Solid-State Preamp/Crossover

Consider a separate pre and crossover. Bryston makes a great analog x-over and great preamps.

That's what I'm doing now and it's non-optimal.

It's almost trivial to build a two-way analog crossover into a line stage. Much better to have both in one component if you do want to actively bi-amp, as I am.

Fosgate made a preamp with a built-in 2 channel x-over. This was back in the early 90's. My friend had one. Maybe you could find one on the used market for about $200. 

The problem that type of IXO you'll want to have high quality parts for the highs. With multi XOs you'll have to provided quality parts for every XO point you want to try. No body dose it because of that reason alone.

I took a stock 2494 Behringer and figured my crossovers. Then with the help of guru or two took it back apart hunted up the values and replaced the stock caps with higher quality caps. LOL  It was suppose to work, it sounded different but not better. I gave it a good 200 hours to break in everything. 

I went back to using the OXO as a tool to provide the XO points and any notch needed. The Mid/High pass was built Point to Point from the OXO information and the best of ALL worlds.

Full DSP with all the whistles and bells for 300 HZ and down, and a very high quality HP passive XO for above 300 HZ and up.  I use  3 and 4 way designs. Have for 35 years or so.. 100 plus pairs of speakers through the years. That is optimal... It took a lot of hours learning that. Not to mention a few quid...

6000.00 is a lot of money.. you need about 300.00 some cables, and then either farm out your XO or learn how to do it yourself.. It's not that difficult.. For a HP only in a two way. You'll make a better one than you will EVER buy, the way you want to do it..

Regards

Some good point expressed above.

We made a preamp with built in two-way crossovers specifically for our speakers. To make it more universal (multiple slopes and points) was not very practical. We designed it with changeable cards to accommodate different filters. We no longer offer it.

I would recommend looking into a high quality preamp with built-in DSP crossover functions. There are several excellent units in your budget.

I assure you that the process of getting your speakers to work correctly will be much less frustrating and much more rewarding using DSP crossovers. We have invested lots of time and resources in both system.

Thanks for the responses.

Rather than offering "all" xover points in an analog circuit, a few between, say, 60-100 Hz would serve the needs of many users, me included, and be practical.

I've used DSP and just never care for it in the long run. There is a cost.

Anyway what I'm doing now, DirecStream DAC into Marchand XM66, does sound excellent. I've wanted to avoid the DAC's internal attenuator but the cost of using it (over a higher-quality analog circuit) is probably minimal.

(But even PS told me it would sound better that way...)