Very technical Infinity Ref 5010cs review

[navin]

This is the 1st part of a review of the Infinfity 51010cs. The 5010cs is very similar to the 5000cs. I have been sworn to secrecy about the differences.

Somebody (the car was parked) hit my wife's left door and in the process damanged her Vifa woofer. Given that repairing the woofer to original specs in India is not possible I decided to get me a pair of Infinity.

As these are Infinity my expectations are high.

Part 1: Before Listening tests.

The pair comes with everything on needs to intall the speakers. This is now the norm with all good component speakers. Good job but nothing special.

The first thing i do when i get speakers is run them through LEAP/LMS and then look at their XO.

Since my LEAP/LMS system is sick I decided to open the XOs.

Nice job. the XOs are well made (the Kappa XOs are even better). The inductors have soft ferrite cores (standard for car audio speakers) the caps are bi polar (those gotta go) the resistors are non inductive (tested on a a bridge) but of the 20% variety.

The XO follows a Parallel topology. I am considering making this series after my last expereince with series XOs.

The woofer XO is 12db/octave using a 0.22mh and 10mfd.

The tweeter XO is also 12db/octave using 3.3mfd and 0.46mh.

The tweeter is padded down about 3db using a 2ohm reisitor and is protected usig a MOV (Metal Oxide Varistor). At low voltages the MOV has a very high resistance, passing very little current. At high clamping voltages the MOV has very low resistance, causing the voltage surge to travel into the MOV suppressing the applied voltage. This ensures that if an amp is clipping (high voltage) the MOV's resistance protects the tweeter. MOV selection is paramount for this to work. I've used these in my home made XOs for some time and I am glad to see this being used my others.

so out came the sodering rod. I am soldering while i type this guys this is how fresh this report is.

out went the bipolar caps in came poly caps with 0.1 mfd tantalum bypass caps. I put both caps on the bridge and got 11.5mfd for the woofer cap and 5mfd for the tweeter!

ooops. changed the poly caps to 6.8 and 2.2 respectively. now i got
7.8mfd for the woofer cap and 3.1mfd for the tweeter caps. Nice. I'll leave this.

as you can see everything must be double checked.

The inductors cores are nice. Even the wire is nice. Looks like OFC but will not know till i get them to ERTL for analysis. I hope to do this tomorrow or next week. The soft iron cores I got in my collection are not better than the one's in Infinity's XO so I'll use the original cores.

I got some OFC wire so I will now pull out my handy lathe mahcine and will wind new inductors on the original cores.

that all for now....

I know this is getting technical so I'm gonna police myself. So guys if you want a full reoprt of this I need to see a show of hands. If not I will delete this report tomorrow (friday) morning.

[Mad Monkey]

VERY EXCITING !!!!


....

ummmmmm


so theese are boxes for sound to magically come out of ?????

[Sam Kapasi]

Oh Nice!!!

I'm all ears. Do go on.

[mclaren1885]

haha..i hope that the CCTB thing didnt get u so pumped up that it made u do all this ...sam,vivek see what we have done to navin with our brainteaser..he has started to get way way more complicated than any of us ever imagined he could be.. "tit 4 tat" hey navin!!!!!
anyways good going my man, love ur DIY spirit..could u pls post a few pics so that it makes understanding a bit easier for us..

[Vivekphadnis]

I love this. I love this.

You say your Leap/LMS is not working. How about running an XO simulation in Speaker Workshop. And thank god you replaced the electrolytics. I find the sound of electrolytics harsh as compared to metallised polypropylene/polyester.

Since you are winding your own inductors, why can't you try air cored ones?

Lastly, have you listened to them yet? If yes, how does it sound?

I certainly want more. Keep it coming.

Vivek

[navin]

MM, sometime they do produce sound. Most times they produce music.

Pics. I got a old digicam but I dont know how to post the pics. I can give you a compact flash cord with pics and print them but posting them is out of my league as you got to reduce the size and need to know photoshop.

My Leap?LMs is out as my friend who has it has some persoanl issues and is not available. I wont worry about T/S specs as these are for the car door.

Air core inductors in a car. Air core inductrs are big. I intend to use the beautiful XO boxes that came with the speakers. The 10mfd barely fit. and if you want to check even B&W used soft iron cores in their 801F and KEF used them in thier midrange's bandpass of their 104R so they ain't that bad. Between caps and inductors I'd change the caps first.

Install will happen on Saturday. In car listening will happen on Sunday. Expect a report covering that Monday.

[SoundManiac]

Arey, I found this really interesting - Shall be waiting for more ....

Also, I would love it if you could elucidate a lil more on the technical terms, XO -What does it exactly do, ERTL etc.

And I just wanna assure, I'll be lapping up all the theory!!

[navin]

XO = crossover.
ERTL = Engineering Research and Testing Laboratory (Andheri East - Mumbai).

[jkdas]

well being a review by navin i read it. emm... i was thinking what would happen if navin had 2 by a head unit

and navin, u dont need photoshop 2 reduce the image. u can use acdsee or sort. or mail it 2 me, i will post it 4 u.

[SoundManiac]

xo = Crossover

HA! now, I understand it a lil better.

Few more...

The woofer XO is 12db/octave using a 0.22mh and 10mfd.

Wo ist das? What do 'mh' and 10mfd stand for.
Also, Leap/LMS..

We don't know nothing you see but eager to learn something.!!

[jkdas]

Originally Posted by SoundManiac

xo = Crossover

HA! now, I understand it a lil better.

Few more...


Wo ist das? What do 'mh' and 10mfd stand for.
Also, Leap/LMS..

We don't know nothing you see but eager to learn something.!!

unit of capacitance : farad ( f)

unit of inductance : henry (h)

m= milli

[Mad Monkey]

Eigen Values !!!!!! .. HA !

[navin]

well actually jk is 1/2 right. m when we talk about henries is mili but when we talk about caps is micro. why because the sign for micro is MU and we dont have MU on a keyboard.

LEAP and LMS are a set of sftware made by LinearX to measure speakers and to design the box and crossover with.

The Industry standard is MLSSA (pronounced Melissa). Others are Clio, Calsod, etc... there are dozens of these softwares.

[navin]

Part 2. Still No listening tests

Ok I managed to bug my friend to give me his LEAP/LMS only to find it works only n Win 98. So I took out a old PC (I dont throw much) and formatted it for Win 98 and installed LEAP/LMS on it. It has a parallel port dongle.

So I ran the woofer on LEAP/LMS and found voila just what I expected. those nuts in JBL took a perfectly good woofer and over did the filtering. The result would have been peaky and great for rock / rap but not accurate, laid back and non fatiguing. Not to my ears. Now how do I know this before listening to the speakers. I cant answer that with 100% accuracy but yeaars of tinkering gives you a 6th sense. I know my taste is a bit too laid back for most so anyone trying to do this should experiement with 4.7 or 6.8uf caps too. (I am using u for MU, as m if confusing some people).

Out goes the 10ufd cap and what we really need is a 3.3ufd. The woofer roll off is smooth enough and wont be affected. If we hear some high order break up nodes from the woofer the XO box is large enough to accomodate one more poly cap.

BTW just realised that you guys should know that all caps are 100V.

[gunbir]

Originally Posted by navin

Part 2. Still No listening teststhose nuts in JBL took a perfectly good woofer and over did the filtering. The result would have been peaky and great for rock / rap but not accurate, laid back and non fatiguing. Not to my ears.

Interesting... Yup, most mfrs 'sex up' their speakers output for mass market appeal. Thats why I like to go active. That said, there are some great crossovers out there that make the drivers sound really special...

Navinji, you mentioned slope. whats the xo point? or did I miss that...