Speaker Crossover Capacitor Values


If the original capacitor for the bass driver is a 72uF Electrolitic non-polar 100 volt, when considering a replacement due to age, why does the value have to be the exact same, such as using a 22uF + 50uF ? What would happen if one used , say a 68uF or a 100uF ? Also for the woofers, does upgrading to a film Cap make sense rather than replacing with a newer electrolitic ?

jim94025

Showing 1 response by mahlman

I recap many Klipsch crossovers and use mainly Audyn red and Dayton 1% poly caps from Parts Express. I also use them in the woofer circuit rather then those electrolytics (normally high ESR) so many companies seem to use. They can be pretty large so sometimes I have to fasten them down where I can and run insulated leads to them. You have an odd value you can’t find then use two that add up. 30uf + 38uf soldered in parallel for instance will give you 68uf and the bonus is two hooked up in parallel will give you lower ESR then one 68uf cap will. I have found this to be true with any combination of values in that two caps always are lower in ESR then one.

Use the values on the board and be safe.

 

Now just for the heck of it with a two way speaker I designed recently I wanted passive crossovers. It seemed with the components I selected that the crossover calculators never had those nice round even numbers that so often appear with commercial passives. So figuring the math meant something I used a combination of caps that would get me right on calculated values and not round them off. It might take three to get my 13.74uf value for instance. Then since the difference in db efficiency between woofers and horn drivers is normally pretty large I did a fixed resistor L-Pad doing the same thing to come as close as possible to calculated values. The difference in fidelity is quite apparent and on those L-Pads a .5db attenuation to much or to little can make a big difference.