Had a little tweak today. Decided I wanted to try a little lift to the midrange (900Hz-1kHz kind of region). My plan was simple. Adjust the crossover on the woofer section from 930 to 1000Hz. I calculated what inductor and capacitor I needed a few days ago, ordered them from good old Willy's Hifi. They arrived today. So I pulled out the drivers, unscrewed the crossovers and went to work. Very messy as everything inside the speakers got splattered in bitumen paint when I did that a while ago. And some of the soldering was a bit tricky. But I got it done, refitted the crossovers and drivers and sat down to enjoy the improvement. "Hmmm. That's not what I expected" I thought as the system started playing and sounded terrible. I quickly decided I must have wired the crossover in one of the speakers to the binding posts in reverse phase. Idiot. I just switched the red and white speaker plugs over and that sorted that. But still something. Didn't sound like more midrange. In fact, it sounded like less. I went over to my work bench to see the 10uF capacitors that should have been added to the crossover sitting there. Perfectly happily. Not inside the speakers at all. Seems I had forgot to put them in. (I was supposed to have changed the capacitance from 15uF to 13.9uF by replacing the 15uF cap with 10+3.9uF caps (and changing the inductor). But instead had simply added the 3.9uF cap to 15uF, so it was now running at 18.9uF). Idiot.
Take 2... A couple of hours later and all is well. I've had to move the speakers out a couple of cm as things had thickened up a bit too much, but I think the sound is now much improved. Imaging and solidity sound better I think.
Comments
Surprised we don't see more of that type of thing in domestic hifi.
Decided I wanted to try a little lift to the midrange (900Hz-1kHz kind of region).
My plan was simple. Adjust the crossover on the woofer section from 930 to 1000Hz.
I calculated what inductor and capacitor I needed a few days ago, ordered them from good old Willy's Hifi. They arrived today.
So I pulled out the drivers, unscrewed the crossovers and went to work. Very messy as everything inside the speakers got splattered in bitumen paint when I did that a while ago. And some of the soldering was a bit tricky. But I got it done, refitted the crossovers and drivers and sat down to enjoy the improvement.
"Hmmm. That's not what I expected" I thought as the system started playing and sounded terrible.
I quickly decided I must have wired the crossover in one of the speakers to the binding posts in reverse phase. Idiot. I just switched the red and white speaker plugs over and that sorted that.
But still something. Didn't sound like more midrange. In fact, it sounded like less.
I went over to my work bench to see the 10uF capacitors that should have been added to the crossover sitting there. Perfectly happily. Not inside the speakers at all. Seems I had forgot to put them in. (I was supposed to have changed the capacitance from 15uF to 13.9uF by replacing the 15uF cap with 10+3.9uF caps (and changing the inductor). But instead had simply added the 3.9uF cap to 15uF, so it was now running at 18.9uF). Idiot.
Take 2...
A couple of hours later and all is well.
I've had to move the speakers out a couple of cm as things had thickened up a bit too much, but I think the sound is now much improved. Imaging and solidity sound better I think.