Blog: Upgrade Inductors with Care
Since the topic of upgrading crossovers comes up a lot I wrote a post that I hope you'll find useful.
https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2023/07/upgrade-speaker-inductors-with-care.html
Thanks @lemonhaze . I'll be putting a 12 awg foil into service on my bass section very soon. So we just started talking about what we had found to work without thanking @erik_squires for the work on his blog, discussing the perils and what could go wrong. jerry |
Hi @lemonhaze - The whole point of the post was that in real life inductors are not ideal and you should take DCR into account before making modifications because any good speaker designer will use it to their advantage, and design the entire circuit with that DCR in mind. If you are just replacing coils with bigger and bigger conductors without compensating for lost DCR you are basically ignore an aspect of the crossover you should not. This is something you can do and should do when using modern crossover simulators. I’m sorry this went completely over your head. I don’t say not to upgrade the coils. I say to measure what you are doing carefully and take into account possible unexpected effects. Watt for watt, coils are more thermally stable and often handle power much better than resistors. I wrote a whole section on why this is and you totally read past it. <sigh> Thermal compression is something we worry about much more in a driver, but again, run the math. That’s what simulators are for. You’ll find that for the most part the power dissipated before the driver is far less than the power dissipated in the driver so it’s not the issue you think it is. |
Thank you, @carlsbad2 |
I find it interesting that Rockport, which don’t skimp on price when building their speakers, don’t use foil inductors. They claim they do not sound as good as perfect lay coil inductors. Anytime I every upgraded my speakers or built a kit pair, I always used foil thinking it was the best. But I never thought to compare them. |
