Xover parts quality,/sound difference?

Dbld, This is a very good question. The short answer is yes. If you are to consider the improvements made on solid state electronics from isolation cones, bearings and shelf material then certainly the vibration filled environment of a speaker is worse. Many people have claimed very large improvements with an outboard crossover, but I have not yet tried this.

I have been considering building an outboard wood box for my crossover that would have binding posts for the speaker cable, and then using another set of binding posts for each of the three drives. (tweeter, mid-ranges and woofers) The speaker would then have yet another set of posts for each driver. The reason for this clumsy setup would be for experimenting with different wire types, gauges and configurations to optimize the sonics. I could for instance use solid gold for the tweeter (I have found gold is perfect) and some combination of wire types and gauges for the mid-range and then maybe silver for the woofer. I figure if speaker cables make such a difference, than I should discover the best wire for each driver.

The point would be to tune the speakers with short affordable wire. If I discovered an affordable combination I could the re-wire those drives based on the results of this experiment.

I expect to try this out over the winter, so if anyone has thoughts...

jd

I found that it works well.. But can't say direct comparison wise, because fact is the only reason I have had to move them out of the cabinet was physically if your gonna use the Best parts available they are literaly 5 times the size of a cheap computer grade board and parts in most of these designs... For example, I did a pair for a friend, they had about 5" X 3.5" x 1.5" boards that maybe weighed 1 lb or so.. Well the EXACT same values of caps, Inductors, Resistors etc.. Of the highest quality we could get our hands on took up a minimum board of 12"(1 ft) X 9", and had to take up about 5" Height on top of it.. So we had to move them to a dedicated cabinet that with those parts weighed about 12 lbs... They were decent sized Cubes for sure.

Even if you have the space to fit such a huge difference in size you could probably knock the speaker out of Volume specs for the drivers if they share a chamber with it. Just a point to make, but I keep it safe if your gonna do an actual upgrade then build them outside for ease of everything, and yes maybe vibration control will be an added benefit, but just pulling them out for fun, I don't know, I would probably not mess with it.

JD - be careful how much you play with the internal guts and wiring. I have been advised that even changing from a slide-on spade connector at a driver to straight soldering could change the impedance characteristics of that driver, and therefore alter the way the crossover was intended to work by shifting what it passes either up or down or widening it range too much.

Disclaimer - the above statement may make it sound like I know what I am talking about, but I assure you that I do not. I am just regurgitating what a very reliable source had told me.

Perhaps Sean could elaborate with more credibility.

JD proposes to

experiment(...) with different wire types, gauges and configurations to optimize the sonics

Actually that can as much fun as it is frustrating:) As you are very thorough, patient and persistant, I don't doubt you'll get optimum results.
Much of the frustration IME came from playing with guages (I gave up on playing with different matls and used single core copper, twisted of course): thinner wire for the tweet--> better hi-frequency BUT also increased resistance... so, there goes my xover point (& amplitude & power response patterns). The differences are slight mind you, but in the tweet's case for example, 1 measured 1db down in amplitude response. Fortunately, I had a L-pad on the tweet that, amazingly, helped out beautifully.
Cheers

Dbld: Most commercial designs are SOOOO far from being electrically optimized that just covering the basics i.e. better connections, better conductors, shorter signal path, etc... will almost always introduce better sonics. Parts tolerances and methods of construction vary so much from unit to unit ( in most cases ) that the small amount of error / variance that a "tweaker" may introduce becomes negligible in the grander scheme of things.

Obviously, as one gets into more precisely designed componentry, what would normally be considered a "subtle" change might manifest itself to greater degree. This is why i recommend keeping maintaining a log with diagrams PRIOR to doing any mods, so as to document what goes where and how each change alters the performance. If one wants to obtain greater precision and detail, they have to be more precise and pay attention to details. Sean
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