Lets talk about XO mods

Esreuter

Hey forum,

Alright, so i have now seen a bypass capacitor, both in schematic and also on the circuit board.

I am still not all to clear on their function, do they take a certain percentage of the work off the main capacitor? what do they really do?

Next, I heard many people talking about just skipping the bypass and replacing the main cap with a higher grade cap type. So my question is this, do you need to incorporate the value of the bypass cap into the main cap?

Example is the monitor 40 XO, it has a 8.0u cap bypassed by a .22ucap, do i need to add the .22 and use a 8.2u cap?

next thing i noticed in the monitor 40 xo is it has a 9.1u cap, well, i havent been able to find a 9.0 or a 9.1 cap from the clarity caps, I was wondering is there a way a guy can wire caps together to get the values to add up? or is this physically impossible?

example, if you put a 8.2u cap then put a 1.0u cap are you only having capacitance of 1.0u because of where it is placed in the circuit? hope that makes sense what i am asking. It tough to put into words.

please and thank you all for your help!!
We should have a house today, only poopy thing is have to wait until aug 29, we are looking at a another house but still have to wait until aug 5, man i want my stuff back, unbroken mind you!

ok enough rambling
please and thank you for your help educating me.

ESR:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

drumminman

Next, I heard many people talking about just skipping the bypass and replacing the main cap with a higher grade cap type. So my question is this, do you need to incorporate the value of the bypass cap into the main cap?

Yes

Example is the monitor 40 XO, it has a 8.0u cap bypassed by a .22ucap, do i need to add the .22 and use a 8.2u cap?

Yes

next thing i noticed in the monitor 40 xo is it has a 9.1u cap, well, i havent been able to find a 9.0 or a 9.1 cap from the clarity caps, I was wondering is there a way a guy can wire caps together to get the values to add up? or is this physically impossible?

Yes - It's called soldering them in parallel. Put the smaller one on top of the other, and solder its leads to those of the larger one. The larger one's leads then get soldered to the board.

example, if you put a 8.2u cap then put a 1.0u cap are you only having capacitance of 1.0u because of where it is placed in the circuit? hope that makes sense what i am asking. It tough to put into words.

Not sure what you're asking. When you solder two caps in parallel per above, you add the values together.

Hope this helps and GL with the house hunting!

Outfitter03

Clarity makes a 9.0uf cap in both their SA and PX range of caps. Either would be satisfactory for the monitor 40 depending on budget. The 8.2uf value is a standard value for tweeter circuits and readily available.

In the Monitor 40 crossover, 9.0uf is close enough to 9.1uf as it is only 1.1% difference. Less than 3% tolerance is very good and within 5% is within the design tolerance. Many electrolytic capacitors are only accurate to +/- 5%.

Heated debates have occurred on this site concerning bypass caps in crossovers, specifically for tweeter circuits. Many DIYers have installed and then removed them because of problems with imaging etc.


http://www.madisound.com/manufacturers/claritycap/sa.php
http://www.madisound.com/manufacturers/claritycap/px.php

Esreuter

errrp.

well i posted to soon, i found a 9.0 in the clarity cap SA line up, guess that answers that. but i would still like to know, for learning the answers to my questions in my last post.

I forgot to ask this, i have learned about the volt rating of caps, now i understand, or at least i think i am right, this is the maximum voltage allowed for the cap to receive before it fries correct?

I would like to know if there is anything else this affects in speaker engineering, is there sound quality difference between a cap of 650v and a 250v cap?

thanks much

ESR:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin: