I want to recap the crossovers in an old pair of high-end speakers I
own. I've opened up the cabinet and diagramed the circuit, but have a
few questions about what I found. Perhaps somebody can help.

The first thing I noticed is that many of the "better" caps (polystyrene
in this case) are run in parallel with electrolytics to reach the
desired value. I spoke with a tech who said that this was done to
achieve the filter affect of the combined capacitance while taking
advantage of the better signal path through the one quality capacitor in
the circuit. Does this make sense?

I certainly understand that there is a cost advantage of doing it this
way because the circuit uses some very high capacitance values.
Replacing these caps with modern, high-end versions would be
cost-prohibitive, if not impossible. I just want to compromise as little
quality as possible.

That leads me to the next question: how do I achieve the desired values
and maintain the quality without going broke? The midrange signal is fed
through a set of capacitors with a combined value of 75 mfd. That's much
higher than I've seen for sale from any high-end capacitor
manufacturers, and anything close is prohibitively expensive.

The next issue is with matching. I don't own a capacitance meter, so
matching the pairs myself is not an option. Is it worth buying matched
pairs of replacement caps? And what do I do if I need to add
electrolytics into the circuit to achieve the desired value? Can I buy
those matched as well?

Lastly, what are the preferred brands of capacitors to use? Are there
any good web sites that do comparisons, including listening tests?

Thanks very much in advance.

--
Steve Cohn