Adding Tone Controls?

Bama, Nice post. A couple of comments on speaker/listening chair location/set up. Keep an open mind on this because some of it is not intuitive and conrtary to customary set up.

1) Set the speakers up so that the speakers/listening chair form an equallateral triangle. In a room with you room's dimensions I would keep the distance from the back wall at 5'+, but I would seperate the speakers substantially more apart. Say 10' with the listening chair back to about 10 - 11'. This will give you a much larger soundstage and, in my experience contribute to reducing congestion which is not unusual when the speakers are too close together and listened for far back.

This will also place the speakers closer to the side walls but due to the nature of those speaker's radiation pattern side wall reflections are not a big issue (remember figure 8 pattern). The only thing it might affect is the bass response linearity a bit, maybe a little boost between 100 and 200 hz. But then all speaker position will do that Often its a matter of choice of options, not perfection.

2)I would toe the speakers in so the axis of the speakers pointed at the listening chair and the back wave bounced off the side wall behind them. This will reduce the need for acoustic treatment on the wall behind the speakers substantially and quite possibly bring the stereo image into greater focus.

This is going to look and sound different than your present set up substantially I think. It will also require some tweaking after initial set up so give it a chance. If it works it will save you money and grief and perhaps as I suspect enhance your listening experience. If not just put them back to where you have set them now. Invest a couple of weeks (at least in this project). I discovered all of this the hard way and it took me an embarrasing long time :-)

BTW, flat bass response set with meter or by ear is going to be impossible, close perhaps. But I do not let flat bass response dictate where I set my speakers unless it is gross. It's the mid's and highs that are essential. Usually the location of the listening chair is as, if not more, important for getting a good bass response anyway.

OK, I'm done. Sorry for the length of my posts. Good luck and let us know how it works out for you.

To add to Almarg's always helpful post above--About the DSPeaker--it looks like you can special order input impedance to whatever value you like for slight up charge (not specified). Standard is 10k ohm. I have been kicking the tires on that unit and looked at the owners manual yesterday. Hope this is helpful.

Almarg --- the transport is also equipped with and AES/EBU output, and seems to be driven along with the coax. I know since I was able to do some A/B testing between the Enkianthus and the Musical Fidelity DACs.

Newbee --- moving the speakers is always worth a try. In my initial setup I had them toed in more, pointing to the listening position. To my ear, that resulted in too much high energy, which tended to confirm the recommendations made in the Martin Logan manual to have the inner 1/3rd of the curvilinear panel pointing to the listening position. Opening up the spacing would be easy to try out.

The transport is also equipped with and AES/EBU output, and seems to be driven along with the coax. I know since I was able to do some A/B testing between the Enkianthus and the Musical Fidelity DACs.

Good! The rear panel photo I was looking at earlier must have been misidentified, but I now see some photos showing the AES/EBU output.

So that would provide you with a means of using the Behringer unit. I can't tell for sure from the photos and writeups I've found if the transport provides an optical output as well, though. If not you would still have to use the DSPeaker in an analog processor/tape loop, since its only digital input is optical.

Swanny, thanks very much for the info about the input impedance of the DSPeaker. I've been considering giving it a try in my system as well, at some point in the next few months, to deal with a room-related suckout I have in the 40 to 50 Hz area. Still a little concerned about the effects on transparency of introducing A/D/A conversions into the main signal path, however, although the very positive comments from Kal, REG at TAS, Roscoeiii here, and others, leave me very tempted.

Regards,
-- Al

Bama, If you're still around....

I just noticed a thread asking about some Perreaux stuff, an Amp, Preamp and the TC (short for tone controls). I put this in my SP10 in the 80's to do just what you are trying to do. Its really transparent and will work well in your pre-amp tape loop. It has 3 tone control, low medium, and high. It also has high and low filters, a defeat switch and a headphone amp. It was intended to be used in-line between amp and pre-amp and works well there. If you are interested let the guy know. I suspect its worth about $150 +/-. Cost about $350 new. Contact the guy if you're interested.

FWIW :-)

FWIW.