[Danny Richie]

Pretty on the outside....

Yes, that is an iron core inductor and an electrolytic cap on the woofer circuit. And yes those are 12 cent a piece sand caste resistors in the tweeter circuit. 

What really got me was the nice looking dual binding post on the back and then just inside the binding post cup the nut and terminal that connects the binding posts to the little circuit board are all steel. Yep the whole terminal that is about an inch long is ferromagnetic.



Nice woofers though. Looks like they have a sprayed coating over paper.

I am not sure what happened to the tweeters though. I used to be a stocking distributor for Focal drivers and the tweeter looked a lot different in the old days. And I'll just leave it at that.

I'll fix'em! 

[Wayner]

Your dealing with speakers that are probably a decade old........

[Danny Richie]

Your dealing with speakers that are probably a decade old........

That's okay. I'll still work on them, and upgrading them is a no brainer. Whatever the customer wants...

[Captainhemo]

Yes, that is an iron core inductor and an electrolytic cap on the woofer circuit. And yes those are 12 cent a piece sand caste resistors in the tweeter circuit. 

What really got me was the nice looking dual binding post on the back and then just inside the binding post cup the nut and terminal that connects the binding posts to the little circuit board are all steel. Yep the whole terminal that is about an inch long is ferromagnetic.

Never ceases to amaze at what   is found lurking insed   
It wouldn't take a huge investment  during the design stage to make substantial improvements to performance in so many loudspeaker designs 

jay

[Wind Chaser]

Never ceases to amaze at what   is found lurking insed   
It wouldn't take a huge investment  during the design stage to make substantial improvements to performance in so many loudspeaker designs 

But why? Ignorance? Inability? Economics?

[Captainhemo]

$ and  margins I'd suspect

jay

[Folsom]

Ya, the problem is you don't want to pay for it.

[mresseguie]

I don't have a picture of it, but the above XO looks a heckuva lot like my old Proac Response D2 monitors' XO. I was surprised to discover it (but not anymore).

[mlundy57]

If I remember correctly it is something like for every $1 spent on parts & materials at the manufacturing end the cost at the consumer end goes up $5. So $20 more on parts = $100 more in the store. Which could totally miss the price point the manufacturer is trying to hit.

On a mass market scale pricing is serious business, with a lot of psychology involved. Being off just a little can make the difference between profit and loss. That's why you see a company selling multiple versions of basically the same speaker. Each one a little more refined than the previous model. Each model is meant for someone willing to spend that much on a speaker and no more.

Speakers are not the only product manufactured this way. The vast majority of products are done this way whether it be audio equipment, bicycles, shoes, a car, even a house.

Instead of thinking ill of folks for making legitimate business decisions I like to think of it as aftermarket opportunities.

Mike

[Captainhemo]

Ya, the problem is you don't want to pay for it.

For many companies, it's all about how little they can put in, how much they can get out, gotta hit that specific magin (not all but many).
You're telling me that  by going to some decent  film caps  and some  wire wound, non inductive  resitros in a network, it's going to cause a signifcant increase in cost..... well, I guess if they want to keep  those margins they  obtain by using  stuff like  what is seen above, then  maybe it would. 

I'm not saying they should all be using   expensive , botique  components, but  there are some prety   inexpensive alternatives to what can be found in  many c/o networks these days

Maybe I'm missing   something, but,  if sellling  product x at   $100  is going to make them    the profit they are lookig for and it costs  say $30 to  improve the  quualtiy of the  product  by a decent  amount, are thy  not going to  make  the same  profit  by selling it at  $130, or god fobid,  even  more at  $150  and  quite possibly have  happier customer ?

 
jay




jay

[Folsom]

I don't entirely disagree that sometimes throwing a little something extra in can be a good move. But in general when you're selling cheap speakers it's a struggle to sell them at all; cost vs income is dependent on volume and so a few dollars here and there really count when you have to spend money to sell them. $30 to them could be up to $65-300 cost to you; and that's not wrong it's just a reflection of what the business model/s require. They're still offering a much better product than the knock-off stuff. But you have to think when you're playing around with the low dollar stuff, people aren't looking at it like "well if I spend another $150 I'll get something way better" so much as "this is my budget".

Rod core inductors are not always bad, btw.

There's some very expensive speakers using cheaper crossover parts. Not everyone sees the value in them being high grade. The design of the speaker enclosure and drivers is going to trump them. JBL would be a good example of a company that uses just good enough parts, but makes good speakers. I think they'd sound a fair bit better otherwise, but since they use a couple dozen capacitors it's not an option.

Also we've all seen when some speakers look subpar to even that one, and I mean like 1 cheap capacitor is the crossover.

[Early B.]

For many companies, it's all about how little they can put in, how much they can get out, gotta hit that specific magin (not all but many).
You're telling me that  by going to some decent  film caps  and some  wire wound, non inductive  resitros in a network, it's going to cause a signifcant increase in cost..... well, I guess if they want to keep  those margins they  obtain by using  stuff like  what is seen above, then  maybe it would. 

I'm not saying they should all be using   expensive , botique  components, but  there are some prety   inexpensive alternatives to what can be found in  many c/o networks these days

Maybe I'm missing   something, but,  if sellling  product x at   $100  is going to make them    the profit they are lookig for and it costs  say $30 to  improve the  quualtiy of the  product  by a decent  amount, are thy  not going to  make  the same  profit  by selling it at  $130, or god fobid,  even  more at  $150  and  quite possibly have  happier customer ?

Another very important consideration is availability of parts. Small speaker manufacturers, including GR Research, have been forced to stop making a speaker because the parts are no longer available. Cheap parts are readily available, and that's partly why even high end manufacturers use them. Besides, the vast majority of customers don't care about crossover parts quality, and they're not geeky audiophiles like us who go so far as to discuss the sonic merits of specific capacitors and inductors.

[JLM]

Bottom line, how many have they sold versus the competition, and how do they compare sound wise?

I'm a speaker first kind of guy and know the value of a $60 cap versus a $2 cap, but I make drivers, then cabinets my priorities.  In Focal's case they manufacture their own drivers, so a $50 tweeter may only cost them $10.  So when you look at the relative value of a $60 cap (that they may get for $40) it's hard to load up the crossover with boutique parts versus moving up to an even better tweeter. 

These upgrades reminds me of a kit car company taking shots at products from a big car company like VW.  What's the point?  I thought AC had a higher set of standards. 

[Danny Richie]

These upgrades reminds me of a kit car company taking shots at products from a big car company like VW.  What's the point?  I thought AC had a higher set of standards.

Actually it is because we have a higher set of standards that we upgrade, because what comes from the factory isn't good enough. It's also more cost effective (by far) to buy a speaker and then upgrade it then to pay up front for the manufacturer to sell it all tweaked out to begin with. Plus upgrading, and tweaking is part of the fun.

Another example is to look at the aftermarket industry in the automotive field. Over here in the good old USA we can't leave anything alone. Even our factory hot rods get customized to make them more powerful, unique, and personal.

[mlundy57]

I do the same thing with bicycles and kayaks. I buy a bicycle then change the gearing to get the ratios I want, replace the front shock with one that suits me better or add knee braces to a kayak that didn't come with them.

Like Danny said, a whole lot of people change/upgrade/customize all sorts of products. That's why the accessories and aftermarket industries exist.

I want an S&S or Screaming Eagle carb on my Harley.....     or ....

Mike

[HAL]

Anyone that read Audio Amateur or now AudioXpress magazine sees ways to do mods like Danny is doing every month.  They have been publishing it since the '70s.  They call it POOGEing gear.  I am a big fan.

J. Gordon Holt of Stereophile use to give tips on how to mod some gear to make it better. 

Back in the '80s even Audio Magazine published a well known article on capacitor dielectric testing and what dielectric constant and absorption do to sound.  Used that article in the capacitor selection for my speakers.   

Did my first crossover mod to my 1984 Maggy IIB's.  Sounded much better with the better polypropylene caps and air core coils I wound than the Mylar caps and iron core inductors.  Never went back.

Tried and true method to get good sounding gear to sound better. 

[Wind Chaser]

These upgrades... What's the point?  I thought AC had a higher set of standards.

These upgrades are all about honouring "higher standards".

A product built to a price point invariably involves compromise / poor choices.and since you mentioned it, with respect to the auto industry, safety issues and expensive recalls.

[Danny Richie]

Okay, here are the factory measurements.

Here are the individual driver responses and how the sum.



The overall response is within +/-3db but there are a few issues. There is a peak in the tweeters response and several issues with the woofers response.

The horizontal off axis looks pretty good.



And the vertical off axis is not too bad as well. They drop out a little bit in the crossover region, but not by a huge amount. Tilting them back a little would help this some.



The spectral decay shows some issues in the 700Hz to 900Hz range. Looks like some woofer break up causing some problems. I was really hoping and really thought this wiggle in the response was caused by the back side of the woofer through hole not being rounded off as I have seen this many times before and it shows up right in this area. But it was not the case.



The impedance curve shows a port resonance or a box resonance right at the tuning frequency of the port. There is also a hint of something happening in that 700Hz to 900Hz range.



A look at the impedance curve of just the woofer shows several areas where a resonance is a problem. There is one at about 32Hz, another at 900Hz, and another at about 2.9kHz.



Peaks in the woofers response also falls inline with the resonance seen in the impedance response. A little experimenting with adding some silly putty to the woofer in various places helped identify the problem areas a bit. I'd have to say that the surround that they used on this little woofer is way to thick and too large. It is causing some of the issues right at the outer edges of the cone.

I really can't see this woofer being a good choice for any ranges above 400 to 500Hz. It might be a good woofer for mid-bass but not mid-range.

But it is what it is and I'll see what I can do with it.

[mlundy57]

Sounds like a handfull.

Mike

[Danny Richie]

So I designed a new crossover. I pushed some of the woofer break up down a little and added a notch filter to the tweeter to drop the peak at 7.5kHz a few db.



There was really nothing I could for for the response in the 800Hz range.

The vertical off axis improved slightly. I still recommend tilting it back a little.



The horizontal off axis still looks good.



The csd looks a little cleaner.



The impedance response now shows the resonance at the port tuning is gone. It looks like lining it with No Rez took care of that.



The No Rez should tighten up the bass response and clean up the lower vocal range too.