I'm in madman Danny Ritchies camp on this one. The x-over is EVERYTHING to a loudspeaker! A seasoned audiophile can look at a given speaker x-over without hearing the unit itself and have a damn close idea how good or bad its going to sound.
@@V1ralB1ack Wattage Post CrossOver...................................? I would be curious to compare gross wattage input versus net wattage per driver driven after the crossover. Or maybe at 1 watt in, as a standard. I would think the difference would indicate a crossover efficiency, if there is such a thing.
No matter whether a speaker has active or passive crossovers, the quality of the components can make a MASSIVE difference!! With cheap coils, along with low tolerance resistors and capacitors, a crossover can be way off and sound horrible, but with high quality, tight tolerance components the same design can sound amazing... echoing Sebastian's comment below!
Wattage Post CrossOver...................................? I would be curious to compare gross wattage input versus net wattage per driver driven after the crossover. Or maybe at 1 watt in, as a standard. I would think the difference would indicate a crossover efficiency, if there is such a thing.
there used to be an online database of rigorously specified subwoofer measurements, and i believe it had an industry-shaping effect: modern subwoofers are built to a much higher standard than previously, and the modern subwoofer customer has a broad selection of options. i wish crossover components could get the same treatment
Some years ago I purchased vintage japanese loudspeakers (2-way) for about 120€. The crossover design is pretty simple though. I replaced the old original caps bei Jantzen foil caps for another 120€, changed the inner cabling and mounted new terminals. I literally have new speakers. I'm very happy with them. They look cool, don't take too much space in the living room and they have WAF ;) crossovers matter!!!
Before I changed my speakers into ACTIVE speakers; I can testify that over the years that not only did the correct part in the correct place make a difference . . . but the quality of a part did make quite a difference. I heard this for myself with just the main capacitor for a tweeter was a much more expensive one . . . and it did make a difference in clarity, detail, imaging, and timbre -- not to mention the opposite can also be a factor with cost-effectiveness; in that, the higher in cost, the less in improvement may be heard. In other words, even as in speakers . . . there are always margins of improvement that you may make a premium payment for just for that small edge. One must decide for themselves, just how much more they are wanting and how much they are willing to pay for that small improvement . . . or does that small improvement make that much of a difference that payment "X" amount of dollars is worth the improvement one hears, or could one be satisfied without that price being added to the total cost of the speaker, amplifier, etc. It is all a matter of choice, budget, and willingness to compromise in order to save money . . . or having the "so-called" best for a very brief moment in time is worth the cost . . . when tomorrow it will already be replaced by something newer, shinier, and always more improved!
good morning, can I ask if you are still convinced of the goodness of switching to active speakers ? which are the major improvements that you have obtained ? thanks al ot and kind regards gino
While it can be appreciated at a particular level, it is amazing what so many consider great sounding????? No wonder it's not just in the past that there once was bread and circuses for the masses
High quality passive crossovers have awesome components like coil wound cement resistors, beautiful inductors & high quality capacitors like Nichicon, Panasonic, Elna, Kemet, Wima, etc., etc. It’s amazing how much you can increase the sound quality of old speakers or a Craigslist score by upgrading the crossover components.
When I went speaker shopping, I purchased the ones that sounded the best. I did not get into the nuances of the speaker's innards. It was a brand known for its build quality, and the speakers sounded great. If I found out that some other speakers use better crossovers, but do not sound as good as my speakers, should I have buyer's remorse over the lesser sounding speaker having a better crossover? The likelihood is that the better a speaker sounds, the better its parts will be. When you play your stereo, you get drawn into the music, and not not into the crossovers, etc. Buy the best sounding speakers your budget will permit. If it is a start-up company, then that is something to consider, in case they go under. But generally speaking, what sounds best is what you should buy, as long as the wife does not complain about how its looks (cause you have to live with that, too).
What sounds best when you buy it is not necessarily still the best in long term. Cheap condensers e. g. tend to dry out early and that will alter the overall performance. So parts quality matters. Of course: If the principle crossover design is bad the parts' quality can't save it.
@@Fastvoice I know no one that has ever inquired about condensers or crossovers, etc, when speaker shopping. I know no one that would know a mass produced one from and hand crafted one. I suspect that even people that do audio reviews would struggle with that aspect of speaker design and build. I also suspect that when reviewers include such information in their reviews, they are regurgitating what the manufacturer told them. Virtually no one opens up their speakers to confirm what is inside. People tend to ask about frequency response, driver sizes, how many drivers, type of wood used, how much power is needed to properly drive the speakers, etc. If you told folks which condensers are in their speakers, or made it up, nearly no one would know the difference. I do know several people that know which brands are reputable, and they will stick to shopping for those brands. It stands to reason that the reputable brands will not have build quality issues. I own Vandersteen speakers. I have no idea what parts are inside. Yet I do know that none of it is junk, from the entry level speakers, to the flagship speakers.
You're absolutely correct. If you labelled a poly cap a foil cap and a foil cap a poly cap then ninety nine percent of all the hand wringing audio snobs out there would simply ask for the film cap, then getting the poly cap instead, remain blissfully unaware until their dying day. The quality of cross over components can certainly make a difference but it's far more important to get the balance of all components correct than it is to use what a couple of dudes who are more interested in bragging about the parts in their cross over than they are great sound think are the best parts to use. As you stated, buy what sounds best. Only a da*n fool would fall in love with the sound of a speaker and then upon discovering it had what he considered less than stellar crossover components throw it in the trash thinking it's sound was now unlistenable. I've seen many comments from people who might be that foolish stating before people buy a speaker they should demand to see the crossover, yeah, good luck with that. No one is going to disassemble the speaker so someone who probably doesn't have the money to buy the speaker anyway can pass judgement on a part they know little to nothing about. Never mind the drivers they know nothing about but don't seem to mind being garbage or the cabinet construction they don't understand but don't question other than putting some dampening material in it as if that is going to fix a poor cabinet. Again, proper design of the system as a whole is far more important than every part being top flight. After all, we've got guys complaining that $1000 is too much to pay for great speakers. Can you imagine if companies actually used the level of parts some of these guys think should be used? Every bookshelf speaker would then be 5 grand and up. These are the same guys who look at parts cost and a sheet of plywood and thing that's all the cost a company incurs. What I've always said to these fellas is if you think you know better or can do better then I look forward to hearing Joe Smith Audio speakers very soon. So far old Joe Smith hasn't made his mark in the speaker world though, strange.
Very true and the question is based of Danny from GR research and all his videos. I advise anyone here to go to GR research RU-vid channel and watch his crossover and videos to learn a lot. Him and Paul are fantastic educators. Now the fr30 is unfortunately like most speakers with just mediocre crossover parts (pics of crossovers on their website) with a total of roughly $350 in total cost for both speakers crossover parts on a almost $30,000 speaker...
I don't know about iron core ever being better than air cores, unless of course it's to compromise sound quality for either lower cost or smaller size, which are valid reasons to use an iron core.
Put simply, a system as a whole must be balanced when you're striving for the top. Like a race car; the tires, down force, engine, fuel, gearing, the vehicle as a whole determines it's performance. If one area is lacking the whole performance suffers.
There are no manufacturers that go crazy with crossover parts quality. The best Magico, Wilson, etc use caps, inductors and resistors not even as good as the ones in my upgraded Tekton Moabs. And even mine aren't "crazy" and could easily be even better with all Deulund level parts. None of this matters when buying, we hear the whole speaker. Where it matters is being able to upgrade your existing speakers. Because they have cheap parts now means you can get a really nice improvement upgrading these parts.
I have served in F16 squadron back in the 90s , unfortunately even with ear plugs it was a huge noise. Hope in the coming years my hearing will be OK. Sometimes when my wife calls me from the kitchen I am not hearing her 🤣🤣
My grandfather manned artillery in ww2 . His hearing was bad. I remember he got a hearing aid, and he put them in listened to my grandmother for 10 minutes and took them out. 😆
I recently acquired a pair of martin logan ESL electromotion speakers and for some reason, the volume output is way lower and muddy sounding compared to my other speakers. Martin logan support recommended I replace the internal power supply, so I just swapped them out and the volume is still really low. Do you think it's a crossover issue?
Helo I need a help which speaker crossover can I use for midrange cuz the crossover tht I bought with the speaker ar burned an the one tht I use to buy to replace the old one ar poor in performance they are not loud like tht one tht I bought with the speaker .which crossover can I buy ' crossover that is too loud for midrange plz help an where can I order them?
Call the company before you buy. Any company using quality parts would be happy to tell you about them. Spending a few grand on speakers should be a selective process and not an impulse.
Perfect answer, they will tell you exactly what they are using and why if they are reputable, or if they shirk around the subject you can say goodbye and not purchase, in any case listening at home first is obviously the best thing
I remember sorting components and testing values in a radio shack selecting parts for a crossover. The employee said “those are all 10’s “ I asserted they were all around 10 but I’ll take theses 6 I tested to be 10.3’s . Know your values and tolerance 1,5, 10… 20% ya might wanna see what the actual value is. I’m a very tolerant poo.
Layman's question regarding iron core conductors, wouldn't the larger core iron core inductor like Paul was showing have less of a saturation problem? Is it possible the iron core inductor shown was in fact more expensive that the smaller air core he compared it to? I've watched a GR video or two and I'm curious as to what level of cheese Danny Ritchie would assign to that above mentioned ICI. Another question would be if the values are the same and the tolerances are the same why/how would a more expensive crossover part sound "better"? What would be the cause of the improvement?
The difference is in residual charge in inductors for iron core vs. air core and discharge rate in capacitors. Air core inductors hold very little residual charge and foil type capacitors have a much faster discharge rate. Another advantage is these parts have a lower ESR ( equivalent series resistance) which means your speakers need less power to achieve the same volume levels. Listening fatigue will be much less or nonexistent too ! If you are after better sound this in a no brainer .
Passive crossovers are always a compromise. The components have tolerances so each speaker is slightly different. OK, so use high tolerance components, but then you turn the volume up, everything gets hot and changes value including the copper windings in the driver unit itself. The impedance curve of the driver changes with temp, so does its interaction with the crossover impedance. Then you have other issues such as damping factor. The amp does not have direct control over the drivers since the crossover introduces an impedance between them, the amps ability to kill back emf is limited and abruptly stop the cone when needed. Connecting separate amps directly to each driver and using a DSP, if well implemented, does not suffer from these problems and can provide better performance.
Separate amps don't control a unit better. A speaker unit breaks- up, distords, and react constantly different to levels of dynamics and volume. A dsp is in theory fine, but it works like an equalizer. The original soundtrack is not even close when playing.
@@benvanzanten379 "A speaker unit breaks- up, distords, and react constantly different to levels of dynamics and volume." That's also true about a driver when crossed over passively. A "speaker unit" does not suddenly "breaks- up, distords," because it's being crossed over actively, whether it be analog such as a 3-way DBX 234XL or the dozens of digital DSPs. So mentioning that drivers do this, is kind of not supporting your point. It's an equal variable to any type of crossover. DSPs and analog DBX's are nothing like an equalizer. They are crossovers which also allow both physical and digital filtering, etc. Everyone using a sub-woofer (yes, there are exceptions) is using "separate amps" and using an active (analog or digital) crossover (yes, there are exceptions). So, they are all Actively Bi-amping. Home theatre people are DIRAC actively Octo-Amping. Actively Tri-Amping 3-way stereo speakers has some great advantages. My favorite reason is flexibility. With each driver in it's own cabinet, I get more sets of speakers for less. I can take out the 6" cone midrange cabinet and replace it with a midrange compression driver with horn cabinet. Change crossover settings from 150Hz, 2.5KHz to 500Hz, 8KHz and it is an entirely new sound/speaker combo. How about the magnapan LS for a midrange? Think of the amp combos. Woofers-Steve Levinson Class A/B, Midrange- Pass Labs Type A & Tweeters- McIntosh Tube amp. I could live with that as my power amplification rack. Ciao
Blending the sounds of a tweeter with the midrange is the most important aspect of eliminating listening fatigue. It involves phase, level matching and varying distortion levels as the drivers near their frequency limits. A midrange or tweeter’s distortion may increase significantly with volume near their frequency’s limits. I’ve often reduced volume to get rid or a hashy upper mid. Playing some albums this problem is less noticeable so I try to glean the truth from reviewers. As you said, you have to live with it. If a reviewer reviews with their favourite recordings the problem might seem important. It’s a sore spot for me.
One can use the best drivers and if the crossovers are cheese like Danny at GR research says it is what it is . I just completed recaps and resistors in my M&K SX-7 satallite speakers , I used fast caps on the tweeter circuits and mills resistors , they sound so sweet now , next is measuring the inductors in the midbass circuits and going to replace them with foil inductors , oh I did replace the capacitors in the midbass circuits with some good house brand poly from Madisound speakers store . Cheese needs to be left for bread and wine .
And increased distortion from amplifier harmonics hitting cone's resonances. Not to mention that these crossovers are complicated, which leads people to buying cheap and underdeveloped crossovers that burn. Passive crossovers are still the way to go unless you want to do something special, like add a delay, an allpass, a very high order filter, address sharp peaks, or a high pass around driver's resonance. All of these are useful and welcome, but are they worth it a the cost of increased harmonics? Currently the best crossovers are hybrid. You have an option of software + analog active + passive + accoustic. The more you pick, the more expensive it gets. With many speakers a passive crossover is fine. As always engineers skill is far more important, but even then we have automatic crossover designer software so yeah, passive is the way to go most of the time.
Active crossovers are only good for under 200hz. After that they rob the speaker of sound big time. Can't replace high end film caps at $100/ea and good film inductors with active crossovers full of cheap parts and noisy power supplys.
Active DSP cross-over allows each driver to be driven directly and precisely and, for example, a tweeter will not get the harmonics from a clipping woofer amplifier. There is no increased distortion but rather you get reduced distortion and less cone resonances with better damping factor also. Of course DSP filtering is best for already digital music (or you introduce another ADC+DAC path) and ideally runs on high sample rate equal to incoming sample rate (No SRC).
@@badd99 With active crossovers you have much better flexibility to tune the filtering better through the entire frequency range. Passive filters have to cope with the complexity of speaker power transfer, impedance and even thermal impedance dependencies.
Quality crossover components cannot be over emphasized. Electrolytic caps do not belong in a crossover. They are for power supplies. Sand resistors do not belong in a crossover nor do iron core inductors. These 3 types of components affect audio
Wattage Post CrossOver...................................? I would be curious to compare gross wattage input versus net wattage per driver driven after the crossover. Or maybe at 1 watt in, as a standard. I would think the difference would indicate a crossover efficiency, if there is such a thing.
I added 31 band EQ between my DAC and Power Amp and was able to voice the speaker to my listening “orgasmic” pleasure. Cost of doing so? $79. That’s all. Just need to make sure you have a speaker that has the capability to produce those frequencies. In my case, my floor standing speakers have a 6.5” midrange driver with a crossover of 2200hz & 90hz which makes it immensely capable of representing pretty much any vocal range from Soprano to Baritone.
oooooh mortal sacrilege... oooooh this insane heretic monster is using an equalizer ooooh noooooo sound all audophile alarms oooo oooooo terrible offense hahaha. well done dude eq for life.
@@Enemji oh , how is it , I bought one about 6 years ago and it was very noisy, I returned and exchanged 3 times and 2 of them where worse than the 1st one that was delivered. So I spent the big money and purchased a ASHLEY parametric and a couple DBX mono 31 Band . Maybe BEHRINGER got there 💩 together. Happy it works good for your needs . Cheers 🥂
Heavy gauge air core inductors trump iron core every time. Something along the lines of iron cores injecting distorion or smearing to the speakers bass response.
Hi Paul. I've had great results using ''' STACKED FILM CAPACITORS ''' in parallel wired banks. 1uf 0.5uf 0.25uf combined to get up to 4.5uf. Sound great. Open. Fast . Love to hear your thoughts.
Or perhaps you gain some kind of fidelity by doing it stacked? Idk it sounds backwards. I think you want less components for the electricity to flow through if you want high fidelity
I’m not sure it’s fair to equate reasonably priced speakers with lower quality parts. There are many variables that come into play with pricing, one of the biggest being the volume of a company’s sales and where they are manufactured. PS Audio is a U.S. company that builds in the U.S., so right out of the gate their products are more expensive to produce for those reasons alone. I also question at what point using “higher quality” parts ceases to actually deliver results that can be heard. In terms of durability, reputable company mid-fi equipment will last decades, so again…
That all depends on the manufacturer, stolen non polarized are the best and last a very long time , but things like how the speakers was used and heat . Heat kills them over time , it's always best to replace them with even decent grade poly caps , if you are wanting a very inexpensive fix that will satisfy you call Madisound speakers in Madison Wisconsin and tell them you want the caps they cary from Taiwan, the poly ones will only be a couple dollars each . I if I can remember are Jp or something like that , Madisound is the best business for speaker and related things , Parts Exspress is not witty enough to give the best service , in my own opinion at least .
active crossovers are cool and nice, but get very expensive very quickly...the crossover also makes the 'sound' of a speaker, if you are as an end user 'responsible' for the setup, you will be the one to blaim if it does not sound right and you loose the 'soul' of the speaker...they all sound the same
I have apogee mini grands when I hooked up a Tom Tutay made for them active crossover holy mother of god. Expensive wires dacs and such were nothing compared to this.
It doesn’t appear that the FR30 crossover’s goal was a flat response. Chris could have added more parts to flatten out peaks, but it looks like they took a less is more approach. Danny Ritchie would have added parts to get the response more linear. Analog design is about a third philosophy.
You just cannot use a generic crossover in any speaker . It does not work that way . That would only work if the impedance of the drivers is known , exactly the same and flat over the whole frequency range . And also the efficiencies of the drivers must be the same . Name me any combination of drivers that has that property . Woofers and cone midranges are the main , but not only reason for this : their voice coils are inductors which will have significant rising impedance with rising frequency and just like any other coil in a crossover this will act like a 6db low pass filter . But since the value of the impedance of every woofer and cone midrange is different , you cannot make a generic crossover . Generic crossovers are utterly useless . Every speaker needs its own specific crossover
If you can “get” into the speaker cabinets buy speaker crossovers from the “car audio market” there are “very” high quality ones available and they are fully adjustable, easy to wire in plug and play. You can even mount them on the outside of the back of the cabinet because the way they are designed to be mounted. You can easily change the settings on the fly any time you want just by changing the pins around. Simple. Focal makes a crossover. I think it’s “64,000” different settings for their car Utopia speakers..The crossover is almost as big as a small suitcase. In fact you can make your own speaker cabinets and install the Utopia’s yourself.
Oops not 64k settings. 4,000 settings for the crossover for the Utopia.My bad..🙃 Focal ES 165KX2 These are the ones I have 2-ohm impedance power range: 6-120 watts RMS (240 watts peak power) frequency response: 55-22,000 Hz sensitivity: 92.5 dB $1,299.99 pair.
there is value to be found out there but its certainly not the high end. its not in the mass market low end either. value is in the not crazy expensive middle range, used high value markets, and thats where upgrading a 20 year old speaker crossover parts might sometimes be worthwhile. audiophile land is packed with suckers. The mark up on the high end is a clue. Its ridiculous.
Iron core coils ???? You gotta be kidding !!! That is the cheapest lowest quality coil you can buy ! . The core saturates easily . If you do need very high values in a coil , you either go for a transformer core coil (expensive) or an I-core coil (Mundorf) . Otherwise stick to an air coil , preferably of the baked varnish variety to avoid any microphonics effect . Avoid iron core coils like the plague !
I’ve seen examples in speakers that were built 50 years ago that contradict your comment.. Things are a lot more complicated than just whether an inductor is air core or not. When it comes to electronic components, you can’t just make comments like this.
Some of the better speakers in this world have non so called high end components. In the end of the day if a speaker sounds good to you then that’s all that matters. When my time is up in this world I will not be remembering that my speaker had a Jensen capacitor in it.
Lol, not everyone has 9000 grand for speakers. Lol. A speaker is a speaker was my greatest revelation. After listening to Focal Grand Utopia and the Wilson Alexx V. Yeah they sound great but they still sound like speakers....... lol 😂. If you want Orgasmic, spend that money on an instrument and learn it. It will sound better than a speaker......... guaranteed.
I’m sorry but….that wasn’t a very informative video. Why are more expensive crossover components better? What are the effects over a simpler crossover with less parts vs more? What are things to look out for in a crossover that would be good or a red flag? And that’s only a few things you could have gone over…. Pretty useless video.
The way you tell the good crossover is by what it looks like. Capacitors should have bright colours. Inductors should look coppery. The more coppery the better. If it is 0.999999999999999999 pure oxygen-free copper than you know it's a good one.
Paul simply stated the quality of parts -and adjusting the XO to the drivers, plays a major role in how that speaker will sound. Nothing useless about that...
*Focal* _"world leader in high-fidelity solutions" "for more than 40 years"_ It's sad but some manufacturers like Focal rely on their pedigree to sell absolute cheap garbage to ignorant customers. Their crossovers are as cheap as they come.
