Could you give us a little more info on exactly how you will use the outboard crossover with your Apogees? And how will you amp them?
I frankly find it a little strange in theory that you should report hearing an improvement based on the way you have tested this so far, just using the digital crossover to direct the signal between your full-range speakers and the subwoofer. I thought the whole point of REL subs was to leave the mains running full-range and send the same power amp signal to the sub for best integration. By hooking the sub up in bypass mode, it seems all you have done is substitute the digital crossover for the analog one that REL prefers you not use anyway. The conventional wisdom on why this would improve the sound of the M-L's is freeing them from having to reproduce the low bass, but how did you set the controls to blend the two, and do your results invalidate REL's concept in your mind (at least with the CLS's)? In any case, I don't think anything you may have heard in this preliminary experiment could be counted as a blow in favor of digital crossovers per se, since your speakers are a crossoverless design. I also kind of doubt (as you suggest) that the digital source's higher dither/bit depth setting could have caused the amount of improvement you heard unless something was actually going wrong with the interface at the lower setting.
Anyway, I find this sort of thing very interesting, and do consider it to be one the waves of the future, but as one could have predicted, it seems as if not many A'goners are interested in discussing something that may so upset the analog apple cart (and I note this as an analog guy myself, who won't be buying any high-rez digital for quite some time I feel). But then again, any way you do it, multi-amping with an external crossover is always going to be a minority approach. Best of luck with your project!
I frankly find it a little strange in theory that you should report hearing an improvement based on the way you have tested this so far, just using the digital crossover to direct the signal between your full-range speakers and the subwoofer. I thought the whole point of REL subs was to leave the mains running full-range and send the same power amp signal to the sub for best integration. By hooking the sub up in bypass mode, it seems all you have done is substitute the digital crossover for the analog one that REL prefers you not use anyway. The conventional wisdom on why this would improve the sound of the M-L's is freeing them from having to reproduce the low bass, but how did you set the controls to blend the two, and do your results invalidate REL's concept in your mind (at least with the CLS's)? In any case, I don't think anything you may have heard in this preliminary experiment could be counted as a blow in favor of digital crossovers per se, since your speakers are a crossoverless design. I also kind of doubt (as you suggest) that the digital source's higher dither/bit depth setting could have caused the amount of improvement you heard unless something was actually going wrong with the interface at the lower setting.
Anyway, I find this sort of thing very interesting, and do consider it to be one the waves of the future, but as one could have predicted, it seems as if not many A'goners are interested in discussing something that may so upset the analog apple cart (and I note this as an analog guy myself, who won't be buying any high-rez digital for quite some time I feel). But then again, any way you do it, multi-amping with an external crossover is always going to be a minority approach. Best of luck with your project!