Excellent advice. I absolutely agree with you that I may get eventually get back to playing vinyl. I have several hundred albums in storage at the moment. Moreover, I don't see what I am doing as an end game. More like a beginning. It is good to know that my speakers are not the limiting factor (even with their age) and can be improved a lot by playing with components of the system. I want to put my initial system together based on the collective ear of those who have similar systems to cobble together something that is adequate within my budget. I will play around with speaker placement and room treatments to try to get that right. Once I put my kids through college, I will be able to direct some funds towards a much improved system.
I will likely look into Dacs like the Ayre that have a volume control. I'm still wrestling with how to crossover to the B-1S. One suggestion was to crossover at the lowest octave (40hz). I could use an analog crossover to achieve this but would wonder if this would be the limiting factor coloring the sound (e.g. defeating the purpose of using a Dac like the Ayre). I could similarly crossover in the digital domain but then would require two Dacs. Dr West at Soundlab told me that several people he knows runs them without crossovers with good results. Some type of parametric eq might have to be used. He also told me to pay attention to phase in using any type of crossover. One other alternative proposed by Dr. West was to disconnect the bass transformer in the A-1s. He said the B-1s would integrate well in that scenario because it goes up to 350Hz. My own thoughts is that I would want to keep the bass directional (coming from the A-1s). I don't know at what frequency bass becomes non-directional.
I will likely look into Dacs like the Ayre that have a volume control. I'm still wrestling with how to crossover to the B-1S. One suggestion was to crossover at the lowest octave (40hz). I could use an analog crossover to achieve this but would wonder if this would be the limiting factor coloring the sound (e.g. defeating the purpose of using a Dac like the Ayre). I could similarly crossover in the digital domain but then would require two Dacs. Dr West at Soundlab told me that several people he knows runs them without crossovers with good results. Some type of parametric eq might have to be used. He also told me to pay attention to phase in using any type of crossover. One other alternative proposed by Dr. West was to disconnect the bass transformer in the A-1s. He said the B-1s would integrate well in that scenario because it goes up to 350Hz. My own thoughts is that I would want to keep the bass directional (coming from the A-1s). I don't know at what frequency bass becomes non-directional.