Wessel Dirksen wrote:

In this whole B&W 804 string, there seems to be a collective scientific "we
know about it and have a formula for it or it doesn't exist" mentality going
on.

You seem to be espousing the "we don't know everything, so
absolutely everything has to be equally possible/plausible"
mentality. Your statements such as "I see that this is a highly
debatable subject and that we all seem to agree on the basic
principles but have very different opinions on the 'unknown'
factor." exemplifies this, IMO. It presupposes that:

a) The parameter(s)/characteristic(s) *you* purport to exist are,
in fact real (defining them as "unknown" is somewhat telling IMO),
and;

b) What is 'unknown' to you, is universally unknown (there are a
number of folks around here - myself excluded - who have rather
extensive speaker knowledge that may well exceed yours).

Saying, in effect, 'there are things I know about, that no one,
including you, understand' is likely to cause the more
knowledgeable folks to take umbrage. On RAHE or elsewhere.

If you want to build a better mousetrap, take apart all the mousetraps
you come accross and do your best to understand how they work. In doing this
you will discover many unknowns about mousetraps.

Well, let's recap. This thread started with a post stating:

"I'm planning to change all inner wirings of 804, as they are
quite poor compared to general quality of finishing and sound."

This seems, clearly, to imply a desire to replace parts with
"better" parts, irrespective of original design criteria. This in
no way equates to "take apart all the mousetraps you come accross
and do your best to understand how they work", which would be an
engineering/redesign exercise, and seemingly outside the scope of
the original posters' desires.

Most responders seem to be of the opinion, logical IMO, that
random changing of components/wires, without analysis of the
effect on original design parameters, is highly unlikely to
improve anything. You seem to be a minority dissenter in that view.

Personally, I don't claim any expertise in speaker construction or
crossover design, but what strikes me about the whole concept
(relative to this specific thread) is *how* can the wiring be
"quite poor" when compared to the quality of the sound? IOW, there
appears to be no problem with the 'sound quality', and if that's
the case, there *is* no problem with the wiring quality (unless
one is concerned about stability and longevity criteria, but
having owned B&W's for 20 years, that doesn't seem an issue to me).

Keith Hughes