So you are actually saying that while you personally have a problem, no one else who listens does?

Marlboro

I don't know how other people's line arrays are set up but I can handle this by adjustment of the system. I have a pre-amp which feeds the analog electronic crossover. The crossover feeds the three ranges to three separate power amps. The tweeter and the bass power amps have volume controls on them.

This allows me to adjust the intensity of the treble above 2500hz, and the bass below 165hz. When I have a recor4ding with too much sibilance then I turn the tweeter amp down a bit. When I have a recording with too much or too little bass, I adjust that too. Often rock benefits by increasing the bass end a bit, and classical by reducing it.

This is sort of like equalization, but without the same phase issues, I think.

Can others not do this? I made sure that the power amps I purchased had separate volume controls. It also meant that I didn't need to push to less expensive op amps of the Rane crossover too hard, and let the much more quality in the power amps do the job. If you can't find power amps with volume controls, you can always buy a control amp and use that instead. In fact, my tweeters are run out of a 60 w/ch receiver.

Marlboro

What exactly is critical listening? I just wanna hear great music as exact as I can afford, and after that I just buy CD's.

Before I stopped posting on the PE forum I asked: "If you could design and build a system that got 95% perfect, but it would cost an additional $2000 and 100 hours of work to make 96%, would you stop and just listen to the music, or would you put all your time into making it 96%? And struggle to keep shaving off smaller and smaller percentages?"

Almost 80% of the people there said they'd go for 96%. And when I asked what they listened to most people described rock groups.

That's when I knew I was in the wrong place. These people weren't interested in listening to music, they we're just compulsive about building bigger and bigger woofers and better and better and better speaker systems, no matter how much more time and energy it cost them from actual listening.

Which are you?

Marlboro

And actually, rather than honing a speaker system to be better each time, they mostly just build a different one than they build from before. One time its a tiny little one, the next time a MTM, then a mini array, than a TL. Not just goes on.

Not me. I built the best I knew how from lots of research, and the money I had available. I'll only upgrade if I can find some change that will show a dramatic, not an incremental, increase in sound quality.

Marlboro