How good is the crossover in your loudspeakers?

It is best to stay away from lousy speakers with serious design flaws in the first place....one can only put so much lipstick on a reeking pig.

I wonder why a crossover mod/upgrade to improve resolution, clarity, etc is the end of the world to some on this forum..i.e., if the baseline design is good to begin with, but, some compromises were made when built to a price point.

There are all kinds of guys rolling tubes, op amps, whatever...and no one bats an eyelid...the same principle should apply to crossover components. It should be very straight forward to keep the original crossover in storage and revert back to it, if needing to sell the damn speaker in its original state.

"Crossover rolling"...shouldn’t be a bad word.

Some make the case that Danny will of course find fault in the designs of others, in an attempt to sell you one of his loudspeaker kits.

Excellent post, @deep_333.

It is only in crossovers which produce poor driver phase relationships (or other technical problems) that Danny Richie does a x/o redesign. If he finds no such problem(s), he merely puts together a parts package that replicates the stock x/o, but with audiophile grade high end parts. He takes the stock crossover out of the speaker enclosure, showing all to see what it is comprised of. Watch a few of the videos, and you will see the proof that even many expensive speakers use poor quality parts in their crossovers. Iron core inductors, sandcast resistors, electrolytic capacitors, binding posts with ferrous parts, etc.

The X Series versions of some Magnepan models offer much the same crossover parts package as does Danny’s Magnepan upgrade kit. From the Magnepan site:

"The general idea of the X Series is to take the existing design of a given model and improve it..."

"How is that achieved exactly? Better capacitors. Better coils (inductors). Better resistors. Better wiring. Better connections. Better materials." These were all covered in Danny’s video on upgrading the Magnepan model send to him by a customer, and included in his upgrade kit.

Magnepan continues:

"Okay it’s better on paper, sure, but how does it sound? The short but truthful answer is that it sounds better! A lot better." 

Here’s one of Danny’s videos on the subject:

https://youtu.be/8IQ4t1Y1mxo?si=shhz3kYWZID3IX9f&t=1

There was a recent thread where the owner of this Eggleston loudspeaker asked what he should do after viewing the Richie video.  I asked him if he actually hears "the hole" and his answer was no, he's never heard it.  The original Stereophile review addresses the issue with setup suggestions.  Basically, it's a loudspeaker you should listen to off axis in a moderate to large sized room.

I believe in good quality component parts, and, good measurements to understand what is going on. I’m a licensed amateur radio enthusiast, and, have a background in automobile NVH testing for sound and vibration, for 35 years.

I’ve built many Heathkit projects back in the day, understanding electronics and components are one of my hobby passions. I have a pair of Klipsch RP8000f’s, which are towers, and a RP504C center. A few years ago I decided to upgrade the crossovers from GR Research, A very fun (for me) project. I can assure you, the quality of parts from GR Research is on another level from the stock parts. Plus, in these particular speakers, the data measurements clearly show they needed help.

There are many other contributors in listening to a system, amp, preamp/processor, cabling, room size, room acoustics, etc... So, my feeling is, when one decides to look at data, and decide to try a new speaker crossover, please take into consideration if your system is capable of resolving the change.

My most recent speakers, MoFi SourcePoint 888’s for L/R, and MoFo Sourcepoint 8 for center. No one has sent in an 888 yet, but someone has sent in an 8. The original designer of these speakers, Andrew Jones, is well known as a speaker designer, and highly respected. Danny’s measurement on the 8 clearly shows the speaker and crossover were designed correctly, but just to a price point. Other than upgrading the parts quality and making a small change to take care of a huge impedance rise, not much needed to be changed.

If you care to take a look at the MoFi 8 crossover upgrade video.

Danny Tackles Andrews Jones: The Source Point 8! Spoiler Alert (It’s Really Good)

The first time I watched one of Danny’s videos I agreed with a lot of his views on parts quality and general speaker principals.  He’s always struck me as calling it like he sees it.  He’s says positive things where applicable, and points out problems as he sees them.   I have no doubt that the problems he points out can ruffle the tail feathers of many who are fans of speakers he finds issue with, but I’ve known for a long time that speakers built to a price point by companies whose primary focus is profit have some subpar components and construction.  

His upgrades can be expensive, but so is a $20 cheeseburger...that’s the world we live in.  I’ve read a lot of raves from people who’ve tried his upgrades.  Upgrading low quality parts  is logical, and I’ve done it many times.  The difference in sound quality is a variable and is subjective, but it’s typically a step in the right direction, if cleaning  up the signal path of your system is an objective.