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Ferrofluid (remove or not?)

hramar

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Jan 12, 2025
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Hello, I have speakers from Dynaudio Audience 122, inside the high-frequency speakers there was ferrofluid which I removed, after that the character of the sound changed, for the better in my opinion, it began to play more detailed than before, and as for heating the coils, I don’t think that without liquid there is a risk of damaging the coil, I listened for a long time at the highest loads, and also new generations of tweeters work without liquid, and I don’t think that manufacturers began to wind thicker aluminum wires, and now the question is, why did they fill this <miracle> liquid inside, and why don’t they fill it anymore)
 
Ferrofluid is an integral part of the driver's design, and its parameters will change if it dries out, leaks, or is removed.
It helps dissipate heat from the voice coil, increasing its power-handling capacity. This allows the driver to be used in configurations with lower-than-usual crossover points without the risk of overheating. Or just plainly being able to play louder.
 
The character of the sound can change.
Sensitivity may increase slightly.
Impedance curve will change, which impacts the crossover, so frequency response may change - usually around tweeter resonance frequency. It may even bring out a small response change out of tweeter band if there is now a large impedance peak.
Less damping, maybe a change at very high frequency?
Power handling will be impacted, especially for longer listening sessions. If you frequently listen at "the loudest levels", you should probably consider putting new ferrofluid in there.

How much change there is would vary depending on tweeter and crossover design.
 
Won't ferrofluid affect the FS? Just looked up the specs and the crossover on these speakers is at 2kHz which is already quite low for a 1" tweeter from the early 00s. A minority of modern tweeters can deal with this sort of challenge but even in modern designs it's unusual.

Without ferrofluid you could be introducing quite a large resonant spike in the response just below the crossover point and increasing the risk of burning out the voice coil. Most tweeters of this age will have a resonant frequency around 1k or maybe higher, so I'd say the ferrofluid is an essential part of the design in this case. A resonant peak will also be causing quite the amount of phase shift which could be messing up the driver integration/frequency response/polar response above the tweeter's FS.

IMO, better to keep the tweeters as they were designed...
 
Depending on climate, I'd politely suggest that ferrofluid doesn't *have* to dry out or alter tweeter performance over say, twenty years. I appreciate that there are exceptions to this.
I agree, but in this instance, the OP has intentionally removed it.
 
Hramar: You need not be concerned about the ferrofluid drying up / evaporating going forward. The formulations of ferrofluid in this day and age are improved over what was used 40-odd years ago. You are likely looking at pushing up posies before the ferro' in your tweeters expired again...
 
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