Adding Tone Controls?

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.

I think you guys are misjudging what he means when he says the material sounds like crap. The OP listens to music that's recorded hot with a ton of processing. Yes the DSPeaker will help but it won't fix the problem.IC's and speaker cable won't do jack for his problem, the recordings are simply bad. Which indictates to me that he listens to music he likes, not audiophile crap that's recorded to perfection (boring)with the life stripped out of the music.

How do I know? Because I had the same problem with what I listen to. If he has M/L's that will only make the problem worse. Too many speaker designers/builders seem to have lost their hearing between 2500-5000htz. Most speakers are just plain too hot/emphsized in that range. That's a lot of the reason women can't stand to listen to most speakers. Their just too hot in that area.

Personally it drives me nuts, but there are speakers out their that will help in his pursuit of happy listening, though some are considered out of the normal audiophile approved speakers. Speakers that throw most all of the sound in your face are not helpful in this situation. Sometimes going against conventional thinking of what speaker to use can make it much more tolerable to the OP.

Of course I don't think he's willing to change speakers but those crappy sounding recordings he'll take into consideration a little more in the future when he looks/listens to speakers. Just for kicks take a look at the fr of the Apogee Stages in Stereophile on-line. The way it drops in the rising fr is how I can get around the problem. Some people are also very sensitive to the fr between 2500-5k hertz range. There are other speakers that will help his problem besides the Stages though. So the DSpeaker unit should help out I would think.
Just a thought.