Cap Quality for the Woofer

[Cody_Mack]

In the signal path I say quality is essential but what about the cap used for the woofer rolloff. I see that a much cheaper non-polarized electrolytic cap is often used in this application. Comments?

Rick

[4tay]

I replaced all the caps in my Forte II's and it was like taking the speakers from behind a curtain for the 1st time. That was before I installed the ti diaphragms.

Bob Crites has stated that the larger caps are very spendy to replace, and as a blocking cap, aren't a big change, unlike changing the tweeters cap. The one thing it does seem to do is help prevent image drift. I can tell you, ditching the electrolytic caps made a difference in that from the mids on up.

Look at the caps in the palladium xover...and you can see what Klipsch's opinion is of high end component use...(they didn't skimp)

[jerohm]

The capacitor [type/quality] on the woofer low pass makes almost no difference considering how it meshes up against the mid-bandpass. I would be almost willing to say it makes absolutely NO audible difference whatsoever [to mere mortals anyway]. The woofer is already naturally rolling off and it only steepens the slope.

If extreme slope configurations were the norm, I might have to re-evaluate MY opinion.