What is Your End Game System?

@kota1 --

How do you "measure" your end game system? Is it by budget, how much it cost? Is it by the luxuriousness of your build and room?

Is it by your components being either state of the art or unobtanium? Is it by the satisfaction you get when you are sitting in your listening chair?

As a way of approaching my setup development and current status, the latter only - the rest follows by necessity from that in whatever form it might take or is allowed to. That is, imposed budget constraints (that most must abide by to varying degrees) in some measure dictates the eventual expenditure, yes, but I have assembled my setup over years with an open mind and more with regard to implementation/sense of context/forest for the trees than a slavish "what’s more expensive is necessarily better"-stance, and with a product "bandwidth" spanning from high-end segment gear to pro ditto and DIY. Part of my gear (DAC/preamp and Belles amp) is remnants in a sense from earlier systems with a different approach that has now branched into a more physically all-out, fully active and subs-augmented system. Some of what I have now could’ve been even more "all-out" if budget had permitted at the time (like 21" beast B&C driver-loaded tapped horns and Vitavox midbass + multicell horns), but the essentials of it would’ve been more or less comparable to what I currently have.

What is your end game system and how do you know when you have reached it?

What comes from hereon (pretty much what’s outlined in parenthesis above, or certainly a variety thereof) in its essential nature will mimic what I have now, which is to (crudely) say a fully active-as-separates approach, dynamically uninhibited/headroom galore, fully or hybrid horn-loaded and therefore high efficiency, prodigious displacement and digital source only. It’s not that I don’t care for an analogue source, on the contrary, but simply that it’s a prioritization with digital only and the efforts invested here, which is also a better suit with my overall design philosophy.

It would be a further refinement of what I have now, if only with certain aspects of the sound, but very much in the same "spirit" or ballpark. Actually knowing one’s heading to get there by already being there in a sense, is a relief; the framework is in place, now awaits the final touches.

@kota1 wrote:

wow, that is an end game. I knew those were theater speakers the second I saw the pic and I have seen pics before where members put them behind a screen, built into a wall. Your setup doesn’t hide them but has them stand up and salute, nice.

Thanks. To my mind there’s something to be said of the "aesthetics" of functionality as a very clear reflection of ’form follows function,’ and not the other way ’round as something that more predominantly caters to interior decoration and (anti-)size demands. Pro cinema speakers are meant to be placed and hidden behind perforated screens, and thus any design considerations as it pertains to their looks are zilch (I guess this can be said of most pro designs). If anything there’s an honesty to their appearance, not least with regard to the design efforts invested towards functionality; what you see is what you get, and yet to many an audiophile this may be misconstrued as sonically crude and unfit for a domestic environment.

I know how it goes with "final" touches as there is always room for something to squeeze a little more.

Indeed. Pragmatically speaking "final touches" can very well be, maybe even mostly so about that endless tinkering within a given setup context that may involve the occasional and local hardware replacement, yet as something that wouldn’t affect the overall approach and path chosen. "Final touches as a refinement work-in-progress within a specific setup context" may be the more appropriate way to go about it.

Do you take measurements?

Yes, near-field measurements have been taken of the horn section on top to assist digital filter adjustments and finding the precise frequencies to place notches and a mild peak suppression (these measurements fairly closely mirrored those found via EV’s own measurements, which initially served as an outset). From hereon the specific gain and Q-values of these minor corrections have been found by ear. The remainder of the driver section, i.e.: the EV bass bin + tapped horn subs, use no PEQ’s within their frequency span, other than of course cut-off frequencies, slope type and gain structure.