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I put in a name to replace the no-name response (Dean) otherwise that post and and responses will soon hit the bit bucket.
no-name (Greg?) posted:
"I dont understand what a bi-polar capcitor or a reverberating cyclone waller is... but thanks for the infor anyway... "
Dean responds:
Capacitors are used to allow only high frequencies to get to the tweeters. This is important. An electrolytic capacitor is small and cheap and relies on electro chemistry. Most electrolytic caps are used with DC voltages such as in power supplies. For speakers, the service is AC, not DC and a bi-polar electolytic cap is used.
Electrolytic caps, because of the electro chemistry have a lag in charge and discharge that distorts high frequency audio. Yes, you can clearly hear this. This distortion if sometimes refered to as 'time smear' as energy is released with a time delay. If you replace such capacitors with a film and foil or metalized film capacitor, the improvement is very noticeable. With most speakers, there is a tiny bi-polar capacitor mounted right on the tweeter. You cannot upgrade that very well as the film capacitor is very much larger than the electrolytic one. With the 32.5 with its outboard X-over network, you can readily upgrade the capacitors. This can involve replacement with a film cap of the same capacitance or connecting a good film cap of 10-25% of the value of the electrolytic cap across the electrolytic cap. This second option is referred to as a bypass capacitor. Its not really all that mysterious. Read the post on the 9-5BB.
If you get component grade speakers, these will have very good crossover networks. The better of these have film capacitors, the cheaper have electrolytic capacitors. You can hear the difference very well with vocals where things are much more imediate and clear.
A film capacitor is made with wound layers of plastic file and metal foil. Or plastic film which has had a conductive layer of metal deposited on it. Polyproylene film is excellent. Syrene film is considered the best. Teflon file might be as good, but is a rare find. The foil can be aliminum or tin. You cannot find such audiofile grade caps at RadioShack.
The 32.5 is a good speaker, but it has the advantange of a real X-over network that is rare in a 3.5" unit. And it can be improved to componet grade quality very easily. So these are options that you can't have with any other speaker that I am aware of.
posted by 207.43.195...
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