A few basic questions and a possible WTB

[kravi4ka]

I know this is something silly but I am a bit OCD when it comes to buying components for crossovers and I need a bit of advice.

I cannot design my own crossover and I usually build stuff created by experienced DIYers. That means that the values of important coils are specified but what happens with the ones that have no DCR mentioned, like the ones in notch filters? Ideally it would be great to use a 8AWG coil but I am still waiting for that lottery ticket How do you decide on the DCR there-12AWG,14AWG, a certain ratio between the DCR and a resistor in line... :roll:

Second comes paralleling of caps. I know we all do it but has anyone compared a stack against an exact value? For example I have a cap on the midrange that is 47uF and if I stack a few I could buy something rather nice, not many good caps are made in that value.

Same for the big caps in notch filters-is it better to use one big cap of lesser quality against a stack of good ones?

And last - anyone has a spare pair of a great cap like ClarityCap MR or Audyn true copper in 3.9uF or any crossover parts for sale please send me a PM, I might dearly need something that is not in use... Or a good for sale section on a forum it would be great. TIA

[chrisn]

Often, the resistance listed for an LCR will be the combined total of the resistor and the inductor. I like to parallel caps because it allows me to have each "stack" be the same exact value, ie: 8.22uf, instead of 8.17 on one speaker, and 8.37 on the other. I parallel resistors much of the time as well.

[kravi4ka]

Many thanks, that is what I was looking for! I am worried that you are as crazy as I am -8.17 vs. 8.22uF?

[DigitalMaven]

Just finished a crossover with audyn 400 volt caps and they sounded fine. Because of the better crossover design the speakers sounded a lot better. There are laws of diminishing returns and maybe spending the money on better drivers versus $100 caps and $100 inductors may not give you that much better results. If you need large value inductors for low crossover points the janzten c-core are very good as well as the erse super-q's. Also the jantzen 15 gauge iron powder core look very good in smaller values. For anything under 2 Mh with a dcr under .3 usually doesn't affect your design that much. I would spend the money first on good inductors, quality military grade resistors like mills or non inductive mox second, and then capacitors. The dialectic absorption is so low already that better crossover designs will play a greater role in overall improvement of sound quality.

[kravi4ka]

Indeed, nothing compares to a good XO design, we have seen how good XO sounds fantastic with cheap components but we have never heard the opposite. My question was targeted more at doing the best when rebuilding an already tried and trusted XO where the Devil has moved to temptations in finer details.

Your opinion is very valuable to me, gave me some real food for thought, thank you.

[DigitalMaven]

Indeed, nothing compares to a good XO design, we have seen how good XO sounds fantastic with cheap components but we have never heard the opposite. My question was targeted more at doing the best when rebuilding an already tried and trusted XO where the Devil has moved to temptations in finer details.

Your opinion is very valuable to me, gave me some real food for thought, thank you.

I forgot to add that because a lot of the time I crossover my designs below 2000 kh The exact value of the capacitor plays a smaller part in the design...so when I do a third order crossover the smaller inductors and the resistors really fine tune the final design. So going from a .24 mh to a .30 mh can alter things substantially at the crossover point. Also I pay really careful attention to my l-pad values on the tweeter side...these values can alter a lot of things including the tilt up or down as well as affecting the smaller inductors in your tweeter crossover. The capacitors play a smaller part as they get larger in size and just really help out with impedance smoothing so for example you can swap out a 47 uh with a 51 uh and it will affect the crossover very little. Maybe they affect the crossover more substantially in a second order but with my third order designs less so...