Quickie for my new 2.0 Speaker setup?

[howie75]

Hello All,

I really enjoyed building my Crack w/speedball upgrade, and now I'm itching
to try my hands on my second DIY project.
Due to some recent audio related purchases , I wanted to keep the budget pretty low and
naturally the Quickie caught my interest, and wanted to know if the Quickie
1. would work in my setup.
2. Add some sound quality improvement or at least tube warmth.

Currently, I listen to music through this setup:
Laptop>DAC>Pioneer AVR(SC-1222k)>Polk Audio A9 Floor speakers
From my understanding, the Quickie would be used between the DAC and
Receiver.

Although I am quite enjoying my first real speaker setup, I feel there's some room
for improvement and tinkering.  The speakers sometimes sound a bit on the bright side.
I would appreciate any feedback and suggestions.

[Grainger49]

Howie,

If your AVR has preamp out and main amp in it will be convenient to feed the Quickie into the receiver.  Otherwise you might use the record input/output for the Quickie.

IMHO you will like the sound of the Quickie.

[corndog71]

I have a project for you.  Rebuild the crossovers inside your Polks with better caps and inductors.  That will help tame the brightness and improve their overall sound not to mention improve power handling a bit. 

I recommend Erse Pulse X caps and EQ or XQ Perfect Lay Air Core coils.  Air core is preferable to iron core unless it's a really big coil.

You can get the schematic for your speakers by contacting Polk directly.  They're pretty cool about that.

[howie75]

I just placed the order for the quickie and upgrade a few days ago.
I do intend to plug it through my receiver.
As for the cross over modification suggestions, I will look into it.
But I am a bit concerned whether I will have the technical ability to pull it off.
The crack was my first time soldering and DIY electronics of any sort.
Thanks for the suggestion, and I will definitely at least look into the possibility
of upgrading the crossover.

[corndog71]

I upgraded the crossovers in a friend's pair of Polk towers a few years ago.

(https://forum.bottlehead.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi576.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fss207%2Fcorndog642%2FPolk%2520R40%2520Upgrades%2FIMG_1901.jpg&hash=51d2b31841323e09b258aeee48775d82b91fe7d3)
Here's the original crossover on the inside of the speaker terminal cup.  There's 2 caps and an iron core inductor with a resistor and air core inductor on the other side of the board.  Those electrolytic caps are terrible sounding in speakers compared to even cheap film caps.  The parts chosen are for cost and size and not sound quality.  They do the job like a teenager.  It'll get done but it won't be pretty.


(https://forum.bottlehead.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi576.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fss207%2Fcorndog642%2FPolk%2520R40%2520Upgrades%2FIMG_1917.jpg&hash=63dd40d2ddda78c70d63fb7a5be1d6af9cc1cc51)
Here's the final version of the crossover  (via Polk) using Erse caps and inductors along with a Mills 1% resistor.  They're the exact values Polk specifies but using higher quality parts.  I soldered them together keeping the inductors at 90 degree angles in order to minimize magnetic field interaction and used silicone to glue them together and fix them to the inside of the cabinet.  I used a thicker guage wire inside the speaker vs. the cheap 18AWG wire that came with it.  I also removed the stock crossover from the terminal cup so it wasn't in the way.

Distortion was lowered and from top to bottom they sounded cleaner and more dynamic.  The first thing my friend noticed about them was that he didn't have to turn his receiver up as loud to get it to sound good.  Bass was tighter and more accurate as well.

You can do this too.