Rebuilding RT800 crossover?

[frodaddy]

I really like the speakers, but I'm looking to get as much out of these I can.

I was curious if it would be worth it to rebuild my RT800's crossover?
Does anyone have a schematic?

[anonymouse]

Look here:
http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38755

[frodaddy]

I never thought to look in the troubleshooting section; thanks!!

Would it be a worthwhile improvement to do?

[anonymouse]

That depends. I'm sure you can get some gains with replacing the caps with Sonicaps, Auricaps and so on. The question is... what does the rest of your equipment look like? What kind of source, amp and cables are you using? Is this your best tweak or should you look elsewhere?

[amulford]

Anytime you upgrade components like that, you should get an improvement. I say do it.

But he is right, your only as strong as your weakest link...

[frodaddy]

My system is setup for home theater, and right now I think it sounds great. There's always room for improvement, though. I want to get the most out of the speakers I have for a couple of reasons: One is I don't have the cash to buy new speakers that would better what I already have, and two is I've told myself I will build the next set of speakers in my home theater. Since I'm not ready for either one of these yet, rebuilding the crossovers would allow me to spend much less money, learn how to work on crossovers, and hopefully get the RT800s sounding better than they were new!

There are several things I need to do with my home theater, and rebuilding the crossovers is something I've had thought about for a while. I just happened to catch a thread similiar to mine and decided to investigate it further this time! As for the list of improvements for the future... purchase another set of RT800s for 7.1ch, amp to drive them (the Denon AVR-4800 decodes DTS-ES/DD-EX but is only a 5ch amp), maybe a new receiver or preprocessor with HDMI / DD PL2x if I'm not happy with how my Denon does 6.1, if preprocessor then buy seperate amps, upgrade crossovers on current speakers depending on the previous, room treatments, EQ each channel, and build new speakers from scratch (time dependent whether crossovers/treatments/EQ'ing gets me a good in room response). Phew, not sure if that helps give an idea of what I'm after or confuses the issue :D Basically it's a hobby and I'll probably never stop tinkering no matter how good it sounds

[frodaddy]

I've looked over the schematics, and I noticed that there are no caps on the woofer section in the RT800. There are 3 on the tweeter, however.
The same holds true for the CS1000p; there aren't any caps on the woofer section, but one on the tweeter.

Does this mean that there won't be much of an improvment in the midbass? Or would upgrading the inductors "tighten" things up in the midbass?

[frodaddy]

Bringing this one back from the dead... anyone care to comment on my last question regarding the RT800s?

[GV#27]

I've looked over the schematics, and I noticed that there are no caps on the woofer section in the RT800. There are 3 on the tweeter, however.
The same holds true for the CS1000p; there aren't any caps on the woofer section, but one on the tweeter.

Does this mean that there won't be much of an improvment in the midbass? Or would upgrading the inductors "tighten" things up in the midbass?
Yes changing the caps will only have an affect in the treble range.Im sure someone will disagree but replacing the .7mh inductor in the woofer section with another .7mh should not bring about much change in sound unless it has a dramatically different DC resistance value .This would then affect bass damping.

Edit: I just looked at the schematic again and notice they used a laminate core inductor.You might want to replace it with an air core type of the same .7mh and DCR value.Laminate core types can saturate at high levels and actually change their value and cause distortion but air cores do not suffer these problems.

[aabid]

very cool