Is it good to upgrade the crossovers in your speakers?


A confessed audiophile, threw this Forum I have contracted “Tweakitus”.
QSA fuses, SRA Platforms, Townshend Podiums, NPS Q45T, ad nauseam.

The latest bug in my bonnet is upgrading the crossovers in my speakers.

I asked my speaker designer about part quality. He did mention that caps, for example, can cost as much as $800 each. And that he has gone up to $50 ones.

Like all things “Hi Fi”, cost does not necessarily dictate quality. And I doubt that I would opt for 2 $800 caps. But there must be a sweet spot for crossover components? Any ideas?

mglik

@artemus_5  As mentioned above 20 year old capacitors getting long in tooth, should probably replace. As far as I'm concerned electrolytics don't belong in speaker crossovers, the issue is whether film caps will fit, large values mean less likely. Now, I"ve heard very good things about the VH Audio ODAM,  not as costly as others and relatively smaller size.  Sonic caps are much lower price alternative to the caps I spoke about in previous post.

 

I'll relate an interesting interaction I had with Bobby Palkovich (RIP) many years ago. Bobby's life work was development of his Merlin line of speakers, constant refinement of original design. Well, naivety lead me to call various manufacturers, designers in those days to report on various mods/substitutions of parts I made to their equipment. So one day I decide to call Bobby and report on Duelund cap mod I had done to my Merlin VSM-MM bam module and internal speaker crossover. Bobby was not too happy with me ( as were other manufacturers I contacted in those days), but showed some interest in spite of this negativity. Lo and behold, perhaps a year later Bobby was offering the Duelund upgrades to his beloved Merlins. It is to Bobby's credit he was open minded enough to hear me through and try my mods on his design.  Bobby was already aware of boutique caps prior to my conversation as  he was usiing Hovlands at that time, he discovered, as I had the Duelund VSF were an improvement. Many OEM's not as open minded, parts are parts to them, they'll try to convince you the same.

I've upgraded crossovers on a dozen pairs of speakers.  Never spent more than $200 total for caps and wiring, sometimes Mortite packing.  The $200 went into a pair of Epos 14.  Every speaker was a success and fun to do.  Never changed any of the cap values.

The experts above don’t even mention insertion values they say you are fine as long as you use the same values but those same values have different levels of insertion loss. This is a reason upgraders hear differences since insertion loss can change the output levels of your transducers. In my opinion, most modding networks really don’t understand what they are doing. And tend to consider cost more than anything else when selecting parts used in the upgrade. Lots of confirmation bias involved in crossover mods as those who don’t understand but spent much and did a thing now hear an amazing difference mostly described as an improvement you don’t hear them saying what they ever did was not as good as stock its always better since they spent much and did a thing. I see most not comparing upgraded networks to stock networks. These are all newbie mistakes but I do know you all will still do it because logic is not involved. And of course, it will sound amazing right? like the guy above {Every speaker was a success and fun to do} really every? hmm

IMHO you are pissing money away on items that in the end make minimal difference. Save up and buy better equipment particularly speakers. If you want to "tweak" get a measurement microphone ($300 at Parts Express) and work on your room.