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Holy Crap What have I done?

Ya know that scene in "Aladdin" where Abu the monkey touches the huge ruby of the forbidden treasure and everything goes to hell around them? Well, *that's* kinda what happened to me tonight.

I finally found a Marchand XM9 crossover at the right price from an honest seller, and it arrived tonight. I put it in line between my preamp and amp, and it did both what I wanted it to do and what I didn't want it to do: it improved the "slam" of the bottom end, but sucked all the air out of the music and my system went from a pretty high degree of "you are there" factor to realizing you're listening to music on a good stereo.

Admittedly, I haven't played with the crossover controls yet, but I'll be quite surprised if they can "bring the life back" to my system.

Any thoughts on how to get my system to give me that "I'm in the room with the musicians" feeling again with the crossover still in line? Maybe I need to go to an XM44, or some other brand of crossover?

I should mention I tried the crossover because my nOrh mini 9.0's only go down to about 65Hz -3dB with a really quick downturn to -10dB (around 55Hz at -10dB, if I remember my measurements correctly.) I was happy with my ACI Titan crossoved over at 85Hz, but had read that using a crossover to cut the lowest octave from the monitors would improve the midrange and imaging. In this case, it didn't, interstingly.

I'd sure appreciate whatever thoughts you all have on where to go next.

Howard
aggielaw

Showing 3 responses by eldartford

eldartford
4,262 posts
 
What is the crossover frequency? I think the Marchand XM9 uses a plug in module.

Marchand X/O are fine sounding units, so you must have some setup thing wrong.
eldartford
4,262 posts
 
Jafox...I beg to differ with you about running main speakers full range and letting their natural bass rolloff occur.
Of course the obvious reason not to do this is to keep the LF signal out of the main power amp. But it's good to keep the LF out of the speaker as well. Although the acoustic output may roll off, the woofer will still be trying, ineffectually, to reproduce those subwoofer frequencies. It doesn't help the upper bass and midrange to have the cone floping around unnecessarily.
eldartford
4,262 posts
 
The capacitor input to the main amp is just a line level passive crossover. (Marchand sells those too). With only 6 dB (gradual) roll off it will not provide solid bass in the range above the 65 Hz that you propose.

I would suggest that people try every alternative and pick what they like. That's what I have done, and I ended up with 24dB/oct, HI and LO, with the X/O frequency easily adjustable to suit the music being played.
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