Modifying Crossovers

@stimpywan Thanks!

I have found some rather expensive speakers that look expensive and fitted with beautifully machined spikes to give the impression of great care and engineering chops, but have cheaped out on the XO components which are hidden from view. Push-on connectors are used on the internal wiring to speed up assembly and other sound limiting short cuts are taken. All this cost saving is doing the resultant sound no favours.

Something mostly overlooked either from ignorance or deliberate acceptance is the orientation of the inductors. If two coils are close to each other there will be coupling, this is how transformers work, where they talk to each other causing congestion and smear. Keeping them far apart helps but of course will require a larger platform causing even more problems. Another reason that the coils are not optimally aligned is because one of them needs to be mounted, not lying flat, but upright on the rounded part which makes mounting it more difficult and time consuming.

If they are mounted correctly then they can be placed close to each other with virtually zero coupling. This happens when they are positioned as two links of a chain would lie.

Then there is the internal wiring, nasty sand cast resistors and the almost exclusive use of PCBs. Yes, there is much that can be improved. We are not talking about redesigning the XO circuit but improving what is there by replacing components with same value but better parts.

When I work on optimising the XO I endeavor to remove any terminals using brass. Those great looking chunky speaker terminals are bad news. Usually the brass, IACS about 27%, is first plated with nickel, IACS about 24%, which polishes to a high finish, and then gold plated. The polished nickel allows for a very fine looking and attractive finish. So, many dissimilar metals playing havoc with your precious audio signal. The push-ons are also brass!

For the manufacturer to move from caps that cost less than a dollar each, to ones that cost $5 or more, ends up raising the price at the consumer level by much more.

...and just to be clear, people are generally not upgrading $1 capacitors to $5 capacitors. Just go out to Parts Express or Parts ConneXion, choose a capacitance (like 0.1uF) and look at the range of pricing. Want to spend $431.68 on a single cap? You can do it! Image what a crossover full of premium parts would do to the price of a speaker. 

Yeah, I spent about $3000 for the parts in my current crossovers. These are high quality parts, but FAR from the most expensive parts available. I’ve seen some crossovers from Tidal and other high-end brands that use parts that are several times more expensive. Even at volume pricing, these crossovers could easily cost $5000 to $8000 in parts.

A number of years ago, I talked to the designer of some high-end speakers about how he picked crossover components. He said he listened to a variety of parts and selected the ones that offered acceptable performance for his cost target and the available space, AND that were also available in quantity from a vendor he was confident in. But he said the choice was rarely his favorite from a sound quality perspective.

A lot of the best sounding components are made by small manufacturers with limited production capacity. A speaker manufacturer that intends to sell hundreds or thousands of units can’t take the chance of designing in parts that may not be available when they need them.

I think it's true that in general, speaker makers have put a retail price of 10:1 at least for the electronics, so a $1 capacitor has to be sold for $10 to make a profit.

Exceptions here are manufacturers that make their own drivers, they can exceed these margins by quite a bit. 

B&W and Magico are some of the rare manufacturers who use high end scrossover ocmponents in their high end speakers.