Infinity Renaissance 90 ReCap

[ILX]

Hello, guys!
I want to recap my newly (few months ago) acquired Renaissance 90. I actually did it already, but I find out that there are some tiny details like original caps ESR, that are not matching the new caps, which is expected ofc. My goal is to get the original sound when new, but I am also aware that is better to have greater quality caps in the crossover and gonna do some replacements, just not all at once. Also not replacing any coils for now. Firstly I did direct electrolytic caps to electrolytic replacement with Mundorf ECAP100 RAW, which made good results, but not good enough I know that this electrolytes are not the same type as the original, they use different electrolytic technology and behave differently when talking about ESR, which plays major role in this great speakers. On the bass section it doesnt really matter what kind of electrolytes you put, so there is no need to discuss it, which narrow the entire conversation to only 4 capacitors. I can exclude one of them, its marked as C2 (3uf) on my scheme, because he barely plays in role at all. But also feel free to correct me if you dont think so.


Which leave us with this 3 capacitors:

If you pay attention to the detail you will notice 2 major things in this photo. C3 (72uf) and C1 (33uf) are both orange color, which I suspect is to mark them as greater quality capacitors than the purple ones. I suspect they have lower ESR. Second major thing for noticing is that the C1 (33uf) is marked as tolerance of 2% instead of 5%. Which makes me think that it might have even lower ESR, because of using better electrolyte material to achieve better tolerance rating.
What you CAN'T see on the scheme is the ESR of the capacitors I currently use. So I will describe them here:
C1 (33uf): Its Mundorf Evo stack, it basically has no meaningful ESR, you can consider it as 0.01 ohms. On the scheme you can see that I've put R1 with 0,56 ohms of resistance. (on the pic is 0.51ohms)
C2 (3uf): Its single 3uf JB JSX MKP cap, no resistor there, originally here we had 3.1uf purple type electrolytic, which could have a lot of resistance, but I believe it doesn't matter.
C3 (72uf): I've tried here different combinations stack of ECAP100's, but currently is stack of Monacor MKT, which also have low ESR, something like 0.01 ohms. I am planning better caps here, just wanna figure out first the best ESR.
C4 (138uf): Since this is huge capacitance I am using stack of ECAP100's here, which has total ESR of 0.22 ohms, which makes it the only place where you have invisible on the scheme additional resistance. With the added resistor of 0.15 ohms it totals as 0.37 ohms.

I also have little mismatch on the C4 and C2 as you can see, please feel free to address it if you believe this might cause a problem.

The speakers sound pretty good now, but I feel this are not the correct values and there is a room for improvement. And is mostly in the department of the midbass I feel it little bit of muddy, crawling over the EMIM details, but really just a little bit. I tried to theory craft it with AI and to think of possible combos like: If C2 is 0.39 ohms, which makes it to align perfectly on phase, then C3 should be 0.18 ohms, because its the same orange type, which leads to the purple 140uf be like ~2.5 larger ESR and be something like 0.30ohms. I tried to theory craft like that and did some tries, but there I noticed the 2% tolerance rating of the C1, which dramatically trashed my theories and decided to share my pain with you guys. There might be a guy who already figured them out, so I am here giving it a try with you.

Also to include another fun fact in the post, I own Kappa 8.2i which also went into electrolytic recap, and there are only purple electrolytic caps inside, no orange. Which makes me think of the precise work that has been done here in the Renaissance 90.

I am planning to use better type of capacitors here, but I want to make the calculations first, then try it with whatever I actually have atm, so no need to inform me that there are better type of capacitors, I know it and I assure you, they are gonna be used!

After all that useless to some people info, here is the main question of the post:
If you happen to know the original ESR of any of this capacitors from the second picture when they were new, it will directly help me to resolve the ESR mystery. Or if you know the Loss Factor same type cap just little bit different capacitance, it will allow me to calculate this caps original ESR, which will lead to the same victory scenario. So anybody knows ? You can also post if you have already recapped your Renaissance 90 and have some great results, I've read the other thread couple of times, I actually have read all Renaissance 90 threads here and didn't find any useful data there, but if you have any further data please share it. This post is also about all people's experience of recapping this great speakers, so feel free to post your data here.

 

[Bright_Star]

I have owned my two pairs of Ren 90's for a long time, one in oak, the other, hi gloss black. They are truly superb looking/sounding speakers.

But I prefer to leave them the way they are. They sound great to me, I dont see any need to try to change anything if it is not necessary.

What music/songs are you listening that you can suggest as a listening test that would make it noticeable to someone's ears that something is lacking so that recapping as you are doing is needed?

Surely you realize, the listening room itself- its size, and its acoustics, and how you have the Ren 90's positioned/set-up is going to play a big role in the sound quality you hear. If that is not done properly, then recapping is not going to magically fix that. Just my own viewpoint. If you want to recap, then of course they are your own speakers to do as you wish.

 

[ILX]

I have owned my two pairs of Ren 90's for a long time, one in oak, the other, hi gloss black. They are truly superb looking/sounding speakers.

But I prefer to leave them the way they are. They sound great to me, I dont see any need to try to change anything if it is not necessary.

What music/songs are you listening that you can suggest as a listening test that would make it noticeable to someone's ears that something is lacking so that recapping as you are doing is needed?

Surely you realize, the listening room itself- its size, and its acoustics, and how you have the Ren 90's positioned/set-up is going to play a big role in the sound quality you hear. If that is not done properly, then recapping is not going to magically fix that. Just my own viewpoint. If you want to recap, then of course they are your own speakers to do as you wish.

Yeah, indeed they do sound great even with few dried capacitors, the Ren90's are the best speakers that I've ever owned or heard, so I do love them very much. And I also know lots of things about crossovers, capacitors, resistors, coils since its my hobby to play with that (not on the Ren's ofc) when you combine both the love and the knowledge you will want to restore them to their best possible condition. Since I could not get help with guessing the ESR values of the capacitors, I've decided to buy expensive LCR meter and find out by myself whats going on in the crossover. Since I know that only the electrolytic capacitors might have failed from the many years that have passed since their manufacturing, I've tested and replaced only them. Actually I was already replaced them when bought the LCR meter, because I felt that something's not right and direct replacement is not doing great job. And I will give you in table the test results:



The table shows That I have 3 dead capacitors and one questionable. Which stroke me down since I've expected more than 50% of them to be very dead. I have also pointed that the 3.1uf doesnt matter much, but it does, since it actually has pretty big resistance, they actually used it here because of that. Those dead capacitors makes my speakers sound like that (the broken line is like what is supposed to be)


This dead capacitors affect only the bass and the midbass and in my case I have only one 140uf dead, so midbass was broken only on one speaker, the midbass of the other speakers was fine. When I got suspicious of sound I believed to be only in the midbass section, but think the main problem comes from the 2 blue 280uf capacitors, which are different from all others, If I have to guess they are plain type electrolytes but lower quality with higher ESR. I also have got to the conclusion that Purple T.I. Capacitors are Raw type and Orange are higher quality Plain type, which cost more than the raw type. They are more linear than the Raw type and that's must be the reason the be used on the emim and midbass. So for now I know almost everything except exact ESR value of the blue 280uf capacitors, so if anyone can help, please do. All measurements are made on 100hz frequency. I think the blue 280uf capacitors are lower quality capacitor than the T.I. branded which still holds in time, which is trully incredible and might have failed on all Ren's that have them, here is a picture of them, so you can identify them easier. I am currently runing there Mundorf ECAP100 which are RAW type (which means worst leanearity and lower ESR than original) with added 0.15 ohms resistor 10W after the capacitor, which is slightly higher then what I think is the right ESR, but it does sound fine, I dont have 0.10ohms resistor to try out with it, local store also doesnt have, so I cant try cheap I have to order abroad just for test.


About the quote questions:
The music I found out that I have problem with my crossover is male voice low end, you can see the graph with frequencies and I think they lack mostly on 180hz and 500hz, few db on 250hz should be less detectable. So any music with deep male voice should expose those problems. About positioning and room, yeah it plays very big part of the listening experience and probably could hide some problems you might have with crossover. Getting equipment that enhances those FQ also could help, but my point is to restore the speakers as they were when manufactured and also share this knowledge with you.

I do this post because of pure love for the speakers and I want to help everyone who wants to restore them. I also have all the original ESR of Kappa 8.2i if anyone is in need for that. I will include pictures of the broken capacitors so you can see for yourself. Will include a working perfectly cap also, so you can see it measures well.



So I have updated my crossover and will add C5 280uf blue and C6 265uf as important capacitors to watch out about their ESR.


You should aim for the following ESR in your capacitors in this positions:
C1 33uf 1 ohm
C2 3.1uf ~ 8.2-10 ohms **
** (this one is tricky, might work also with 6.8oms or 10ohms, need further testing)
C3 72uf ~ 0.5ohms
C4 140uf ~ 0.16-0.18ohms **
** (I am using here 56uf + 82uf ECAP100 Mundorf Caps as stack without any added resistors and I think it works fine)
C5 280uf ??? ~0.26 ohms **
** (This is the question I am using here a stack of ECAP63 + ECAP100's with total ESR around 0.15ohms + added resistor afterwards of 0.15 ohms and I am getting good result I believe. Might need further testing here.)
C6 265uf ~ 0.16-0.18ohms **
** (this must be the correct ESR here, but be careful here cause if you put different ESR you will affect entire bass section.)
The 882uf and 300uf is also important to be around 0.06 ohm and 0.13 ohm ESR, but you can drift little around that without any problems. And because of their huge capacity and RAW type they have low ESR, which makes them very easy to replace.
I want to point out also that there might be different revisions of the crossover, with not exactly those values, but they must be close enough not to affect the ESR by more than 0.01 point, which is negligible.

About the Fuse 1.25A on the HE-EMIT. I have not measured it and I dont think its that lower on ESR as I have put it on the schematics, also I have NOT measured any of the coils, but I can and will do at some point, just dont want to open them for just that. The values there are my guesses and I cant guarantee them. But I can guarantee you that you can clean that blue box fuse of 1.25A, just be very very careful. It can be cleaned without removing it from the crossover, you just need something very small to open it and gain access to the copper point, which must be cleaned with a cloth and sandpaper, but again be very very careful there, because if you broke it you cant replace it. No one does use tweeter fuses anymore. I am afraid to desolder it for measurement, but I am planing to replace both capacitors on the HE-EMIT so I can measure it there without touching the fuse, but it will be somewhere in time, not now. Results will be put here, when I do. I have replaced both resistors of the HE-EMIT with Mundorf MREC10, unfortunately there is no 5ohm and I couldnt find 5.1 ohm on my local store, so I put there 4.7ohm which might make my HE-EMIT to be slightly louder in some FQ, you can see where on the FQ I've put above. And yeah I know I can put 2 x 10ohms, but they are expensive and will take more space. I am telling you all that because I want to include a video of the speakers with sound I hope, if youtube doesnt block it.