Unhooking crossovers in my polks? (1 Viewer)

[Joe Tilley]

I have the an all polk set up with RT55i front mains,front surround,rear surrounds,&CS400i center. What I'm wondering about is that I have the crossovers unhooked for the drivers, the tweeter section was left alone of course & was just wondering if any one else dose or has done this?

The reason I've done this is that it just did not sound right to me with them hooked up,to me it sounds much better without them.I've thought about trying to make my own crossovers for them but right now I don't have the money for that.I just figured that my receiver would take care of the crossover frequencies (Sony STR-DA5ES)& there is no real need for the speakers internal crossover.

So dose anyone else do this or am I crazy for doing this?I have had them like this for about 3 month's with no problems whatsoever,& like I said they sound much better to me like this. Just curious

 

[Mike_Ch]

Joe,

I don't really understand how its possible for you to be getting better sound by disconnecting the drivers from the Xover. I am assuming that you have unhooked the wires going to the crossover from the mid/bass driver of your Polk speakers- this would mean you have opened up the speaker and desoldered or if they were using spade lugs, unclipped the wires form the Xover. Or do you mean that instead of *biwiring* you are only using the one set of cables to the tweeter and disconnected the cable to the bass. Disconnecting the driver from the crossover by removing the internal wiring means is that you will be getting *NO* sound from the mid/bass driver, and that you will only be getting sound from the tweeter. This would sound awful, since tweeters handle usually frequencies from 2Khz up only. They have a low-pass crossover component that prevents them from handling any sound lower. All your Sony receiver Xover does is to act as a crossover for 120Hz/100hz/80hz etc meaning that if indeed this were used, your sub would be handling only up to the Sony Xover frequency, and a huge gap would be present between that point and the Xover point of your tweeter.

Again, could you please clarify what exactly you have unhooked? But generally speaking, unless you really know what you're doing and have the right tools (MLSSA equipment or other response measurement tools), leave the crossover design alone. You can change the capacitators, resistors or even the inductors to better components, but only if you know their values.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[Joe Tilley]

Mike, I am running directly off the receiver basically for the woofer section.What I did was take out the back plate an unsoldered the wires for the woofers that lead to the crossover than ran my own wires from the binding directly to the woofers, like I said the tweeter is untouched (still hooked to the crossover)the woofers are not however using the factory crossover. So pretty much they are working full range.

 

[Saurav]

I just figured that my receiver would take care of the crossover frequencies (Sony STR-DA5ES)& there is no real need for the speakers internal crossover.

The receiver's crossover handles the signal between the subwoofer and all the other speakers, it does not do anything to the signal/frequency distribution between the woofers and tweeters. So, your receiver is handling the lower limit of what your woofers are playing. Between your woofers and your tweeters, you still need the speaker's crossover to handle that transition correctly.
So your tweeters are using their crossover, you just disconnected the woofers from the XO and connected them directly to the binding posts? This should work, you might get more distortion from the woofer because now it's trying to play everything up to 20 KHz, something it wasn't designed to do. I would expect Polk's engineers to have done a competent job of designing their speakers and the XOs, but if you like it better this way, that's all that matters

 

[Joe Tilley]

So your tweeters are useing their crossover,you just disconnected the woffers from the XO and connected them directley to the binding posts?

Correct, I don't know what it is but it just sounds better this way to me. And as far as distortion goes I don't even have a hint of it,to me their was alot of things missing with the XO hooked up as to without it.