Upgrading Speaker Components

Yes, it is necessary to change the crossover. The best way of upgrading the crossover is to replace the parts with the same values but higher quality. BUT this will not NECESSARILY make them sound better. I am facing the same question and it is not simple. Unless these are very good cabinets you may be getting into more trouble than you expect. All the elements in a speaker work together and just changing some part for a "better" one doesn't mean you will like the sound better. The landscape is littered with experimenters who got worse results. Now if these were bad speakers to begin with then this doesn't apply to the same degree. I am replacing the internal wiring and speaker posts on my Spendor S 100s and contemplating further steps but these two should give an improvement on about any speaker. Talk to someone like Madisound about your particular speakers. Also many DYI sites but unless you want to devote serious time and money to a project it is probably easier and cheaper to get a good pair of used speakers on this site.

When you say "nice cabinets" do you mean they look nice or they are designed nice? Good looks are just one part of the cabinet equasion.Manufacturers spend lots of money to ensure that drivers,crossovers and cabinets work together.If your speakers are relatively inexpensive,sure,experiment some.There are lots of publications and what have you,on the internet dealing with speaker building.Just reading some of this material will give you an idea of what goes into building a speaker.

Just swapping components is difficult on more than one level. First, finding drivers with the exact same diameter as the previous ones and the same recess depth can be extremely difficult. Second, the cabinet was built to work with those drivers, so you'd have to also find drivers that work with the same internal volumes.

Next, you can never swap out a driver without completely redesigning the crossover, ever. There might be one instance out of three hundred that this would work. (Seas makes a tweeter with the same measurements in both a soft dome and metal dome, those are interchangeable-the only driver I can think of that this works with). That makes it close enough to never for me.

If you are going to mod speakers, you can try changing internal wiring, or potentially upgrade the crossover components (make sure they are exactly the same values including voltages on caps), and maybe adding internal bracing. Other than that, you're better off contacting someone like Jed at clearwave loudspeakers for help with a custom design - no one offers better value in my opinion, he doesn't not charge for crossover design. It will be designed to meet your specs, and work in your room.

>So if I have a pair of speakers with nice cabinets & want to swap the drivers out to something more upscale(better materials such as carbon fiber/silk)is it absolutely necessary to change crossover components.

Yes.

>Is there a guide or website that can help me choose the right components?

Vance Dickason's Loudspeaker Design Cookbook is a light 275 page introduction.

You'll also need to invest in measurement software, preamp, and calibrated microphone so you can get reasonably flat response without any of the vertical polar response nulls lining up with listeners.

Try something and tweak for different compromises (as between total power and on-axis response). Iterate until you're happy. A programmable line-level cross-over and 4-8 channels of amplification can help there.

If you just want better sound it'll be less work to build nicer enclosures than you have now to house an exceptional design which wasn't designed to the price point the speakers sold for.