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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
ned1000
39 posts
 
invalid

1,283 posts

 

@ned1000 how do you know Danny is right and Wilson is wrong.
OK i watched the video did you ? it is obvious Danny is correct what silly thing to say! 
also he is honest and would not lie he is a straight talking texan they seldom BS 
here watch and this one too! 
https://youtu.be/Tma9jFZ3-3k?si=Mx38QtXZJszr6mKk
https://youtu.be/dYZlMFsMFK4?si=WRsJwtXuggpcESE0
so watch them learn and report back 
i have done buisiness w/ Danny he has at all times been honest knowledgable and far from greedy w/ some speakers not worth modifying and fixing he told me and only when i persisted did he agree to assist me w/ them I decided to spend the $ as i had already spent the $ to buy them and i considered it a project many people in the yamha/ sony  FB group were eager to see what could be done to improve them .( they had the same speakers )  all outcomes have been entirely satisfactory . in case of cheap low-end speakers yes it makes less sense ( or no sense at all as it costs about the same whether low end or high end ! )  but i view it as fun project .
in car world guys will mod a FWD car like SAAB 9-3 and it is nuts to mod a FWD car they will NEVER work as well as RWD car but people enjoy doing mods increasing HP making cars faster , better handling etc  Not everything has to make perfect sense! 


 

devinplombier
1,684 posts
 

Not everything has to make any sense at all!

 

jtgofish's avatar
jtgofish
525 posts
 

I have restored a lot of speakers in my time including refurbishing crossovers. At times I have had 3 or 4 speakers of the same make and model all with quite different capacitor values due to varying degrees of aging and natural variability.

Unless the values are way off [and I mean WAY off-like 50%out of value] they all sound much the same.That has surprised me.I have had to conclude that a fair degree of the sound relates to the drivers independent of what crossover components or values might be used.You certainly hear when drivers are not working properly.

toddalin's avatar
toddalin
669 posts
 

How good are my crossovers?  There are probably no others in the world that function as these do using these components and the parts selection has taken years of tweaking.

 

Caps were mixed for there "particular sound" and multiple values were mixed to as to produce the most common value (e.g., the higher of the two was always mixed with the lower of the two other caps when used in parallel).

 

devinplombier
1,684 posts
 

@toddalin 

It looks like VR1's wiper is floating, essentially making it a 50R fixed resistor?  Normally a L-pad wired as a variable resistor has ground (pin 3) floating. I'm probably not reading this schematics correctly.

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