When David first played them the source was an Ipod. It sounded OK. Then we hooked up a music server with a custom DAC ala Larry Moore (of UltraFi). Much better sound. Then a tube-buffered CD player with integrated volume control was plugged in and the sound was in full glory.

Have you actually heard Rick's $8K arrays or Danny Ritchie's LS-6 and LS-9 line arrays?

Often on the DIY-oriented forums I see somebody's claim that "my DIY speaker sounds better than a pair of (choose any expensive speaker brand). I've even found myself falling into this trap with some of my budget line arrays, but only until we placed mine side-by-side with speakers that use premium quality drivers and crossover parts. In my experience well designed speakers using top quality parts have always trumped speakers using inexpensive drivers.

One comparison I haven't been able to do is a multi-amped budget array like yours using active crossovers versus a high quality array using a passive crossover. No doubt the active crossover array will outperform the same speaker using a passive crossover, but I doubt it will outperform Rick's $8K arrays or Danny Ritchie's LS-6 and LS-9 arrays. On the other hand, yours might be the exception.