New Centaur Minor owner

[EldRick]

Not correct. Using a small value cap will not shift the low-pass XO frequency enough to matter, and it will reduce EMF-caused distortion to some small degree. Can't hurt, might help.

[Odysseyss]

Any other tips on what to do to improve sound, like change caps on something or what would be simplest upgrade to do. Thanks for any info.

[Vansloneker]

Can anyone give me any tips on Apogee Minor speakers? My room is 10x12 ft. How far apart is best, Tou in, a little a lot. I am 7 feet from speakers in a treated room. Using Odyssey Khartargo Upgraded Mono Blocks and a VTL 5.5 tube pre with Cardas Twinlink speaker cable. Thanks for any info.

My Centaurs are 207cm (measured from the inside edge) apart and 145cm (measured from the tweeter) from the rear wall. That should be good starting point for you. You have to try and move what position suits you best. At least 120cm from the rear wall is generally recommended. Toe in is generally not recommended.

[Odysseyss]

Can you use measurement in inches. I'm from USA, don't use Centimeters much, thanks or any info. Also want to upgrade crossover, what would be first thing to change for better sound.
Regards

[Odysseyss]

I figured out the centimeter stuff, your Apogee are way further out than mine. Mine are 6ft. apart end to end and 37 inches from back wall, just a little toe in. Do you really think I should use No toe in.thanks again.
Regards
Ken

[Vansloneker]

With a crossover upgrade your speakers will sound better and I suppose it will be easier to spot the differences when you move them around. With Apogee's, an inch can make the difference. An important factor is the sound that is radiated from the ribbon to the back and their reflections on the rear wall. If you toe-in you ribbons the back wave will reflect away from you. That is good for Bose, not for us
A 10 by 12ft room is rather small, so if 6ft wide gives you the best sound stage, that's what it's all about. The distance from the side walls is also a factor. In the end what counts are not inches, but what you experience in your listening seat.

[Odysseyss]

Thanks Van for your help, you are very kind. I have the Apogees slightly toed in, may try to have no toe in hear how it sounds. Any tips on what to change first on crossover for better sound? My electrical engineer friend is going to take a look soon, and may do the upgrade. Thanks for any info.
Regards
Ken

[Vansloneker]

Sometimes they do a very little toe in with Apogee's, you just have to try what works best for you.

Considering the X/O, read this topic. And read elsewhere in the forum and on the internet.
As a first step placing bypass caps on the high, low and ribbon connecting caps will almost certainly see an improvement. Also I experienced that replacing the ribbon connecting cap can make a huge difference.

But this is just peanuts compared to what you can achieve with a more rigid X/O job. Replacing all caps with any brand good basic caps (e.g. Clarity Cap PX, Mundorf M-Cap) should give a huge improvement. Even more with hi-end caps. If I had a project at hand right now, with limited funds I would change the caps for M-Caps, and if the funds were a bit larger I would put in the Jantzen Superior caps.

The Apogee installers strongly recommend replacing the coils for better ones. If that's a step to far, you could pot the existing coils. There are a few resistors only in the X/O, change them for better ones.

Jon -the UK Apogee installer recommends better internal wiring. Good copper should do. If you change the X/O at least the X/O part of the wiring should be better wired. And disconnect and disable the switches, unless you really want them.

With my Centaur I went from changing all caps for good basic caps to adding hi-end bypasses and finally super-bypasses. In my own experience I found that uniform caps would give a slightly more coherent and three-dimensional sound stage.
The hi-end bypasses give me far more detail and a much sweeter sound, once I was hooked to the hi-end sound there was no way back. Resolution and definition is imho wonderful. Sometimes, well not even an exception, I hear the spit as the singer articulates.

Sometimes I find them a bit to smooth, they could have a little more bite. I consider this due to the Mundorf Supremes and the silver wiring. Note I'm talking about the level of nitpicking.
At the same time the speakers are ruthlessly exposing any technical wizardry. Sound engineers like to 'enhance' vocals particularly on pop music and you hear that.
Anyway I am very, very pleased with my X/O upgrade and I ow great thanks to the forum for the support I received.

My pleasure, Sir!

[Odysseyss]

Thanks Von,
You have been very helpful. I will forword what you said about crossover stuff to my EE friend who will do the mod. My Apogee Minors are in mint condition, bought from original owner with boxes. The ribbons are perfect, no colorations and no kinks. Woofer sounds fine, but it is getting old. I just hope it hangs in there. I've been playing around with speaker wire, found a pair that sounds pretty good. I use the Apogee with a pair Odyssey Khartargo Mono Blocks, with a VTL 5.5 tube preamp. Also have a pair of Merlin speakers made here in US. Thanks for your help, I will keep in touch if and when crossover is being done. May be awhile. If you have any more tips appreciated.
Regards
Ken

[Odysseyss]

Sorry your name is Van,not Von.

[Odysseyss]

Sorry your name is Van,not Von.

[Vansloneker]

I will be really curious to the outcome of your talks with your engineer. If you guys decide to work on the caps, with those amps it will pay-off. Remember, new caps can take some time to break in.

[Odysseyss]

Van,
Yes I will be in touch when he does it. One question, can he just remove the crossover with out me taking speakers to his house? He has all his stuff at home, scope soldering iron stuff like that. I hope you can give me an answer about this, would hate to move the speakers to his house, you know ribbons very delicate. So if can just remove what's behind those 6 stews I'd be happy. Thanks for your time and help.
Regards

Ken

[Vansloneker]

Taking out the X/O board is easy. The components are glued to the back plate with the terminals and the switches. For any tech it will be obvious what cables to disconnect. Just make sure to mark the connections and for extra sure take pictures.

[Odysseyss]

Thank you Van , you've been very helpful and kind. We need good people like you in this crazy world.
Regards
Ken USA

[Vansloneker]

When it's about our beloved speakers, all Apogee owners are helpful.

[Odysseyss]

Thanks, my EE fiend is coming over this week to take a look at the crossovers , then he will tell me what we should replace and how much I want to spend. I'll keep you posted Mr.Van.
Regards
Ken

[Odysseyss]

How do you remove crossover? My EEfriend is hear, lots of white stuffing, do you go in from front? Looks very hard to get to, any help or pointers?
Regards
Ken

[Vansloneker]

Like I said before, unscrew the back panel where the terminals and switches are. Piece of cake.

[Odysseyss]

We did this, remember his is the Apogee Minor, maybe different from Centaur. Really hard to get to very small room to work with, we see no screws one we got speaker inputs off,6 screws off, no way we can get it off.

[Graz]

It is different - the Minor can only be gotten at via the cone hole!!

[Odysseyss]

You mean I have to take off cover and get thru to the crossover from woofer? If this is true can you tell me the procedure on removing speaker grill. Thanks for any info.

[Vansloneker]

Sorry I wasn't aware this was constructed differently. Here are a few copy and pastes from Google:

This one has been covered here a few times - if only Apogee had used nice grill pegs!!! I have sent details on email also - for others here it is;-

Centaur woofer access

To remove grill, first make up special levers out of a pair of 8or so wide flat-lade screwdrivers, bending them at 45 degrees about 2from the end, flat down. These will be your grill levers and need to be used each side of the 6 joint pegs on the grill. By this I mean one peg at a time, with the levers each side of this peg, about a quarter inch from it. Levering one side alone will break the flimsy grill&

Start at the bottom, outside/inside, repeat middle, repeat top.

You now can access the woofer with a Philips head screwdriver.

Take care - Graz

The front speaker covers have 6 or 8 plastic clips which interlock very tightly to the box.

Best to use something like a steel ruler to slide under the speaker grille and carefully but firmly prise the clips out one at a time.
You should be able to figure out where the clips are, starting in the corners. The grilles as you know are very flimsy, but if you dont use some strength they wont budge.

Get a putty knife and gently insert along the top and side, rotating the blade 180 degrees on its long axis. That will loosen the grill which is only held on with refastenable nylon brads. You can then gently pull the grill off the speaker, being careful to pull the whole side off at once (that is not one isolated brad at a time but all at once.)

I did it with a pair of firm, flat blade screwdrivers. Just be gentle, cracking the flimsy plastic frame is the biggest risk.

[Odysseyss]

Thanks Van,I knew something was wrong, we could not figure out what to do, the crossover was so big, and no way getting it out of speaker binding pistol hole. Looks like a big job. Thanks I will ask my friend if he wants to do it. As of now I ordered some Cardas speaker binding posts to start off with. This may be better than the plastic ones. May also disconnect low,high, and normal switches out, is this a good idea? What should be done to do this? Will it improve sound. Thanks for any info.
Regards
Ken

[Vansloneker]

Well now I've learned the Minor is not a scaled down Centaur I have to be careful not to put you in wrong directions.

Google returns me an Apogee Centaur Minor Crossover crossover PDF document. Do check that this matches your crossover.

This crossover is actually a bit different from the Centaur crossover. I see one switch in the woofer circuit only. Basically the wires that are connected in switch position normal have to be connected, the other wires can be left disconnected. That is, if normal suits you. Make sure to best measure the switch as the switch position is opposite from the connections on the switch. Removing the switch is said to give little better sound because the path now will be better quality over wire not cheap switch.

In normal there is a connection through one resistor and 30mfd cap, in high the connection goes via two resistors and the cap, while on low there is no connection and no attenuation of the woofer.

Now the Centaur and probably the Minor also is known for it's problematic bass handling particularly when compared to the foil woofer Apogees. Maybe it is better you do keep the switch, at least until your crossover is reworked and you are really sure if you need bass attenuation or not.
If you upgrade components only the components in the attenuation circuit that are actually used have to be replaced.
What position is your switch now?
How is the switch connected to the crossover? With wires?

The high filter is not complicated. Only a 30mfd and a 10mfd cap, a 1 ohm resistor and the coils. For the coils there are others on the forum who can advise you. To give you an indication, replacing the high filter caps with Jantzen Superior caps would cost about $160 per side, UK prices, no shipping included. Mundorf Supremes would be about $140 and Mundorf Evo only about $35 per speaker high filter. I don't know US parts sites.

[Odysseyss]

Van,
I have switch at normal. I like it this way. Tryed others did not like the sound. So do we take out the low and high wires out of switch? And just leave normal hooked up? Or disconect the switch box all together? Thanks again. I want my EE friend to do exactly the right thing, do not want to ruin sound for the worse.
Regards
Ken

[Vansloneker]

I am not 100% sure about the switch diagram, can you take pictures of the switch and it's connections?

[Odysseyss]

Van, I can't take a pic, but it has 3 wires hooked on back of switch. We put together the speaker back yesterday , so I could listen. Anyways I'm not sure how to post a picture on this site. I'm an old guy 65 not to hip to all this iPhone stuff. My kids are always on there cell phones, not me, I don't own one. But this iPad takes pictures. When my friend comes over I'll take some pics with this iPad and try to send you pics on what the back inside looks like.
Regards
Ken
PS where are you from, may I ask....do you use SS amps with your Centaure ? I have also owned the Apogee Major, two pairs mint, sold them, wghat a dummy.

[Vansloneker]

Your friend is more technical savvy so he can take pics. If he don't know how to upload sent them to my name as you see in the right panel at gmail with the well know extension. It is important to have an image of the switch with the wires and where they go to. I think removing/disconnecting the switch won't make a change as dramatic as changing the caps.

On this forum, in the right panel you can see the location people entered in their profile. You may google to find out where Fryslân is and develop your internet skills.

I have an Advance Acoustic MAP 303 II integrated amp which is a French design build in China. This has the advantage over later Advance Acoustic MAP 30x amps that it is switchable to play class-A, class-AB or auto. The later amps are auto so you can't deliberately choose for class-A, the amp decides on the base of how much power is asked.
When I am in the listening seat I listen to class-A. Only when pushed hard AB or auto makes sense because then it has much more power. Otherwise class-A is so much sweeter.

You know, for many years I saw a pair of Duetta's advertised for little money and I didn't take it serious. When I finally contacted the seller he replied he just sold them for what was it, 100 or 150 euro. Felt kinda stupid he he...

[Odysseyss]

Thanks Van,
I will google where you live. Also will try to take some pics. Looks like we won't be able to get to crossovers thru speaker hole, too small. I don't really know what my EE friend can do but bypass the switch and put in those Sardas copper binding post. He said he can do some resisters, what ever that will do. Should I just have switch hooked to Normal and take the low and how filters out, or just bypass the whole switch? Thanks for your help.
Regards
Ken