Behringer Crossover for Maggies vs Bryston

Cool. What is funny is that a couple of people have contacted me directly on this, and I may wait a year and then get a floor model XVR-1 - the opposite of where I was heading with this thread. Some say that once you go active, the active crossover itself matters more than the quality of the amps, sort of sounds backwards, but my making the amps around 4X more powerful, can make more sense. But the XVR-1 is a 'sciene project', I may just pay somoene to try and do it over a weekend. Depending on what month it is, I like science projects, but right now I have so many things going on in life I just want this part to work without much time input. One criticism of active crossovers, even the good ones, is that they become 'infinite science projects', which I'm not looking for. But don't properly (or even just within 5-10%) I do believe they totally change what Maggies are capable of.

LiketoListen - yeah, the entry fee is so low, it seems almost worth trying as an experiment. Let me know how your project goes. I am a fan of Hero ICs as a not super-exotic but extremely dependable and have several balanced in my system here and there. I think if you went with Hero balanced you could rule out ICs as a source of any problems. Also - I've heard that going active you almost have to go balanced as otherwise you will get hum, but if you can go with Hero RCA's you'll save a ton of money and still know the ICs are holding anything back. But, yeah, let us know what you find.

Just to share the info - some have told me directly that the crossover is more important than the quality of the amps if you change from passive to active crossover - it changes the whole thing about what is going on so significantly that the amps become less important. Interesting...

I have MG3A speakers; I am using 2 Bryston 10B sub crossovers and VMPS larger subwoofers (triamplified system). Biamping the MG3A speakers is the single biggest improvement I have made in more than 15 years of owning the Magnepans. The Bryston crossovers sound very good, quite transparent. I have only used the factory-recommended Magnepan crossover settings from the MG3A manual. Some advantages I could see with a digital crossover are adding delays for speaker phasing and parametric equalization for the subwoofer. If you just want to biamp your Magnepans, a single Bryston will do the job. Make sure you understand the different frequencies available on the 10B vs 10B sub models. Having an amp for the bass panels frees up the power they need and keeps the high-frequency clipping products out of the tweeters where you could hear them. Highly recommended - you can't go wrong with the Bryston! I have used a bunch of power amps over the years and could still hear differences, but they are after the Brystons in the signal chain so that does not surprise me. The midrange/tweeter amp is the more critical; the bass amps matter less when biamping.

I was just surfing through Behringer-related posts on Audiogon this A.M. and noticed your Aug. '09 post regarding Behringer crossovers. I have Maggies too, but use the Behringer DCX-2496 x-over. I am very satisfied with this crossover and find it to be extremely flexible: it offers Linkwitz-Wiley, Butterworth, and Bessel crossovers @ 6, 12, 18, 24, and 48 dB/octave, sampling rates from 32 to 96 kHz, and a sampling depth of 24 bits. I hve had absolutely no problems with this crossover and highly reccomend it. While I suspect that the x-overs used by Magnepan are a better audiophile choice, the Behringer offers the audiophile an excellent learning experience, especially since it offers (with it's extra calibrated mic) the opportunity to phase-correct your planars. The improvement in imaging is exceptional, and measurement of phase-coherency is something that analogue equipment cannot offer.
I was wondering what equipment conclusions you had come to to date...