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A bad resistor can sound as nasty as a cheap preamp or CD player.
Take a look into the guts of many speakers and you’ll likely see ceramic resistors, like the one
pictured at the right, used in the signal path. Yuck! Run!
If the manufacturer actually cares about what he’s doing, you’ll see wire wound types like the one in the middle. Some brands are pretty OK.
Check out the resistor on the left, the Caddock Power Resistor. Even though their cost is several times that of the other types, we use Caddocks as the signal path resistors in all of our speakers because of their obviously superior sonic characteristics.
These superior metal oxide types are made in the USA to the most exacting specifications; each resistor is individually laser trimmed to within 1% of its target value. This is a luxuriously made part, and their sound is ‘head and shoulders’ above anything else we’ve tested.
In our high current circuits we bolster the Caddock’s already impressive power handling ability with a meaty heat sink. This is no small matter. After all, the function of a resistor is to reduce the signal by partially converting it to heat. But, one of physic’s more ugly laws is that the heat produced increases as the square of current flow. So heat is produced exponentially as the signal
increases! The big problem, here, is that resistance of the resistor itself then increases as the temperature rises. That’s bad; in a speaker this means that output will not scale properly as the resistors heat up. As the signal doubles the output should double, but instead will fall short owing to hot resistors. This kind of distortion is called ‘thermal compression’...a particularly pernicious form of dynamic compression that will sap the life out of your music.
So, while the other guys may give you fancy gold plated badges and jewelry store carpet spikes, we’re spending your money on something your eyes will never see, but that your ears will certainly appreciate: great resistors.
Resistors.... who cares?
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