Jantzen Audio is the premier manufacturer of hifi audio crossover components and accessories in the consumer electronics industry

Denmark’s Jantzen Audio is one of the world’s leading producers of specialized resistors, coils, and capacitors.
Long regarded as the crossover capacitors, coils, and inductors of choice for high-end European speaker manufacturers.
Jantzen’s products include P-Core, Air Core, Copper foil, and C-Coil Toroidal inductors, as well as CrossCap, Poly and Z-Cap capacitors.

General things to consider before taking on an upgrade project

• Do you have the required experience with crossover assembly?
• Will there be room in your enclosures for the larger crossover boards that upgrading to better components will most often require, or are you willing to make external crossovers?
• Mostly relating to vintage speakers, what is the condition of the drivers and are they in proper working condition? If not, your first step should be to have your drivers repaired / refurbished!
• If the drivers are not in optimal working condition, you cannot be sure that the driver(s) will perform the same as it/they did some 30-50 years ago, thus the crossover may need to be redesigned with the necessary changes to factor in frequency response, phase, and impedance.

General thoughts on choosing components

We often get asked which coil or capacitor type will sound the best or will give the best performance?

This is one of the most difficult questions to answer, as personal preferences often outweigh the technical reasons for choosing crossover components.

When having considered the technical aspects, one must look at things like:

• Budget for the components and overall cost of the design
• Cost of crossover components in relation to overall cost of the system
• Which sonic profile or “flavor” is preferred
• The ratio related to the increased gain in performance versus the additional cost

It is not an easy task to describe how a component will change or “upgrade” the sound of a specific loudspeaker, as what constitutes “good sound” is of course very subjective.

The best way to find the components you like is to test them yourself, but the second-best thing is to get inspiration and help from the DIY audio community and to read component reviews as well.

Considerations for induction coils

• What is the condition of stock inductors and is it necessary to exchange them?
• If you want to exchange / upgrade the stock inductors, you will have to pay extra attention to the ohmic resistance of the coils (DCR), as this may be an essential part of the crossover functioning.
• If you wish to exchange the stock inductors, it is necessary to measure the Ohmic resistance of the inductors with a precision milliohm meter. A standard multimeter is not good enough for this, as we are measuring resistance of e.g., 0.1-0.5 Ohm.
• Do your speakers have L-Pads/Attenuators, and do you have the know-how to transfer those to the new crossover boards? Alternatively, would you be willing to sacrifice such features when upgrading the crossovers?

Considerations for capacitors

Generally, we would recommend concentrating on upgrading the capacitors that are in direct line with the tweeters and the mid-range drivers.

This goes for both newer and vintage speakers.
Mainly for vintage speakers, the stock electrolytic capacitors can be e.g., 30 years old and should be exchanged.

We recommend exchanging old electrolytic capacitors to new 5% tolerance electrolytic capacitors or possibly upgrading them to MKT (polyester film) or MKP (standard type metalized polypropylene foil).

For the tweeters and mid-range capacitors, it makes sense to use high-end (expensive) capacitors, but for the bass section we recommend simply using good quality electrolytic or MKT/ Standard MKP capacitors, as it is overkill to use high-end capacitors for bass section dedicated capacitor positions.

It is also important to note that specifically for vintage speakers, the capacitor values used were often from the “old e-row” of values and today it is rare to find values like e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5uF when it comes high-end modern capacitors, which are most often only offered in the “modern e-row” of values

Our capacitor philosophy

Our main goal is with our higher-end capacitors is to get rid of some of that “coloration” that can occur with lower end capacitors and to let the sonic profile sound a bit less “bright”.

We are trying to make recordings sound as close as possible to how it sounded when it was recorded.

Obviously, there will be big differences when comparing electronically produced music versus microphone recorded acoustic music.

Some listeners will miss the sort of painted on “coloration” or added “brightness” that they were used too from lower grade capacitors, and they will have to decide if the new sonic profile is preferable.

However, all kinds of manipulation of a music signal is a type of distortion, but for some a welcome distortion.