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Evil pro-sound gear

Take nothing for granted with those pro-sound active crossovers. The first one I used years ago sounded absolutely hideous when first installed. After weeks of stuffing around, it turns out that one midrange channel was phase reversed. This is quite hard to figure out in a three way system.

The latest adventure concluded yesterday. A few weeks back I borrowed an active crossover from a friend. He hadn't used it before. One midrange channel was 6db louder than the other. This took more time than you'd think to figure out. The speakers were new to me and I kept playing with the positioning because they wouldn't image.

Yesterday after more frustration due to the elusive nature of the good sound I would get occasionally, I realised it would be easy to measure once and for all. I used ARTA demo software and a laptop. Turns out none of the levels match when the controls on the front panel match between left and right AND neither do they track with each other so relative positioning is impossible. If you make any change, you have to measure to get within 0.5db.

On top of that, the crossover frequencies do not match between channels when set the same AND they are both more than 100% off from the front panel reading. I thought I was set at 400Hz, but instead I was at 700Hz on one channel and 900Hz on the other!

After setting it all using the measurements on the laptop, the sound is P0 better. Funny thing is that I thought the sound was acceptable prior to this. These are the dangers of speakers that are new to you and gear that lies to you. You just HAVE TO MEASURE or you're flying blind.


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  • Evil pro-sound gear - jeff mai 03:03:48 02/27/07 (1)
    • Typo fix - jeff mai 03:06:27 02/27/07 (0)


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