Crossover Component Quality

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Texbychoice

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Crossover Component Quality
« on: 14 Jul 2020, 05:23 pm »
Roaming YouTube and discovered a high end boutique speaker line with many high praises.  Their website mentions point to point crossover wiring with quality components.  Mundorf resistors mentioned.  A picture of presumably one of their crossovers shows green rectangular resistors.  Unable to tell capacitor brand.  Two ferrite core inductors with the cores protruding on both sides probably 1/2 inch.  At nearly $4,000 a speaker pair the crossovers look pretty crude. 

Danny's videos about upgrading name brand speakers to high quality crossover components have started with similar crude crossovers.  Those videos inspired me to give it a try.  The final result with air core inductors, Audio grade caps, and high quality resistors is amazing.  Now listening to music, not speakers.  Kudos to Danny for generously sharing his knowledge. 

Will never look at expensive speakers as the route to excellent sound reproduction again.  What could those $4,000 speakers sound like with quality crossover components? 

 

Peter J

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Re: Crossover Component Quality
« Reply #1 on: 14 Jul 2020, 06:23 pm »
What could those $4,000 speakers sound like with quality crossover components? 

 

They'd sound like $6000 speakers.  :D

What you're paying for in most big name brands is the stuff you can see. Pretty cabinets, spendy binding posts, drivers, marketing. By and large, anything that's hidden from view is less of a concern. It's really hard to sell the value of unseen whatevers to the buying public, and that's not just speakers, but extends o many things including houses.

Hobbsmeerkat

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Re: Crossover Component Quality
« Reply #2 on: 14 Jul 2020, 07:24 pm »
And computers...  :roll:
I cant tell you how many times I've had to fix a friend's/family's computer, cuz they got a "great deal" on a $299 "Black Friday" PC that wouldn't even have been "adequate" 5 years prior, completely oblivious as to why they're having regular slow-downs & crashes.
Meanwhile several PCs I've built will almost never have issues. Even 7+ years later, outside of occasional software bugs or pebkac. (User error)

Sometimes you're lucky and can get a lot of life out of something cheap, but often times, there's a lot of performance being left on the table, simply because the average user/owner can't see or understand how the internal components will affect the end user experience, or is more worried about price than if it will perform. (Before the realm of diminishing returns at least)

Like buying a $5000 gaming rig, but only playing on a 60hz tube display from the 90s/2000s. Or conversely, buying an 8K OLED TV but only watching old, worn-out VHS tapes over coax..  :lol:
But if you can compromise, you can get something that looks good, works good, and sounds good, even if its not the "best" in any one category, its still worlds better than either extreme.

But at least with speakers, like computers, you can fairly easily upgrade the internals so long as you know their values and know which components to look for, you can really wake them up

Texbychoice

  • Jr. Member
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Re: Crossover Component Quality
« Reply #3 on: 14 Jul 2020, 08:51 pm »
They'd sound like $6000 speakers.  :D

What you're paying for in most big name brands is the stuff you can see. Pretty cabinets, spendy binding posts, drivers, marketing. By and large, anything that's hidden from view is less of a concern. It's really hard to sell the value of unseen whatevers to the buying public, and that's not just speakers, but extends o many things including houses.

Bet they would charge more!  My comment was a little tongue in cheek.  Most of us understand the big brand names carry hefty overhead costs.  The less than impressive crossover was from a small company, not widely advertised, primarily direct sales carried by a tiny number of dealers, hand made, and promoted primarily at large audio shows is best information I can discover.  More power to the owners if they can build a speaker cheaply, get glowing reviews, satisfy customers, make a profit, and stay in business for over 25 years..