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Best Capacitors for Crossovers

I am now in the tweaking stage of trying different caps in my crossovers for my DIY homemade 2 way. I presently have and will soon try a 5.6uf 800 vdc +/- 2% Jantzen Audio Silver Z-cap.

I see that Mundorf, V Cap get a lot of accolades, and the Dueland are quite pricey.

Does anyone have a favorite?

I am trying to cross over at about 4500HZ at 6db.

128x128ozzy
ozzy's avatar
ozzy OP
3,650 posts
 

georgelofi,

I have tried the Solens and they are ok but they seem to compress the dynamics. The caps I am using have silver leads and silver wiring

eric,

I do like to play the Pass Labs amp pretty loud sometimes. I'm crossing over the tweeters at 4500hz. There frequency rating is 1700-20000+hz, 6 ohm and have a 30 watts rms rating .I have not added any resistors. First off, I am not sure what they contribute. Can someone explain? Is it for equalizing the levels between the tweeter and woofer?

I have been using the Purist break in disc quite a bit and I do believe the brightness is toning down.

georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
4,966 posts
 
I have tried the Solens and they are ok but they seem to compress the dynamics.

Really? I found the opposite, with all of them, when used in my ESL xovers, and even in my Plasma tweeter xovers, especially I found the SILVER METALLIZED POLYPROPYLENE to be vey good, but everything has to be perfect to handle these babies, because they’re so fast and clean.

Which ones did you try?, as there are quite a few models (8 I believe) that can do the job inside a speaker xover.

Cheers George
orpheus10
5,988 posts
 
I've used those in my crossover with great success on a similar tweeter.

Now I'm waiting on some to arrive for my power amp.

Good luck.
ozzy's avatar
ozzy OP
3,650 posts
 
My DIY speakers are sounding very nice. Hard to believe that these small speakers sound so good. If I haven't mentioned before I am also using 2 JL Audio F-113 subs.
erik_squires
5,268 posts
 
Hi Ozzy,

Yes, resistors in the tweeter section are usually to pad down the level.  Tweeters tend to be very sensitive, around 98 dB for instance at 2.83V, while woofers, when all is said and done, may be around 87 dB for a small diameter woofer. So that's 11 dB difference. It's close to 10x the power needed in  the woofer than the tweeter.

I just posted sample files for my own DIY kit. It includes simulation files so you can play with the design and see how each part contributes to the sound.

Best,

Erik
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