Dunlavy Minimum Phase Mods

Linear Phase is preferable except when high Q filters (aggressive filter) are used.

High Q filters can result in audible pre-ringing and a minimum phase filter will have no pre-ringing - so a snare hit will sound more natural with a minimum phase high Q filter.

However, I think high Q filters should be avoided period! 

So if you are dealing with low Q filters then linear phase is always the best. The reason linear phase is best is because it preserves the relative phase information in the audio. The timbre of a musical sound that covers many octaves or percussive instruments that have a wide spectrum response will be preserved faithfully by a linear phase filter. Minimum phase changes the relationship between various frequencies and can really mess up correct timbre.

In a speaker crossover with a low Q filter (gentle filter) I would recommend always linear phase (so as to preserve timbre especially in higher frequencies)

Perhaps I'm missing something? Is this just supposed to be an academic exercise? It would appear to me that at great extra complexity and cost one has made what might be marginal improvements over the simpler, less expensive alternative?

@unsound

That's kind of what I am asking. From a technical perspective, recreating a square wave, or near perfect impulse response with purely passive, multi-way speaker is really difficult.

Worthwhile?

erik, I reply not as an engineer but as someone who owned Duntech speakers for 19 years, auditioned several Duntech and DAL models, and had the pleasure of personal conversations with John on two occasions.

John Dunlavy was one of our most respected speaker designers.  He believed strongly in the benefits of time/phase coherent speaker designs and so all his models were based upon that.  To achieve that time/phase coherency with his multi-driver speakers required a rather complex crossover.

My advice would be to leave the stock crossover as is, or else find some other brand if you aren't satisfied with the Dunlavy and do your experimenting with that.  I believe you will only mess up your Dunlavy and likely ruin them for resale.