|
Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
|
|
|
Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
|
In Reply to: I am curious about the crossover posted by Schu on October 13, 2005 at 10:10:50:
Look I am going to get hit on all directions from this. So I am going to stand on three legs for this battle.First I am an amateur musician, meaning I know how music sounds in a small venue, a medium venue, and a large venue.
Second I am an audiophile. So I guess that means I love to get my sound system to try its hardest to recreate that emotion and passion of the music as best I can.
Third, I have been tweaking and building speakers since I was say 12 years old. I am 48 now, so that has been a lot of speakers. Some good, some bad, and some very ugly sounding.
These Sonus Faber wanna be speakers are delicious in every way. I adore them.
To answer the crossover question let me say this. Modern speaker designers and engineers are working hard to get the very best reviews. So making the graphs work measured 1 meter from the speaker is paramount. To do this, all you need is LEAP and some time sorting the best crossover components and circuit board layout. Nearly every modern speaker manufacturer has moved to LEAP created high order crossovers.
IMHO they measure great. Gotta love those graphs....and they sound sterile, uninteresting, and constipated. They just lose all their emotion and passion. But they do measure like a champion!
For my speakers I generally end up with dual order crossovers mainly to protect my beloved midtweeters and ribbons which are no longer manufactured. They do not like low frequencies so why risk blowing them?
I like to use ribbon chokes because their DCR is very low. That means less of the amp's power is wasted in the crossover. It is the first watt of power your amp makes that determines its sound quality IMHO. For this reason I like to keep the crossover simple. One choke and one cap. I use solen caps because I love how "fast they sound" which is a must for the ribbons.
I run a very high quality wire wound resistor I sourced from NTE that come packaged in a gold aluminum housing. These are not cheap. I think they run about 6 to 8 dollars each. They have the least grunge effect on the sound of any resistor I have heard so the price is not a factor for me.
I am running 100 ohm resistors in both the 3" mid tweets and the ribbons. I am running 50 ohm resistors in my Vifa dual concentric tweeters I use for the rear channel. I always try to run the mid tweets and tweets full out. Then I measure from my listening seat, and then I run resistors until I find the ones that give me the most linear frequency response at the listening seat.
I like to measure my speakers at the listening seat not at 1 meter. I understand why we measure speakers at 1 meter but rooms do a great deal of massaging during those additional meters.
That is why my REL wanna be woofers are dual order slopes at 175 hz. These are not sub woofers. These are sub reinforcers. So I want them to fill in the missing curve of the DIY satellites that are measured where I listen. I have 150 hz and 125 hz crossovers from different builds, so I can swap them in and out to evaluate.
So in my apartment the 175 works best. In my last basement with concrete walls on three of 4 walls 125 hz sounded best.
Now for my opinion on the sound quality of a simple crossover versus a higher order crossover.
You simply have to use the best, most linear and musical speakers you can find. This is where many of my earlier speakers failed. They had great text book measurements but sounded lousy.
Now I go out and listen to as many great speakers as I can find. Find one that is emotional and passionate and then use that specific driver.
The single order or dual order crossovers I build are point to point soldered. I use Audioquest Type 4 speaker wire for my internal wiring. I separate out just the heavy conductor for the woofer or midrange, and use just the light conductor for the mid tweeter and tweeters. This is awesome sounding wire IMHO.
I do use dual binding posts so the crossovers are fed directly from the amps output terminals I feel this is a critical element to making the transient information as clear and unsmudged as possible. Again this is simply my choice. There is a lot of confused controversy about biwiring. I like it. It works for me. It is my choice and I am taking it.
If I did not tweak and evaluate so much gear I would hard solder my speaker wire directly to the speaker's crossovers. This would make my audiophile life way too complicated. But eliminating all these breaks also provide a clear and clean sound IMHO.
So with my speakers they have just superlative emotion and passion. The music is vital, alive, and just blooms into the room. I am sitting way too close so in a better room I expect these speakers to sound considerably better. But these are without exception, in every sound area the best speakers I have ever listened to, owned, or set up.
A high order crossover would just destroy this magic IMHO. If you want to hear these first hand, just schedule a trip to Reno Nevada and I will be happy to host a listening session.
In my book first order or second order crossovers are the way to go. I understand the new Gallo reference monitors use no crossovers. I would love to see how he pulled that one off!
Cheers.
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Follow Ups
- Answer on the crossovers. - tubesforever 11:11:38 10/13/05 (1)
- Great input - Schu 14:05:09 10/13/05 (0)
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
