Ordered the DeCapo tweeter/cap upgrade...

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Jonathan

Ordered the DeCapo tweeter/cap upgrade...
« on: 16 Oct 2003, 04:51 pm »
Well, I finally bit the bullet and ordered the tweeter/cap upgrade for my De Capos.  I hope to see them some time early next week.  I'll post my initial impressions (with the understanding that some break-in will probably be necessary before I can make a final conclusion).  

I'm pretty psyched!

Jon

mcrespo71

Ordered the DeCapo tweeter/cap upgrade...
« Reply #1 on: 18 Oct 2003, 06:19 pm »
Good for you!  It's nice that the older De Capo's can be ugraded.  I'd do the same if I were in your shoes, but I have the MM De Capo I's.  I'm happy with the sound, but I can't really do any comparison.

wongstein

Ordered the DeCapo tweeter/cap upgrade...
« Reply #2 on: 19 Nov 2003, 03:41 am »

Chris and I upgraded his De Capos last week and the sonic differences were immediately apparent, although the 100 hour requisite break-in period has yet to be reached, at least, at fuller volumes.  In short, the problems in the high frequencies about which we have previously complained appear to be eradicated, and so far there's no reason to believe that any new problems have been introduced, but the freshly-installed tweeters sounded a bit closed-in, like a brand new speaker.

The upgrade was straightforward.  It entailed first removing the old tweater and a pair of capacitors (acting as one) labelled Max Cap.  I wonder if this has anything to do with Frank Fabian and his line of Max Pro drivers.  The typeface is the same and the bright celeste colour of the plastic jackets is in line with the Max Pro branding.  I've heard some fantastic little speakers from him selling for very little money, and I wouldn't be at all suprised if he was somehow involved with the production of the De Capos.  Coloured wires are pre-soldered to the capacitor, so connecting them to the new tweeter and the binding posts is dead-simple.  By the way, that's the Canadian spelling of colour 'cause the De Capos are made in Canada, eh?

The only complaint that we had with the original non-"i" De Capos was a bump in the 2Khz range that Chris originally alerted me to.  I hadn't noticed it at first, but I suppose that it could contribute to a "bright" sound in the wrong setup.  Eventually, we started to recognize specific recordings where this aberration was more apparent - some forward-recorded violins and other strings sounded quite metallic and hence lacking "wood" or "body" and one leturgical choral recording (a reference of ours) made in a big hall had all the 'S's capitalized.  When I mentioned in another topic in this circle that I could hear this treble defect, and guessed that it was a bump at about 2Khz, Brucegel informed me of the existence of some measurements that were available, and Chris produced some graphs that clearly showed a bump at 2000Hz.  So this measurable aberration from linearity is easily heard and placed if you're listening for it, but it seems pretty subtle and you might not even notice it if you didn't know it was there.  The De Capos don't have anything like a flat frequency response (I guess that's the trade-off for an extremely minimal crossover and all of its benefits)  but with the exception of that little chicane at 2Khz in the old, non-"i" De Capos, the rest of the curves are wide and gently sloping, so they are not intrusive if at all audible to most music lovers.  

When I visited Chris about four days after the tweeter upgrade, I could here that they opened up considerably.  There was air and space and excellent voice separation.  All in all, these smaller domed, bigger magnet tweeters (made by the same manufacturer as the old ones) sounded quite well integrated to me, and the defect that previously seemed subtle now glared through my memory in contrast to the smoothness before me.  I think that with that little defect in the frequency response gone, and no apparent new problems traded for it, the De Capos may have moved just a little closer to perfection, but I still think that they lack real extension into the high frequencies.  Don't take me too seriously, however, because being a ribbon-lover I think that of some studio monitors like PMCs and also of Wilson Watt and Sophias and other dome-tweeters (save for the Beryllium ones like in the JM Lab Utopias or some Kharmas which have great HF extension).  Nonetheless, I think that our next critical listen will be done with more than one amp and will entail the trial of a small selection of cables because the speakers sound quite different now.  Because of the harshness of the original tweeters, Chris had gravitated toward Van Den Hul interconnects like the non-metal The Seconds which tighten up the top end a tiny bit, and the Van Den Hul D-102 MKIII hybrid metal/carbon interconnects which just plain roll off the top end, quite frankly.  Now I'm eager to get my pure silver Nu-Vista non-balanced cables into that system in hopes of letting the new tweeter breath easy at the high altitudes and hear what they can do.  I'll be cleaning my ears first, I promise you.

Speaking of upgrading speakers - I've been thinking of having the complex crossover in my Apogees hot-rodded by a shop (inspired by what a great-or-non-existent crossover can sound like) using the latest high-end parts of the same values but tighter tolerances.  I wouldn't do that myself because of the complexity of the internals of my speakers (ask me for an internal photo), but now that I've been inside a De Capo, I see that there's only one active part, no warranty to speak of, and a few wires to be tackled for some hot-rodding action.  

What if we replaced Chris' new capacitor with the latest, greatest, bestest, fanciest, tweakiest, (expensivest?), close-tolerancest capacitor available to foolish humanity (Black Gate?  Auricap?) and replaced the internal wiring with cabling on-par with the runs used to get to the speaker?  Perhaps I'll start a new hot-rod De Capo thread and cross-post to the DIY and The Lab circles.






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