Top tips dude. About to build my first XOs, by basically copying the one's in my Concorde IIIs, with more expensive components, I was about to spend my budget across the entire board, but you've convinced me to bias my spending a little more toward the higher frequencies. Many thanks for the knowledge, and the no nonsense presentation.
Finally, an audiophile who has a firm grasp of the fundamentals of Electronics. You are the 1st person on RUclips I've watched who explained the function of each Crossover component (including its losses & parasitics) perfectly. So many on this platform claim to have decades of experience in this field yet says a Microfarad is a 1/1000 of a farad.
Yeah, this was really good. I saw that thing with the one guy say a microFarad is 1/1,000 of a Farad. I hope that was just a brain freeze, but that guy is not all that good at explaining the concepts of electronics. This channel looks to be worth subscribing to.
Trying to get my feet wet in speakers diy. Not too long at all, very informative. Would like to see even more examples and explanations. Thanks for your effort!
Best advise ever, thx. A month ago I started building my own xovers for my Denon 1910, and wish I had watched your video earlier. Nonetheless, I'm pairing my 7.1 AVR with big horn tweeters and vintage pioneer bookshelves. My sound is more crispier after upgrading to crossovers. I found that not connecting the tweeter air inductors to ground but directly to + gives a better response than if the coils had been grounded. I'm using ceramic resistors, bypass caps and diy coils. Advise on: 1. HP air coil connected directly to tweeter + instead of grounded because my woofer coils is already grounded. 2. resistor connected to LP immediately before AMP -
Yes u r very good. Yes series elements are much more important than the parallel elements. Sometimes even add resistance to parallel elements but never add R to series elements very good
Great video, I am looking forward to outer foil capacitor orientation in crossover either bypass or coupling position with respect to speaker +/- terminal or with respect to amplifier output +/- terminal. Hope to see in near future video.👍
I have some JBL HP520 towers that were pretty high end when they came out. I just looked at the crossover, and a lot of the capacitors look to be Bennic radial dipped polyester film capacitors. And anywhere there is an electrolytic capacitor, there is a tiny green chicklet tone capacitor in parallel. Half the inductors are air core and half are iron core, but on a steel spool, instead of plates. All resistors are sand cast. Pretty much every component that had a label was a Bennic component. All the electrolytics weren’t bulged or physically leaking. It seems like pretty nice stuff and they didn’t skimp a lot on the design. Would there be any appreciable benefit to upgrading the components?
It typically will be and in theory it will be on 2nd order 3 way crossovers like the one shown, but the phase of the driver can still change that from where the crossover point is.
I am planning to build a Passive 4th order High Pass filter for my tweeter, which is able to play down to 1kHz, and thus I plan to have the signal to be attenuated to 60dB by 1kHz and be at 1.4kHz at 83dB, basically filtering at just below 1.6kHz. Is there a reason why a 3rd order is better suited as a High Pass filter for a tweeter like mine? I have read that when it comes to the phase difference between 4th and 3rd order filters 4th orders can cause resonance, is this correct? I am not 100% sure if I am on the right track and would like to save some money if a 4th order will cause the tweeter to sound weird, but I really like the steep slope, so hoping it is acceptable. Furthermore, I plan to use the following components; Mundorf capacitors Mundorf Air Cored Copper Foil Coils CFC16 (inductors) Mundorf M-Resist Audiophile Resistors Which will cost me a total of $250 for two High Pass Filters. I am happy with the budget but prefer to not waste money making a mistake, especially if it is a blatant one. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
The coils introduce phase delays and the capacitors out of phase, you cannot get rid of distortions with passive filters!! Because of this, it is best to use a very good constructive broadband speaker! Or as few components as possible in the crossover, of order 1 with loudspeakers already built at the same SPL and made for certain frequencies!
I wander if you can help me,I been trying to recap my speakers crossover ,I can seen to find anywhere this capacitor made by spirit 106J 100v and also spirit 275J 250V any ideas ? I’ll appreciate and new in this ,thanks
He's got 22,000 views of this video, that's good, but who among them understand the math? Back in my day, I found the Parameters to use, in creating a tuned speaker. Kids became more interested in the SPL, as apposed to Quality. I went to a contest, when I was a professional Installer, and found that the Competitors knowledge of the Thiele and Small Parameters were non existent. This was 1994. Now there are RUclips video's and all that. This guy Doesn't want to explain the parameters, for fear of loosing interest... Not me, I dig this guy..
Really good and detailed explanation on considerations for crossover design. There's not much information I could find on line that puts it as well as you did. Thank you. I'm currently working on some Elac speaker crossovers where my mids are recessed and not as detailed, and the highs are too loud and a bit fatiguing. Contemplating what the best approach might be.
More dampening with the lpad and a better capacitor in the high pas maybe will do it. Its often hard with the factory made speakers because the speaker drivers doesnt come with thiele-small data, so then they will have to be measured with ex dats v2 and a umik-1 to get data to calculate with.
very fine video. tx. do you know of any books out there that would be close to Crossovers For Idiots? I know nothing off this subject but would like to learn how to design speakers from scratch. Tx again.
My suggestion would be to get Bassbox Pro and Xover pro which are softwares. If you go to Help in the menu and select On-screen manual, it will show a really easy to understand intro to speaker building in each of the 2 softwares it consist of. The reason why I think this is better than any book is that the software can estimate good compromises, and is full of little design hints/warnings that clues you in to the dynamics. So through the why is it doing that and what the manual said, I believe you have something that moves forward quicker.
@@weeverob I find X*over Pro to be a bit clunky but Kent's advice is right on the money. The best explanation of crossover design I've ever seen comes in the X*over Pro users manual. Brief, precise, easy to understand. It's excellent.
Use an online calculator or much better crossover software for that. Even if you are a electronic engineer it makes no sense to calculate manually. You change one thing and it moves so many other parts of the calculation. I recommend X-over pro from HarrisTech because it guides you. Lots of people like Xsim which is free, and its good if you have some more fundamentals and it requires ZMA and FRD files on your speaker drivers, and here X-over pro can work with thiele-small parameters if you dont have ZMA and FRD files
Absolutely, if the speaker drivers support it and they often do. Particularly vintage high-end this is often a good upgrade, back in the day electrolytic caps where often used, and they really have no place in high-end, too much hysteresis.
@@ubacow7109 They technically do the same, but there are different qualities, just like the speaker drivers, just fewer aspects of differences. So an electrolytic cap can do the job, the result is just harshness and lack of clarity, particularly its clear in the high-pass to hear.
Film and foil capacitors can discharge faster than electrolytic capacitors of the same rated capacitance, so are better able to respond to the changes in higher frequency signals. This is why they distort the signal less, providing a cleaner sound. If you must use less expensive capacitors, at least do as Kent Larsen says and run a high quality capacitor in parallel to the cheap cap. The other problem with cheaper electrolytic caps is that they degrade over time. The simplest way to get great sound is by hunting down and designing for low Qts drivers to get a low Qtc (no higher than 0.8) and high quality crossover parts just as Kent Larsen suggests in this video.
I was looking to uograde a cheaper crossover board with slightly better components. I picked up a couple of wima caps 3.3-3.4uf 50v, now im worried..as theyre tiny compared to the massive cap on the board...does size matter? 😂 Its a 100w rms amp going into a 100w woofer and 15w tweeter 8ohms +l-pad from said cheap crossover board (2nd order woofer, third order tweeter,).
The tiny capacitor of the same capacitance as the large cap is almost certainly an electrolytic capacitor. It is completely unsuitable for a crossover circuit. Stick with the large one. Those can last nearly forever. They are probably fine. It's generally only the electrolytics that go bad over time.
Humble hifi assembles crossovers as a business model. I'm sure you can also get companies like Madisound or Meniscus to assemble a crossover for you too, as long as you purchase the components from them.
The main thing is between the fundamental types of components for a solid result. There is difference between brands and the value they give. I found Solen and Jantzen to provide most bang for the buck. And for capacitors which have the greatest impact, see this article www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html I think its a masterpiece
There is a study on iron core inductors and other papers on the topic of speaker crossovers on DIYRM. Some of them contradict what you say. I think if an inductor has a high value, then sticking with expensive air core makes no sense. Laminated core inductors have neglegible hysteresis.
Maybe I am not being clear enough in the video, but that is exactly what I am advocating (starting around 10:30). There the shift due to resistance is explained. Even better than the laminated steel is toroidal cores.
What about noise from the resistors, and inductance free resistor sandcast or anything else will make no difference not sure why you showing three different types there's no difference between the three if they're non- inductance they are all the same as long as noise floor is the same. What about tantalum resistors why are they not preferred
Tantalum is one of the conflict metals. As long as you buy tantalum, you're fueling the tribal conflicts between the african regimes that own the mines. I guess that's mostly why Tantalum has lost its fame among the enthusiasts.
Well shit, I wish I'd watched this damn video before I ordered the frickin expensive 100uF capacitor and 2.5mH inductor for my lowpass =P whoops Nah, it's ok, we're talking maybe $50 bucks, which isn't nothing, but for the quality I got, It's gonna last. The only thing is I wish I coulda got some of the 1% loss 20w resistors instead of the 10w 2% ones. But honestly idk how much that will matter. Building Swope 3-way tower btw
I have a question if you don't mind, I'm trying to wrap my head around component values. I'm not knowledgeable about the electrical field to be honest but trying to learn bit by bit. What is the difference between the 10W and 20W components? Are the 20W components just able to handle more power if the Ohm rating is the same? Or does it have a different effect? For example a 10 ohm 10w component will have a resistance of 10ohm until 10W and anything above 10W will not be resisted? Maybe it helps if you explain why you wouldve wanted a 20W component instead of the 10W one? Hope my questions aren't too stupid, I'm a noob haha
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![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Top tips dude.
About to build my first XOs, by basically copying the one's in my Concorde IIIs, with more expensive components, I was about to spend my budget across the entire board, but you've convinced me to bias my spending a little more toward the higher frequencies.
Many thanks for the knowledge, and the no nonsense presentation.
Finally, an audiophile who has a firm grasp of the fundamentals of Electronics. You are the 1st person on RUclips I've watched who explained the function of each Crossover component (including its losses & parasitics) perfectly. So many on this platform claim to have decades of experience in this field yet says a Microfarad is a 1/1000 of a farad.
Very detailed yet kept simple. Good job indeed.
I was sold on that genuine smile talking about the musical quality you might get
Yeah, this was really good. I saw that thing with the one guy say a microFarad is 1/1,000 of a Farad. I hope that was just a brain freeze, but that guy is not all that good at explaining the concepts of electronics. This channel looks to be worth subscribing to.
Trying to get my feet wet in speakers diy. Not too long at all, very informative. Would like to see even more examples and explanations. Thanks for your effort!
Thanks for this importend Information. 👍
1/26/2024: Good Day. Much to think about here, and excellent education. Thank You
This video is just what I needed. Great vid. Liked, thanks.
Best advise ever, thx. A month ago I started building my own xovers for my Denon 1910, and wish I had watched your video earlier. Nonetheless, I'm pairing my 7.1 AVR with big horn tweeters and vintage pioneer bookshelves. My sound is more crispier after upgrading to crossovers.
I found that not connecting the tweeter air inductors to ground but directly to + gives a better response than if the coils had been grounded.
I'm using ceramic resistors, bypass caps and diy coils.
Advise on:
1. HP air coil connected directly to tweeter + instead of grounded because my woofer coils is already grounded.
2. resistor connected to LP immediately before AMP -
Nice one man, this is a great video for people to understand the basics!
So nice to see your video explanation!
Thank you for that. 👍
Very useful thankyou.
Thank you, I'm encurraged in changing the caps on my vintage speakers!
Absolutely correct. Matches my experience exactly.
Greetings from Singapore. Really like the insight you provide in terms of where quality really matters most. The textbooks just don't tell us this!!!!
Thank you! I would love to see Singapore, its at the top of the travel list for my wife and I.
That was very helpful, thanks.
Yes u r very good. Yes series elements are much more important than the parallel elements. Sometimes even add resistance to parallel elements but never add R to series elements very good
Interesting, thanks. Kind of what I suspected already. Parts, in series and higher freq's are the most important.
Very helpful, thanks for posting this. re: Zoeble network, is that tuned to be resonant at the driver's impedance peak frequency?
Thank you, learned a lot with your video.
Thank you so so much!!
Very very informative...thank you from France !
Excellent video :) thank for sharing your knowledge🙂
Thank you for your time.
Thanks so much for the upload, im building some big horns and trying to get my head around the crossover, your videos are excellent for explanation.
Thank you very much!!
Excellent explanation
Great video, I am looking forward to outer foil capacitor orientation in crossover either bypass or coupling position with respect to speaker +/- terminal or with respect to amplifier output +/- terminal. Hope to see in near future video.👍
Great video👍
I have some JBL HP520 towers that were pretty high end when they came out. I just looked at the crossover, and a lot of the capacitors look to be Bennic radial dipped polyester film capacitors. And anywhere there is an electrolytic capacitor, there is a tiny green chicklet tone capacitor in parallel. Half the inductors are air core and half are iron core, but on a steel spool, instead of plates. All resistors are sand cast. Pretty much every component that had a label was a Bennic component. All the electrolytics weren’t bulged or physically leaking. It seems like pretty nice stuff and they didn’t skimp a lot on the design. Would there be any appreciable benefit to upgrading the components?
Great video, thanks
Informative, thank you.
Great Video, Thank you!
what program do you use to calculate your xovers??
Kurt can you comment on the JBL 4412 crossover capacitor replacements?
Great stuff! Thanks
Thank you, that was informativ
Good video!
In that scheme shouldn't the polarity of the midrange be inverted?
It typically will be and in theory it will be on 2nd order 3 way crossovers like the one shown, but the phase of the driver can still change that from where the crossover point is.
Great video!!!
Thank you!!
I am planning to build a Passive 4th order High Pass filter for my tweeter, which is able to play down to 1kHz, and thus I plan to have the signal to be attenuated to 60dB by 1kHz and be at 1.4kHz at 83dB, basically filtering at just below 1.6kHz.
Is there a reason why a 3rd order is better suited as a High Pass filter for a tweeter like mine? I have read that when it comes to the phase difference between 4th and 3rd order filters 4th orders can cause resonance, is this correct? I am not 100% sure if I am on the right track and would like to save some money if a 4th order will cause the tweeter to sound weird, but I really like the steep slope, so hoping it is acceptable.
Furthermore, I plan to use the following components;
Mundorf capacitors
Mundorf Air Cored Copper Foil Coils CFC16 (inductors)
Mundorf M-Resist Audiophile Resistors
Which will cost me a total of $250 for two High Pass Filters.
I am happy with the budget but prefer to not waste money making a mistake, especially if it is a blatant one.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
The coils introduce phase delays and the capacitors out of phase, you cannot get rid of distortions with passive filters!! Because of this, it is best to use a very good constructive broadband speaker! Or as few components as possible in the crossover, of order 1 with loudspeakers already built at the same SPL and made for certain frequencies!
I wander if you can help me,I been trying to recap my speakers crossover ,I can seen to find anywhere this capacitor made by spirit 106J 100v and also spirit 275J 250V any ideas ? I’ll appreciate and new in this ,thanks
Do you know how to upgrade a Pioneer CS-53 speakers? THx!
is ok to replace 10W 2RJ resistor with 10W 2.2ohm resistor in speaker crossover, will it be any big difference
Thank you
Hello sir
How to make 4ohm 12db 3way crossover ?
Can pls give value for C1, L1 and R1......
He's got 22,000 views of this video, that's good, but who among them understand the math? Back in my day, I found the Parameters to use, in creating a tuned speaker. Kids became more interested in the SPL, as apposed to Quality. I went to a contest, when I was a professional Installer, and found that the Competitors knowledge of the Thiele and Small Parameters were non existent. This was 1994. Now there are RUclips video's and all that. This guy Doesn't want to explain the parameters, for fear of loosing interest... Not me, I dig this guy..
Really good and detailed explanation on considerations for crossover design. There's not much information I could find on line that puts it as well as you did. Thank you.
I'm currently working on some Elac speaker crossovers where my mids are recessed and not as detailed, and the highs are too loud and a bit fatiguing. Contemplating what the best approach might be.
More dampening with the lpad and a better capacitor in the high pas maybe will do it. Its often hard with the factory made speakers because the speaker drivers doesnt come with thiele-small data, so then they will have to be measured with ex dats v2 and a umik-1 to get data to calculate with.
@@AudioTalk Exactly the right answer.
very fine video. tx. do you know of any books out there that would be close to Crossovers For Idiots? I know nothing off this subject but would like to learn how to design speakers from scratch. Tx again.
My suggestion would be to get Bassbox Pro and Xover pro which are softwares. If you go to Help in the menu and select On-screen manual, it will show a really easy to understand intro to speaker building in each of the 2 softwares it consist of. The reason why I think this is better than any book is that the software can estimate good compromises, and is full of little design hints/warnings that clues you in to the dynamics. So through the why is it doing that and what the manual said, I believe you have something that moves forward quicker.
@@AudioTalk thanks for your help, Kent!
@@weeverob I find X*over Pro to be a bit clunky but Kent's advice is right on the money. The best explanation of crossover design I've ever seen comes in the X*over Pro users manual. Brief, precise, easy to understand. It's excellent.
Please I just came across this video good work but if you can teach how to calculate the components that's
Use an online calculator or much better crossover software for that. Even if you are a electronic engineer it makes no sense to calculate manually. You change one thing and it moves so many other parts of the calculation. I recommend X-over pro from HarrisTech because it guides you. Lots of people like Xsim which is free, and its good if you have some more fundamentals and it requires ZMA and FRD files on your speaker drivers, and here X-over pro can work with thiele-small parameters if you dont have ZMA and FRD files
v.v thanks to share u r great experience , love it u r channel so-much.
So nice of you
How does the outer foil capacitor lead connection impact the crossover ? What is the proper outer foil lead orientation for C1, C2, C3, C4, Ce ?
Is there any benefit to fancy higher end crossover components vs cheaper ones?
Absolutely, if the speaker drivers support it and they often do. Particularly vintage high-end this is often a good upgrade, back in the day electrolytic caps where often used, and they really have no place in high-end, too much hysteresis.
@@AudioTalk don't all the crossover components technically do the same job though so long as the values are what the design calls for?
@@ubacow7109 They technically do the same, but there are different qualities, just like the speaker drivers, just fewer aspects of differences. So an electrolytic cap can do the job, the result is just harshness and lack of clarity, particularly its clear in the high-pass to hear.
Film and foil capacitors can discharge faster than electrolytic capacitors of the same rated capacitance, so are better able to respond to the changes in higher frequency signals. This is why they distort the signal less, providing a cleaner sound.
If you must use less expensive capacitors, at least do as Kent Larsen says and run a high quality capacitor in parallel to the cheap cap.
The other problem with cheaper electrolytic caps is that they degrade over time.
The simplest way to get great sound is by hunting down and designing for low Qts drivers to get a low Qtc (no higher than 0.8) and high quality crossover parts just as Kent Larsen suggests in this video.
Air Inductors are the best, Mylar Capacitors are the best as for audio use in Notch filters, and Crossovers.
I was looking to uograde a cheaper crossover board with slightly better components. I picked up a couple of wima caps 3.3-3.4uf 50v, now im worried..as theyre tiny compared to the massive cap on the board...does size matter? 😂
Its a 100w rms amp going into a 100w woofer and 15w tweeter 8ohms +l-pad from said cheap crossover board (2nd order woofer, third order tweeter,).
The tiny capacitor of the same capacitance as the large cap is almost certainly an electrolytic capacitor. It is completely unsuitable for a crossover circuit. Stick with the large one. Those can last nearly forever. They are probably fine. It's generally only the electrolytics that go bad over time.
Thanks for that information bro..👍
Need someone to make a pair of crossover for a pair of hivi 3.1a speakers I do have all infor anyone need help
Humble hifi assembles crossovers as a business model. I'm sure you can also get companies like Madisound or Meniscus to assemble a crossover for you too, as long as you purchase the components from them.
a capacitor resists, or filters Low Frequencies... The Inductor does the opposite, it will resist High frequencies..
Calculat the db and ohm and give 8,8,8 ohm
Iam lost to me didn’t tell me what name brand are better then other.
The main thing is between the fundamental types of components for a solid result. There is difference between brands and the value they give. I found Solen and Jantzen to provide most bang for the buck. And for capacitors which have the greatest impact, see this article www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html I think its a masterpiece
Nedlab capacitors
1st order bandpass is 6db/Octave, 2nd order bandpass is 12db/Octave..
👌👌👌👌👌👌👍👍👍👍👍👍🙏🙏🙏
There is a study on iron core inductors and other papers on the topic of speaker crossovers on DIYRM. Some of them contradict what you say. I think if an inductor has a high value, then sticking with expensive air core makes no sense. Laminated core inductors have neglegible hysteresis.
Maybe I am not being clear enough in the video, but that is exactly what I am advocating (starting around 10:30). There the shift due to resistance is explained. Even better than the laminated steel is toroidal cores.
What about noise from the resistors, and inductance free resistor sandcast or anything else will make no difference not sure why you showing three different types there's no difference between the three if they're non- inductance they are all the same as long as noise floor is the same. What about tantalum resistors why are they not preferred
Tantalum is one of the conflict metals. As long as you buy tantalum, you're fueling the tribal conflicts between the african regimes that own the mines. I guess that's mostly why Tantalum has lost its fame among the enthusiasts.
Well shit, I wish I'd watched this damn video before I ordered the frickin expensive 100uF capacitor and 2.5mH inductor for my lowpass =P whoops
Nah, it's ok, we're talking maybe $50 bucks, which isn't nothing, but for the quality I got, It's gonna last.
The only thing is I wish I coulda got some of the 1% loss 20w resistors instead of the 10w 2% ones. But honestly idk how much that will matter.
Building Swope 3-way tower btw
I have a question if you don't mind, I'm trying to wrap my head around component values. I'm not knowledgeable about the electrical field to be honest but trying to learn bit by bit. What is the difference between the 10W and 20W components? Are the 20W components just able to handle more power if the Ohm rating is the same? Or does it have a different effect? For example a 10 ohm 10w component will have a resistance of 10ohm until 10W and anything above 10W will not be resisted? Maybe it helps if you explain why you wouldve wanted a 20W component instead of the 10W one? Hope my questions aren't too stupid, I'm a noob haha