Best caps for speaker crossover?

Nickt, what do you like about the Hovlands? Have you compared it to any of the others I mentioned? Thanks.

Don't forget Sonicaps. Some of the most natural and musical caps I've heard in a crossover (for my drivers - Scanspeak's).

But it all depends on the speakers and drivers that are being used. Each cap has a "style" or "sound" to it, as does each driver. You really want to mate them.

Bottom line - there's no "best" cap for all situations.

Enjoy,
Bob

What are the cap values? Some are QUITE large, and replacing with, say, TRT D-Caps would cost hundred$.

Personally, I've been very satisfied with NorthCreek Zens in large values--they seem a little smoother than, say, SCR/Solens/Axons--with TRT D-Caps as smaller values and bypasses on the (larger) NCs. But the SCR/Solens/Axons are unbeatable in quality v. performance, especially in large values.

See http://www.altavistaaudio.com/caps.html for a highly experienced person's opinions on cap quality.
.

Dear Draculel: I try in my speaker crossover all the caps in your list plus: Hovland, MIT RTX, Solen, Aeon, Wima, etc.

I do extensive tests with all those brands on my speakers and no one of them can meet the neutral balance and naturalness of the V-caps: this is the less colored cap that I ever know for a crossover speaker use: small and large values and if you have the money you can do the by-pass with Teflon V-caps ( very very expensives ).

If you really want an improvement on your speakers performance is that you can change the caps and the inductors, for these one I can recomemnded the Alpha-Core ( cooper or silver ), nothing come close to it.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Rauliguegas, the V-caps now come in two flavors, Teflon and Oil-film(?). Which would be better for speaker applications? By the way, I've always thought about using Alpha-Core inductors. Any thoughts on what type of wire to use inside the speaker and speaker terminals?

Thanks guys for all your input. I figured the V-caps would come out on top for most applications. Too bad they cost so much. I'm not willing to put in more than $300 tops for caps. I'm going to have to take a look at the X-over in the future and figure out how much it's going to cost me.