Upgrading Verity Audio Parsifal Encores towards Anniversary status

Almost a year ago I decided to shed my Pass Aleph 2 thirsty (300w/ch idle heat; 1hr+ warmup time) monos and demo the baby Orchard Audio Starkrimsons. That the latter equalled the harmonic richness AND soundstage depth of my golden Alephs was quite nice, so I made the transition to tiny GaN monos.

Having read that SOTA amps and speakers sometimes use solid silver cabling led me to making my own Ag cables that hot-wired to the now-nearby (10") amps. The top octave became more transparent, so I made similar jumpers for the top. The old Encores woke up!

Seeing that the recent 25th Anniversaries were taller, sitting on their mysterious $4k plinths, now using alum separation plates, resulted in a series of calls to Julien P at Verity to investigate what was new.  Their MAAS plinths are indeed very high tech, using expanded metal alloy foam bricks to absorb all large vibrations, and actually cost them more than $2k in materials! We agreed that nice dense DIY butcherblock was a cost-effective compromise. Sorbo decouplers replaced pointy spikes and super-thin blutac at Verity also. I decided to use 4 IsoAcoustics "76" feet, sitting centered in their spiked cups (on carpeting), with eight 1/4" sorbo separating the plinth from both the speaker and the Iso decouplers. The bass tightened up a bit, as the bass module wasn't exciting the floorboards anymore; thankfully NO loss in slam.

I next found a midwest supplier of those solid 1" aluminum planks, and bought a pair for cheap. Their sidecuts were clean enough to not require further finishing, so I lightly sanded them and sparesly spray-painted to create a nice matte industrial look, getting these alum planks to match the stain I used on the butcherblock plinths quite nicely.

My Encores now sit +2.5" taller, which better matched my newer taller listening chair anyway. Sit-down/stand-up crossover deltas were minimized nicely, indicating that the original Parsifals maybe should've been taller anyway!

With the Encore Verity used a superb customized Scanspeak 28mm silk tweet, replacing it with a smaller, more extended one later. So I always wondered if the compromise had to do with less life in the top octave, sometimes lending their rep to include comments re excess smoothness or lack of top-octave detail. Yet I NEVER felt that way. Treble harshness disappeared when I went away from my somewhat-etched bimetallic Nordost SPM to my ArgentPur solid-Ag cables (not meant to advertise!), so I 'm really happy with the outcome. With Cu cables I might understand why some feel the Parsifals are a bit too smooth or opaque up top.

But knowing that the Parsifals' superb 5" Art Audio mid is crossed at a lofty 5.5kHz DOES mean it gets beamy before crossing. That really helps tame first reflections, but results in a dull ROOM response. I'm now toying with the idea of carefully introducing some top-octave EQ (Lokius?) to spit in the bucket of my age-related top octave droop, or even play with off-axis super tweeters up or rear-firing and crossed as high as possible to NEVER result in comb-filtering the lovely OE 28mm SS tweeters. A little more air up there off axis would perhaps be more than just a silly experiment?

Before I ask if it's easy to replace this tweeter with a more extended "Ovation" one without major surgery, I wonder if others have experimented with analog EQ or added super tweeters to retrieve a bit of air up there? Certainly don't want to ruin a great system, but my recent audiogram suggests that this aging fart's classic "top octave droop" needs some serious aural Viagra! Aperion STs seemed attractive until I read how front-firing additiuons almost NEVER get away without serious comb-filtering degradations. Yikes! Yet REAR or TOP-firing ST orientations might be ok?

Note that an Electro EMC-1UP feeds balanced (4v) through an Aleph P (probably passively), to the Starkrimsons. All cabling is my solid pure Ag designs, which are extremely transparent, detailed, coherent, but with NO "silver glare" nor artifact. (Hence I started ArgentPur.audio as a final swansong after retirement. There: blatant shoutout!)

To answer queries I've seen here as well:

The Parsifal Encores use a Dynaudio 8" FOUR ohm woofer, so indeed require more juice than perhaps assumed. I have these woofers front-firing, which because my nearfield 8' triangle sits 6' from the front wall, was required; rear-firing was too bass-light originally. (That the Anniversary Parsifal is fixed rear-firing I think is a tragic mistake!) Unlike most 3-ways, the Parsifals cohere in the nearfield extremely well, partially because of the so-wide 150/5.5k crossover points. That beaminess of the mid actually makes room placement easier, despite the overall room power response is dull due to off-axis radiation droop.

Anybody out there play with EQ or super tweeters with the Parsifal (Encores)?

I suppose that once I set up my Blusound Node3 through Orchard Audio's DAC and restart streaming I can look into DSP Eq wherein phase can be controlled, but I'm not there yet, so something like a Lokius may be a decent cheap experiment to spit in the bucket before getting lost in a super tweeter swamp.

Thanks for any thoughts and ideas.

PS. I met the head tech of Electrocompaniet at a soiree at the NY Audio Show in September, learning that their EMC-1 UP was in a 6th edition, but still using the same Cirrus-based DAC and Class A discrete output stage as 20 years ago because it still sounds better than any they've tried! That's gratifying....

I also assume that the Aleph P pre, especially in balanced mode running passively, has reference quality transparency. Any mods therein?

I've been happy enough with the 150w/4/ch baby Starkrimsons, but met their tech, who's building for me a pair of 350w/ch ULTRA Stark monos next month Will they lend even more oompth to those Dynaudio 4ohm woofs? Maybe. Regardless, I'll probably sell off the baby Stark monos...either with 4-way binding posts remounted, or with 14AWG solid Ag 12" "jumpers" tossed in gratis.