Is my amp the problem?


I recently decided to bi-amp my speakers so I purchased a crown xls 1002. (225w 8 ohm). I am driving a 10 woofer. It sounds horrible. I can't seem to get it to put out much power despite its rating even when I make all the right adjustments. Its a class D amp. Is that my problem? It just doesn't seem to have any Ba**s. Lol. Advice is appreciated.
jimbones
So can we assume you have bypassed the internal crossovers and replicated them in miniDSP?

That's usually the easiest way to go. Test 1 driver with the passive crossover. Adjust miniDSP until your active filter looks the same. Repeat with next. Make sure your sensitivity matches before and after.

Best,


Erik

@almarg - You are totally correct.  I didn't even think about the miniDSP.  In addition to the input impedance issue, all the miniDSP devices will convert the analog input to digital before doing the crossover processing - then converting back to analog.  These conversion steps as well as the very poor power supply section of the miniDSP will just kill any sound quality benefit you would be getting from the Modwright preamp or audio source.  You would do better to look for an analog-only crossover.  There are a couple of Bryston 10B crossovers for sale on Audiogon.  They have input impedance of 15k ohms, much better than miniDSP.  Also, completely analog and much superior power supply.

That being said, I did think of one more thing.  You should consider any built-in passive crossover inside your speaker.  Are you using a manufactured speaker?  Or something you built yourself (DIY).  The internal crossovers of the speaker will conflict with any active crossover. While you could potentially set the active crossover above/below the internal crossover points, you are just wasting a step.  If you do have internal crossovers in your speakers, you are just better off using a Y-splitter cable to go to two separate amps and take the active crossover out of the system completely.  On a 2-way speaker, you could potentially just bypass any crossover wiring internally and wire directly to the speakers.  If it is a 3-way (or higher), this becomes more complicated because you'll need to have some sort of internal speaker crossover to separate between mid/tweeter.  The internal crossover will have this, but it will also have a high-pass section to rolloff the woofer frequencies.

If you can't control this and it's a manufactured speaker, an idea would be to connect the Modwright amp to the mid/high binding posts and not use an active crossover for this at all.  For the woofer, you could use an active crossover to the Crown amp, but then wire the crown amp directly to the woofer (do not use the internal woofer crossover).  All this will require some DIY work on the speaker to accomplish.

Let me know if I haven't explained these ideas correctly.

Aux,

Um, no.  I meant, the miniDSP can be miscalibrated for the speaker. They sound good enough. What you need are measurements.

Erik
Erik, I have no experience with miniDSP products. But for example if the OP is using the 2x4 model or the 2x4HD model I would be skeptical that a product incorporating two channels of A/D conversion, four channels of D/A conversion, sophisticated digital signal processing, as well as USB and Toslink digital audio interfaces in the case of the 2x4HD, while selling for list prices of $105 and $205 respectively, would not significantly compromise the sonics of Modwright electronics. So I don’t find Auxinput’s comments about it to be surprising.

But yes, measurements would most likely be necessary to properly match the mid/high and low frequency gains and sensitivities.

Best regards,
-- Al
Regarding A/D, DSP and D/A.  I have done comparisons on a high-end device.  The Bryston SP3 has very high end power supply, audio stages, and A/D, DSP and D/A.  Even on this device, when comparing audio using Bryston complete pass-through (just going through it's discrete Class A audio stages) and the Bryston DSP (using A/D, DSP, and then D/A).  When using the A/D - DSP - D/A, the sound became much brighter and I did lose some midbass/midrange body - probably lost detail in areas as well.  I suspect it will be far worse with a product like miniDSP.