[NoahH]

Hi all,
I am excited to say the components of my NX-tremes just arrived!

I have been sitting down to confirm I have everything and test all parts and realized a question.

I am pretty sure that testing the woofers independently via a low-volume output of regular music from my amp without a crossover is not going to hurt anything and will work as a test, I suspect that is not true of the tweeters. I assume that putting something like an 8 khz tone instead of music straight into the tweeters is fine for testing, correct? That said, if something goes wrong in a test and I accidentally pipe lower frequencies into a tweeter, how bad is that?

Any other testing suggestions?

Thanks!

[NoahH]

Second question for the crowd; testing the capacitors shows a pretty big variation in values. Most of the Sonicaps are within 1% of their rated value, but 2 are closer to 5% under spec. If feels like that is big enough to matter - any wisdom from the crowd on this?

Thanks!

[Hobbsmeerkat]

For testing woofers we use the resistance setting on a multimeter to make sure it reads correctly.
Usually 16-Ohm woofers read as 12-ohm.
And 8 ohm drivers usually read around 7ohm.

If its reading fluctuates, or is really high/low theres likely an issue with the voicecoil .
If you get no reading, its likely DOA.

Most caps have a variance within +/-10% and are still considering "within spec"
Some brands offer tolerances within +/-5%
Most Sonicaps tend to stick within the +/-5% range, especially on larger caps above 8uF
Smaller caps tend to see a little more variation within the +/-10% range.

Which is why we match them into close or matching pairs. So you dont have a 10-20% difference between caps that have the same printed value.

That way if there is any variation, it's minor often well below 1% between the two speakers.

[NoahH]

Super helpful - thanks Hobbs!

[E-Zee]

As Hobbs mentioned, variance from stated value is not a big deal, but a large variance between your pairs can be.   

For example, if my target cap value was 10uF, I'd rather have two that each measure 11.5 uF, than have one measure 11 and the other measure 9.   

Hopefully that makes sense.  Matching pairs and knowing actual measured value also allows for substitutions as needed.   Again if 10uF is the target, and I have inventory to pick from, I might find a pair of 9uF that each measure 9.9uF and use them instead of pairs of 10uF which actually measure 10.7.   In reality those small variances might not matter much if at all, but hopefully the principle conveys itself.

Elon