Someone just emailed me this question:
"I found attached picture of Apollo crossover. Usually in hi-end gear manufacturers are trying to use as less components as possible. Regular crossover has 5-7 components.
The Apollo's crossover has 50-60 components and huge amount of capacitors.
Do you think it improves the sound?
Crossovers of Poseidon and Ulysses looks much smaller (considering the cover)."
An in depth reply would take a book but here is what I said :
this is a pretty involved subject but the short line is that in a multi driver system to do it right you need a very sophisticated crossover. Two way systems try to use as simple a crossover as possible, but even those would be improved by using multiple caps of much higher quality. We could make this same crossover a fraction of the size /cost but it would use inferior electrolytic caps etc that you typically find. There are a host of other reasons but this is not the place. bottom line is that single driver systems have no crossover but limited bandwidth and uneven response, two way systems have simple crossovers but again many compromises sonically (especially in larger systems) Three and four way systems require a sophisticated network and most companies use electrolytic caps for the large values and buffer them with film caps to make the sound acceptable. We only use film caps and use them in groups so that they are the most transparent. This is an incredibly expensive path to take and usually you will only find crossovers like these in speakers in the six figure range.
btw the Ulysses and Poseidon crossovers are exactly the same in size as the Apollo11, it is like building a ship in a bottle to install them.
I hope this helps to clarify?
thanks,
lou