Modifying Crossovers

Clearly there are a few members here, a vocal minority that one person has called a "consensus" that think it is crazy to touch an OEM component and if God (the OEM) had intended you to have a better crossover, he would have given you one.

I’m fine with all those who don’t think it is a good idea. I think they are perhaps trying to come up with a reason why they shouldn’t do it. If it were to become the next hot mod, then they might be subconsciously forced to do it. Like cables.

As for doing A/B, installing a new crossover involves a lot of soldering of wires. In my case there are 6 seperate connections. Building an A/B would be a lot of work and expense. Those of us who have heard the mods, evaluated them technically, and understand what we are achieveing do not need to be convinced that it will sound better. Let me put it this way, there are likely components in the signal path in your speakers that you would shudder if they were in the signal path in your amp. Sand cast resistors that cost $1.99 apiece for one. Remember all those expensive bypass capacitors amp manufacturers use? Your speaker doesn’t have those, but mine will in a couple of weeks.

A friend has very similar speakers to mine.  Mine sounded slightly better until he upgraded crossovers.  Now every time I go to his house I'm reminded that I need to get my crossover upgrade done.

So don’t anybody feel you need to approve or disapprove of crossover modifications. Just like anything else in life, if it isn’t for you, don’t do it.

Jerry

A quick story:

I was a audio dealer, speaker designer, and still currently involved in audio service and performance upgrades. Years ago I attended a convention and had a heart-to-heart with one of the most successful speaker manufactures of the past 30 years, He had recently introduced their new "flagship" model to rave reviews, and was an overnighht success. He was polite enough to give this guy some of his time, and we got deep into speaker "nurdystuff". After sharing my thoughts with him, he paused for a few seconds, looked me in the eyeballs and said: "I believe in all that.. I just don’t want to fight my engineers over it."

A few weeks later I decided to do a "what if?" experiment and did a "high end" top to bottom approach to the speaker, addressing all the things that stood out to me that could use a little "TLC." A month later, the regional manager for the company visited my store and I convinced him to spend some quality time with the OEM vs "modded" versions of the speaker. He sit there for a while listening, and I could tell the gears were churning. After the music stopped, I asked him how he liked them. His answer: "They sould better. Okay, what did you do?" My answer: "Everything your engineers told you wouldn’t make a difference." I think this may have perculated to the top.

I agree with @erik_squires that I wouldn’t mess with a high end speaker -- UNLESS they can be reverted to origninal condition. a) you might not like the changes, b) it may effect the resale value, and c) you might have just voided whatever remains of the factory warranty (on the raw drivers).

OEMs choose crossover designs based on a number of factors. Cost, manufacturing efficiencies, ease of service in the field, etc. But, there also has to be "buy in" to the design and components by all iinfluencers of the speaker design/manufacturing process. This is where philosophies (sonics, sonics ,engineering, financial, etc) enter in and present a very complex situation.

I have a very simple philosophy as I approach speaker "mods". Get things out of the way that make the speakers sound worse. These are usually not hard to find in speakers under $25k.

A quick note on "better" parts. If the values of the replacement parts are the same as original, the measured frequency response should be within 1db (non detectable) of the original. However, when the music starts playing, things become different in a hurry -- in a good way. Dynamic compresion is one of those stock OEM attributes that doesn’t sound "wrong" when you hear it. Until you realize how much headroom was compromised and micodynamics were squashed when the speaker is upgraded by better internals. This includes modern AND vintage designs.

Just my 2 sense.

@carlsbad2 

Lookin’ good Jerry.  Let us know how they sound.

My cautionary tale is to be careful in doing too much.  Tweeter and mid-cap upgrades are simple and easy. 

If you have a 1980's - 1990's vintage speaker though, it's worth doing a complete analysis before doing much work.  The issue is the tools and effort it took to get a good crossover back then to work across both frequency and impedance.  There's plenty of examples of speakers in this vintage that need different crossover designs. 

Be extremely careful replacing caps that go to ground, their effects on the impedance curve is unexpected, so measure and compensate for ESR changes. 

Best,

E

Thanks everyone for this very interesting and informative discussion. Let’s close this out. 

Cheers