How good is the crossover in your loudspeakers?


 

I just watched a Danny Richie YouTube video from three weeks ago (linked below). Danny is the owner/designer of GR Research, a company that caters to the DIY loudspeaker community. He designs and sells kits that contain the drivers and crossover schematics to his loudspeakers, to hi-fi enthusiasts who are willing and able to build their own enclosures (though he also has a few cabinet makers who will do it for you if you are willing to pay them to do so).

Danny has also designed crossovers for loudspeaker companies who lack his crossover design knowledge. In addition, he offers a service to consumers who, while liking some aspects of the sound of their loudspeakers, find some degree of fault in those loudspeakers, faults Danny offers to try to eliminate. Send Danny one of your loudspeakers, and he will free of charge do a complete evaluation of it's design. If his evaluation reveals design faults (almost always crossover related) he is able to cure, he offers a crossover upgrade kit as a product.

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. A reasonable accusation, were it not for the fact that---for instance---in this particular video (an examination of an Eggleston model) Danny makes Eggleston an offer to drop into the company headquarters and help them correct the glaring faults he found in the crossover design of the Eggleston loudspeaker a customer sent him.

Even if you are skeptical---ESPECIALLY if you are---why not give the video a viewing? Like the loudspeaker evaluation, it's free.

 

 

https://youtu.be/1wF-DEEXv64?si=tmd6JI3DFBq8GAjK&t=1

 

And for owners of other loudspeakers, there are a number of other GR Research videos in which other models are evaluated. 

 

 

bdp24

Danny Richie aside, there is no doubt passive crossovers can be made to improve sound quality. 

Claims of amazing sound quality differences are quite plausible, though often relative to the severely degraded originals.

Crossover components live a hard life in a harsh environment. Their life expectancy can be short, especially small-value electrolytics’. That has to be kept in mind when comparing a brand new component to a 25-year-old one.

Electrolytics don't belong in any crossover, virtually any film cap will better electrolytic, and deterioration won't be an issue. 

@devinplombier  have you ever compared new electrolytic capacitors vs film capacitors in a speaker crossover, there is definitely a difference.

@russbutton 

There’s no doubt that an active crossover is better than a passive one.  But why then do so few active crossovers exist?  And why do so few speaker companies even offer them? I have an old ARC crossover that I had set at 100hz and it made a huge difference with some electrostatic speakers I have.