Crossover mods and speaker efficiancy?

Trelja: Once again, right on the money. As usual, you summed my thoughts up quite well : )

Herman: Mitch stated that the amp is delivering more power, but also sounds much louder and "bigger". As such, it is hard to imagine heavier gauge inductors and lower loss components being "less efficient" or a greater "wattage waster". I do agree that crossover points may have shifted slightly. However, i sincerely doubt that Hales was using THAT sloppy of parts tolerance in their speakers. They would have had to be horribly out of spec to achieve the shift in values that would cause the changes in required drive levels that Mitch is talking about.

I have to agree with Trelja's assessment above. That is, the better that your system gets, the more likely you are to listen to it louder. The lack of grain, glare and distortion are no longer an irritant, so you end up compensating for those factors with increased volume. Not only do you end up "rocking out" more, you end up enjoying it more too.

One problem with this type of situation though. Now that you've increased power transfer into the speakers, reduced passive losses and are also listening louder, the drivers have a LOT more thermal stress to deal with. Be careful. Your either well onto the road of "sonic bliss" or "thermal melt-down". Hopefully, the drivers and crossover freq's / slopes were well chosen by Hales and you won't run into problems. Sean
>

Sean, he never said he used "heavier gauge inductors and lower loss components," that is an assumption on your part. He used different components. There is no telling whether they were more or less anything with the limited information given. Perhaps Hales used higher quality components than the modder. If Hales did their job then they listened to a wide variety of components and settled on the one that delivered the best performance (sounded best to them) at their price point. Replacing that component with one that is more expensive may or may not result in better performance. Perhaps a certain value of coil is replaced with "higher quality" heavier guage coil that has the exact same inductance but lower resistance. The new coil will sound different, but will not neccesarily sound better because the speaker was voiced with the higher resistance coil.

In any case, the wasted energy I'm refering to is not in the components, but what is directed around the speakers. A coil in parallel with a tweeter will create a high pass filter and the lower frequency currents will flow through the coil. If am inductor with a different impedance is used then the amount of current will be different, altering the cut off frequency and the amount of current that amp has to deliver.

I also don't accuse Hales of being sloppy with tolerances. Tolerances are what they are. Maybe the coils they used were a little higher than labeled (lets say 10%) but well within spec. Hales doesn't care as long as they got the sound they wanted. If the mod then chooses coils that are a little off the other way (say 10% low) then you have a 20% difference between the new and original, plus the differences in the resistance of the wire.

I guess my point is this. There are too many variables and crossover design is too complicated to answer the original question in a brief post. In general I agree that more money will give better performance, but it never ceases to amaze me that one would assume that just because they spent a lot of money on new cap or coil, that it will perform better than the component the manufacturer chose.

Herman, The speakers do sound better. I am listening quite a bit louder as it sounds good. It's as simple as that. My speakers sound good.
I in fact used higher guage coils(12guage woofer, 14guage midrange and 16 guage for the tweeters). I have my old crossovers in tact and they look quite alot different than my new crossovers. Hales appeared to use a small guage in their hand wound coils(not impressive looking) and they used Axon caps for the tweeter/midrange and electolytics in the bass area. Hales made an excellent speaker and I've enjoyed them stock for years but decided to take a chance. I gambled. I'm happy as the speakers sound like they are in a diifferent league than they used to be. I researched the crossover mods with several proffesionals and as well with the help of fellow Audiogoners. When Hales made the T5's ,they made it at a price point. They were not going to put $800 worth of parts in the crossovers. Not alot of speaker manufacturers do at that price point. That being said I could have been unlucky and gotten a sound I very much disliked as some people do with unsuccessful crossover mods. I was warned it could be great or it could be horrible.I just got lucky as I like the new sound. I am using Dynamicaps for tweeter and midrange with an auricap and audiocap in the midrange as well and I am using Solen for the Bass. I went with Solo and Alpha Core inductors of different guages and am using Mills resistors where the resistors are suopposed to be by Hales design.
Over all I am very excited with the results and realise I was over reacting when I saw the meter jump the way it did but had I (and I have)played the speakers before the mod at that volume the music would be loud to tolerate but the needle jumped as well. It's almost as if by playing louder and using more juice I am getting a bigger fuller and generally better sound. The speakers have only been playing for three days and I expect further changes which I could either like or dislike. Who knows, maybe I'll hate the sound when the speakers are burnt in but maybe I'll love them. Only time will tell.

Sean, actually you beat me to the punch in saying the same thing! You deserve the credit. I thought I was posting first, but you must have gotten up pretttttty early in the morning. Anyway, it is clear we are on the same page, and now so it Mitch. Good sound often leads to louder playing of a system.

Herman, it was me who "presumed" Mitch went to larger inductors and lower loss components. While your argument makes sense from a logical perspective - it was never explicitly stated until Mitch confirmed it above, it falls down in practice. Anyone who has ever looked at an audiophile loudspeaker crossover can attest to the fact that someone going with Solo, AlphaCore Goertz, or North Creek Music Coils is moving up to a larger gauge inductor. That is just the reality of things.

I have looked at the crossovers of a lot of expensive audiophile loudspeakers, and will tell you 14 gauge Solen Perfect Lay is about as good as things EVER get. Now, I am certain you can find the needle in the haystack, but what I say is true 99% of times. I was actually impressed just now in reading about the Axon cap, as normally Solen is the top of the line. But, I am not at all suprised to hear of the electrolytics in the bass area. Again, this is the reality of things.

I think one thing that you can definitely distill out of my opinions is that we need to stop kow towing to loudspeaker manufacturers when it comes to crossovers. I can assure you that they do not enter some secret society once they begin a company and gain insight from the creator that none of us plebians do not have. The economics of speaker manufacture is, like most businesses, to maximize profits.

The crossovers being internal causes them to often be the first area corners are cut. Personally, I feel that speakers today are too entranced by book matched veneers and perfect finishes. I would like to put the money into the crossover given the choice. I think there is no shame in taking two steps back from making these finishes and putting the money into the sonic elements of the speaker.

I hope that we always have this kind of dialogue in terms of audio, and that as time passes, what we come to consensus on can be integrated into products that I maybe one day have a say in(right now, unfortunately I do not enjoy that) at my company. I want Fried to return to greatness by being the people's company. Members of the discussion forums can help me achieve that by making sure their voices are heard.

I think we are all on the same page here. I agree with Mitch that what he did was a gamble, and I'm glad he won the bet. I'm sure the manufacturers do have to look long and hard at the components in the crossover. If they used the quality of stuff that Mitch used it would raise the retail price quite a bit.

The bottom line for me is that I don't think just replacing the stock components with more expensive (higher quality?) ones is always going to yield superior results, and since they are so expensive it is a gamble I'm not willing to take. In an ideal situation you would build the crossover and then play the same game the manufacturer does and try different values in different combinations until you hit on the best combo, but with each component costing so much few can afford to pay for all of the uneeded, leftover stuff.

Glad it all worked out for you.