Tom Thiel,
I have a new speaker rebuild and elected to place the crossover out board for final tuning. It will always be outboard. Components are mounted on a solid 1/2 inch poplar board and grounded to the floor via threaded 1.5 inch Audio Points.. Originally the 2 8gauge inductors were tied down to the board each with several zip ties. After listening for a couple of weeks I felt the sound was dynamically restrained and cut away the straps, so now the inductors only rest on the board under their own mass and physical size. Immediate improvement was heard in soundstage size, everything was much more dynamic and with much more acoustic air.
These 2 small inductor values are physically large with a space of about 2.5 inches between them. They are placed 90 degrees to each other. I decided to move 1 another 2 inches from the other. Way different again in performance. I thought that placing the inductors apart and with 90 degrees of separation would eliminate any magnetic field inner play but that is not the case...So my thoughts and observations leads me to question. What are the magnetic actions and reactions when a crossover is placed inside a cabinet in proximity to a woofer magnet or powerful neo tweeter magnet and or the variable fields under power of confined inductors?
Today I will be receiving 4 sections of mu metal to place around all of the inductors or a large portion of the facing circumference of each. If this case study of the magnetic field, external to the confines of a cabinet makes for an improvement then why wouldn't the same hold true for crossovers inside the box but even much more than those outboard? TomD
