etc6849

Maybe. Been really lucky doing local deals to get rid of stuff. Soldtwo XPR-1's for $2400 week before last without having to post them. Then a doctor stopped by yesterday and bought some stuff, and is thinking on the xpr-1 and an xpr-2 for $2400.

Thanks. XMC-1 sold, shipping it to CA. The XPR's are really the one thing I can't ship easily. I have had two come to my house that were damaged in the past, and I'm not going to take the risk. Too much of a headache having to send the damaged ones back. They definitely need to be sent freight. If you wanted the single XPR-1 and willing to go through the hassle and expense, I might ship it freight as I have no use for it. I'm going to tri-amp my center channel, and it is clearly too big for that

I hear you. Have a few XPR-2's also. But here is my smaller stuff that I'll ship: http://www.ebay.com/sch/etc6849/m.html?_ipg=50&_sop=12&_rdc=1

Come on down. I'll give you an excellent cash only deal. The more you buy, the more percent you get off the total.

ONE XPR-1: $1200 See picture below for XPR-1. Bought this in 2015 before Emotiva started limited transfer of B stock warranties, so I think you should be good on warranty, but call Emotiva to be sure. I know now days B stock warranties DO NOT transfer. Only have one XPR-1 forsale guys. Others have sold, sorry I CANNOT SHIP THE XPR-1 (DON'T ASK EITHER PLEASE), but I do have the box, manual and power cord. You can definitely see it work, no problem. This would make a killer subwoofer amp as it can easily do below 10Hz and 1000's of watts into 2 or 4 ohms! Klipsch Palladium series P-17b bookshelf speakers in Natural finish (3 pairs available, price is for ONE pair): $2200 I'm selling a like new pair of Klipsch P-17b speakers. When these came out these were $4000. I will hook them up and let you check them out. I'd prefer a local cash sale on these too, but if needed, I can put them on up ebay or do a paypal transaction, provided you have good ebay feedback and I send them to a paypal verified address only. I cover the paypal 3% fees. www.klipsch.com/products/palladium-bookshelf-speakers XMC-1, Oppo HA-1, Oppo HA2 and bunches of other audio goodies (that I personally used and work great, I am not a flipper): Search on ebay for seller etc6849 (under ebay advanced search) and checkout the items I am selling and bid fast. These will be shipped UPS and fully insured if you buy them from me on ebay. Package deals available if you act fast before the XMC-1 auction ends on 5/27/2017. Come and get more than one item for a NICE discount, cash only of course on all local pickups! EDIT: Got a good question via PM and need to clarify... You definitely don't need to do ebay to buy the ebay items. Any reasonable/acceptable offer higher than the current bid, and I cancel the auctions at my descretion (provided more than 24 hours are left). I can't give you a price though without location due to shipping costs. Also, you do need feedback and an established account for me to check somewhere (forums, ebay, usaudio, etc...). You would need to have a verified paypal account and talk/text with me on the phone first. I can't afford to lose money, so if you are new here, don't ask for off ebay unless you have excellent feedback on ebay and let me look you up there. If you are international, please don't ask me to ship stuff to you. I would if I had more time and experience with international transactions, but I don't.

Well, somewhat exactly What I am saying is that with Dirac software on my PC and 12 bass traps and other 4" owens corning 703 panels I made and the other items from my post, I CAN take my room out of the equation and get very very close to what the mics were hearing in the concert hall (to the point your hairs will stand up it sounds so real, assuming the recording is not compressed or post processed to the point of being ruined as most are). This is the best you can do. Honestly, how often do you get up and move seats when doing critical listening? It takes the 4 items I outlined in my post. If you are near Columbia, SC I don't mind showing you and I promise you will agree after hearing It is not cheap though. Just tri-amping almost triples the cost of a stereo system. Let alone the calibration mic, Dirac software, room treatments, measurement and filter knowledge needed, etc...

Yes, you are right, most are striving for that "live" experience. But I am sitting in a small room limited by small room acoustical issues (as most here are), and these room issues will be way more dominant especially below 200Hz (versus setting in the concert hall which is much bigger and doesn't have these types of issues). Technology exists now that can correct time domain room related issues with very little latency, so why not use it? If the playback is already a digital on my PC, doing this conversion digitally on my PC makes a lot of sense (versus having to do extra A/D and D/A conversions with something like this: https://www.minidsp.com/products/dirac-series/ddrc-88a ). As you insinuate, the recording captures the concert hall based on where it was mic'd from (usually much closer than you sit), so the information is never going to be as if you were in the audience. It is true for many recordings...

Exactly right. Several things are needed for reproducing life-like dynamic range. I have only once seen any of these applied by a dealer with a showroom. Even in very high-end show rooms I've visited with $200k+ stereo systems, they don't do everything possible to have the best possible dynamic range. 1. A very well treated room (if you can't hear yourself breathe, the noise floor is likely probably too high). This also means that anything else that emits noise needs to be taken out of the listening area. Lowering the noise floor of the room and adding bass traps and thick acoustic insulation should be at the top of the list. Get a calibrated mic and nice measurement rig. Try to perfect impulse/etc response along with waterfall plots as much as possible for your room. My ears seem more sensitive to transients is why I recommend these measurements. I'm not saying that frequency response isn't important, but it is usually the last measurement I look at. 2. Get rid of all sources of distortion. This necessitates active crossovers and minimizing A/D and D/A conversions. To completely eliminate hiss that a pre/pro might be adding my setup sounds best when I feed AES straight in my active crossover. Do all processing in the digital domain and have a single D/A conversion at the end. This also means having top notch digital processing like what a PC can do (using ASIO sound drivers and not anything that goes through window's mixer) or buying well designed top notch pro gear and outputting digital into an active crossover (hopefully one that has FIR filters as other digital crossovers will add unnecessary phase shifts). For the LF/sub crossover, I found that low order Bessel filter crossover sounds the best. Presumably this is because more drivers are moving at the same time (better room coupling) and I crossover well above and within the capabilities of all drivers. My phase response is fairly flat (measured at the MLP) compared to any passive crossover that will have tons of phase shifts. Also, try for a processor/preamp and amps that truly have low distortion measurements for IMD and THD. As a side note, I also think slew rate is important for transient reproduction. Clearly more than just producing a flat response matters. Music has tons of frequencies mixed in and well recorded music has transients and lots of dynamic range. One concerned with fidelity should want to fully recreate it. 3. Pick amps with a very low noise floor (to where sound comes out of nothingness). I thought amp selection was BS to some degree until I actively tri-amped and heard hiss from my larger amps. If one removes all the padding of the mid and high drivers and has a treated room, you can really get a since for which amps have the lowest noise floor. I did put some padding back in upstream of my large amps and it helped, but then I was sacrificing dynamic range of the speaker processor. Unfortunately, the only amps I tried that completely eliminate hiss for me are the Benchmark AHB2 amps and they are expensive even used. All I can say is I hear guitarists breathing and other things that were buried in the noise floor before and feel the amps were worth it. It would be great to tryout two of the Pass Labs First-watt amps, but since they are even more expensive than my used AHB2 amps I will stop why I am in the hole/dog house. 4. Speakers that can support ~120dB at the listening position and amps that can support this without clipping. If you have headroom and play at a lower level, you are going to hear less distortion at an average level of 60-80dB playback versus speakers with lots of distortion at 120dB. 5. This should probably be number 2, but always pick the best mastering of the content you are playing. Best mastering means not buying some recent remaster that squashes all the dynamics. http://dr.loudness-war.info/

I got a decent deal on a b-stock RME HDSPe AES card and with the advent of 4k UHD bluray playback on my PC, I want to eliminate my Emotiva XMC-1 AV processor. I will use my PC for all decoding and room correction (Dirac Live) and supplement it with another Xilica XD4080 to handle additional bass management. This means no standalone preamp or home theater processor. Going to buy another Xilica XD4080 (#2) and send AES outputs for 7.1 to two Xilica processors where one XD4080 #1's active crossover is used for: driving mono subs, FL and FR (tri amp outputs) and center amp, and the other XD4080 #2 used for driving my rear speakers and side speakers (eventually I'll fully tri-amp or quasi bi-amp my rear speakers and add side speakers). My question is what is the best option for handling bass? Option A: I could use the TotalMix Fx software console to sum all 8 channels and send it out via AES and let the Xilica do a LPF and time delays for this mono signal and send it out to the subs. The problem with doing this is that if there was LFE content above the cutoff frequency (say 90Hz) it would be lost, although I could send it out FL and FR using XD4080 #1. Option B: FL, FR and C would get crossed to sub out internally by XD4080 #1, LFE would also be sent to sub's analog out (AES signals from PC: FL & FR, C & LFE so two XLR AES cables). Additionally, I'd send AES out from XD4080 #2 into XD4080 #1; this signal from XD4080 #2 would contain low frequencies for rear and side speakers and be summed in XD4080 #1. This wastes half an input pair (due to the way the Xilica assigns AES I/O), and I am also uncertain about latency here, although since I plan to use two of the same speaker processors, latency differences would likely not matter (although the sub signal fed out #2's AES out would be slightly delayed as it went through a Xilica digital input already). http://xilica.com/products/xd/ https://www.rme-audio.de/en/products/hdspe_aes.php Small drawback to the above: 1. I would need to find a foobar2000 plugin that would down sample anything above 96kHz for input into the Xilica's. 2. No Atmos/DTS-X decoder right now for consumer software playback (although this could eventually change). Lots of pluses: 1. RME uses 42 bit processing and seems like it would be a superior volume control to what any preamp can offer (including an analog pre driving the XD4080's analog input). 2. PC does all decoding, which makes things future proof. 3. Lower noise floor as the XMC-1 is doing unnecessary A/D and D/A conversions for speakers that are triamped. 4. 40 bit processing with DSP in the Xilicas, 42 bit processing with DSP in RME card and 32 bit room correction done through software using a CPU (not a DSP). All are superior to what any processor under $15k can do. 5. Much more versatility, FIR filtering for LF/MF and MF/HF if I later triamp more speakers. 6. Much better sub alignment as I can pick the order and filter type for how each speaker is crossed to subs. 7. No worry of upgrading processor when HDMI or HDCP changes in the future. 8. Avoids ADC of the Xilica channel inputs (right now when AV processor feeds these there is unnecessary D/A and A/D conversion taking place).

So this can do 3400 taps @ 96 kHz? Also, how is the noise floor on the analog outputs? I hear no hiss at my listening position about 8 feet away. However, I had to add some Benchmark AHB2 amps to get my noise floor to be inaudible, and this wasn't cheap. Looks like a great option for a killer 4 way crossover. So there are minidsp plugins that allow you do to 2x8 active crossover with this unit (FIR and IIR)? In the past I looked and only noticed IIR crossover plugins. This newer unit looks interesting. I don't own any miniDSP products, but would consider ordering this if I ever actively crossover my center or rear speakers.

I'd pay a little more up front and go with the Xilica XD4080. Thinking mine was $1600 new (really was pushing things at the time, but well worth it). The XD4080 lets me also cross to my subs, and also has FIR filters for everything except sub-LF. It also lets me use the AES/EBU inputs to drive everything, so I just added this to my PC: http://www.amazon.com/GUSTARD-U12-384KHz-Digital-Interface/dp/B00PU3R6KY/ The next one on my list to try was the miniDSP 4x10 HD as I was looking for 3-way + subs. I don't have this unit, but it is what I would recommend for future proofing as you could do your center later or add subs (plus it's less than $500). It seems to have a digital input too, but lacks FIR filtering (only really expensive digital xo's have this with the Xilica being the cheapest).

5.1 active xo setup? After using the previous USB to AES converter for a few weeks now with the XD4080 I am sold on the idea. I think my dream system would be to use a multichannel PCI-e card on my PC with several AES outputs with the goal of adding another XD4080 when a cheap one comes up. Seems there are a lot of PCI-e cards to choose from like this one: http://www.lynxstudio.com/product_detail.asp?i=16 Does anyone know if these multichannel AES cards show up in windows as multiple audio devices or as a single multichannel digital I/O device? If they show up as a single audio device under device manager, I'd eventually like to ditch my home theater processor too and do 5.1 the way I am doing stereo. Home theater processors aren't flexible and get outdated too quickly (and honestly their performance can't match Dirac on a PC anyways). Even KODI's digital volume control sounds excellent when using WASPI.

The 32 bit volume control is foobar2000's, so it's done in software. I wish there was a 5.1 solution that worked like this, but then I'd be tempted to tri-amp my other 3 channels, and the setup is already way too expensive (but it does perform and sound much more expensive). Basically, there is a Music and a Watch TV button on my remote control. I use input channels 3 and 4 on the Xilica XD4080 for my Emotiva XMC-1 when I want multi-channel, and input channels 1 and 2 for stereo only are tied to the AES digital input channel 1 in the Xilica's setup menu. I hooked a serial cable up to the Xilica, and have a script on my home automation (HA) server that mutes channels 1 and 2 and unmutes 3 and 4 when I want to watch tv/movies. Had to use a GC100-06 to turn my front amps on and off too as part of the macro: https://www.globalcache.com/products/gc-100/models1/ Part of the macro also starts and controls two windows programs for music or movies: Foobar2000 (music) and KODI (TV and movies). I use MCE controller to start these programs, ensure they are in the foreground, etc: https://mcec.codeplex.com/ MCE controller receives commands from my HA server over a TCP socket connection and is 100% customize-able. My signal chain for stereo: Foobar2000 (controls volume)->Dirac via ASIO4ALL driver->Dirac then uses the Xmos Xcore ASIO driver->outputs USB->XD4080 AES input 1->XD4080 output to subs and amps. One could use the Xilica's input volume control to raise/lower volume.

One feature I find myself really liking is the AES input on the Xilica XD4080 (thinking it is made overseas though, but sounds fantastic). Added one of these XMOS digital interfaces to my PC for $169 and it sounds fantastic too: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00PU4IXA0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It seems worth while to ditch a preamp altogether if you are adding a digital XO (with digital input) and use a PC with software like Foobar2000 with a well implemented 32 bit volume control (and ASIO soundcard drivers if using Windows) and the interface I linked to. Seriously, bypass the Windows audio stack (or use Linux), ran across these measurements the other day: http://archimago.blogspot.com/2015/11/measurements-windows-10-audio-stack.html

Some of this improvement is from re-running Dirac with a new sofa in the room... but:

@Chris A REW file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1J0a4OV_WGLRGRMa3lYX2sxdWM Some graphs: : You weren't kidding about the improvement possible for imaging. The impulse differences are shown below. 10-15dB improvement in many previous spikes: And THD is lower also:

Thanks. Wait until you see the post Dirac result ;). Could not have got it without your Xilica recommendation and other advice in this thread which led to selecting a somewhat affordable active xo that did FIR filters. I would think there would be a Linux or virtual soundcard solution that can use HDMI out as an active 8 channel xo. I saw one for Windows, but forgot the name. As you know, regardless I don't think you can setup a PC solution for multi-channel. Perhaps you could do 5.1 and use the remaining 2 PCM channels over HDMI for active bi-amping the fronts along with mixing 80hz and below and passing it to the sub channel? If this is all done as a virtual sound card, you would just use KODI for playback of all movies/music/TV on the virtual soundcard, and any processor with HDMI in and analog preouts should work (you'd just lable channels 7 and 8 as left and right WF out, etc...). I was going to attempt this, but it will not work for tri-amped front left and right and 5.1 content as HDMI can only do 8 PCM channels. I also don't know if the windows software I found is this versatile...

Chris, Thanks for answering this non practical question of mine. I had edited my original post as I quickly realized my sub would need to output frequencies well above 1000Hz to handle a 6db/octave crossover (which from my research was desirable for minimum phase)! My subs aren't designed to do this so I didn't attempt it. I may give it a try still, but the 2nd order bessel works very well for low frequencies. The Palladium woofers would handle the first order slope well as I picked 110Hz to allow for a gradual high pass slope. However I agree that modulation distortion would have to be worse off. This Rane note is what led me to going with a second order bessel which kept group delay very low: http://www.rane.com/note147.html "Note that for the second-order phase-match design, low-pass and high-pass group delays are exactly the same." This has resulted in EGD that is very well matched all the way down to 20Hz. I will post the REW file that has Dirac and non-Dirac comparisons of using high order BW filters versus these new active xo settings. I would agree with your earlier post that eliminating phase shifts gives better imaging. For low frequencies, I think I can hear and feel a difference, but have no way to do proper testing of this. I can see that the sides of my waterfall plots pre-dirac have improved slightly using a 2nd order filter versus an 8th order BW. Also, EGD improved drastically from before.

Ok, I decided to redo my active crossover settings, but wanted to keep phase shift from the crossover used to a minimum so I selected 12dB/octave bessels for woofer and sub. I also had to invert the sub to get the phase tracking to match between the subs and woofers around the crossover point (110Hz). Phase looks pretty decent (but I'm not a pro), and the bass is the best it's been; using a shallow slope for the subs and low frequency drivers gives even better bass (was very good before, but has a tad more impact now). Too late to run Dirac tonight, but I'll post an REW file in the next week or so comparing the presets on the XD4080.

@Chris A I was thinking last week about your goal of having no phase wraps. I was able to put a large well padded La-Z-Boy Pembroke love seat along my back wall, and it almost fixed the phase wrap I had at 238Hz! Excess group delay is very smooth at this frequency now, but there is still the amplitude dip. I ordered two ottomans and a chair to match the love seat (at a very good price saving about $800 versus my local la-z-boy dealer). I believe these last few pieces of furniture will fix the room related phase shifts. https://www.wayfair.com/La-Z-Boy-Pembroke-Premier-Stationary-Club-Chair-LZ1408.html and https://www.wayfair.com/La-Z-Boy-Pembroke-Premier-Ottoman-LZ1409.html Then with the Xilica XD, I am thinking about doing FIR crossovers at an acceptable slope for: 500Hz, 3.8kHz. For the 80Hz crossover for the subs I am planning to move up to 110Hz and use a first order LR filter (to eliminate most of the phase shift from the crossovers). Hopefully doing this would eliminate most of the phase wrapping in the previous REW file I posted for my quad amped setup. I guess an alternative would be LR 2nd order and inverting the sub polarity or doing the Harsch XO for sub/woofers? I am thinking the shallower slope for the first order linkwitz-riley will mean both my subs and woofers will be working at the same time for the most part, so decay times below 110Hz would have to improve due to better room coupling (more drivers as always led to better decay times for me provided they are time aligned). IMD would be worse off with a shallow sloped crossover, but I doubt this will be noticeable with tri-amped mains I haven't seen this line of reasoning written anywhere, but it would seem it will give much better in room performance versus the 48dB/octave BW crossover I have now at 80Hz. Very interested to see if anyone has used this approach to improve decay times (and at the same time eliminate phase shifts that higher order crossovers will cause). I don't think most speakers by themselves have an in room -3dB point close to 20Hz, so probably not recommended for everyone... Will be a while before my oversized chair and ottomans come. I'll post the results here next month, but wanted to get your thoughts on using the first order filter for the sub/LF transition. To ensure time alignment, I would do a band limited sweep in REW and match up the resulting impulse plots for both the woofers and subs (maybe a 40-140 Hz sweep). I'm thinking I would temporarily change the Xilica's crossover setting to do this measurement so both woofers and subs would give the same amplitude for the 40-140Hz band. After I get the proper delay, I would time align the woofers and subs in the Xilica and put the crossover settings back where they should be. I would then sweep drivers individually and do a overlay plot of the phase, and might alter timing in .1ms increments in REW until there is a very smooth phase in the crossover region. Any thoughts on this approach?

I wish the Xilica was that flexible. I can only tell it how many taps to use and the xo frequency. Taps are limited to 1500 (for all channels combined); this means the FIR xo's are not very useful for lower frequencies like MF-LF.

Very neat. Thanks! So, getting phase slope to match closely seems to have resulted in a very audible improvement to me. Strings, voices, string brushes sound very real now. Some of this could be due to the Benchmark AHB2 amps I added, in addition to better phase tracking. A harsch crossover configuration sounds like it would flatten the slope of my phase response (a lot less overall phase shift due to the crossovers). What audible improvement would be expected? I know many say we cannot hear differences in phase, but I know my bass sounds far more accurate when the phase slope is linear/consistent and without bumps for the subs/LF crossover. I'm thinking this could be combined with an FIR xo for the MF/TW?

@Khornukopia There are some directions for bi-amping and using REW that I found in one of user jtalden's posts at: http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/rew-forum/72727-new-function-required-implementation-low-pass-high-pass-filters-perfectly-simulate-response-curve-eqs-7.html#post776346 Definitely worth checking out the REW technical thread at home theater shack. Also, all of ChrisA's and DrWho's posts here are obviously very very helpful! Jtalden was able to re-time things things to get my phase response to look even better! Here is a comparison for the left speaker (red is Dirac, green is without). You can see how the slopes match up very well. His process changes a little based on the situation, but it is well documented if you read his posts on home theater shack. He recommends measuring the drivers at the MLP, which worked out well for me (but my room is well treated). If you have dual subs, I would crossover higher than 70 Hz (over a 100Hz?) to make it easier to match sub and front speaker phase tracking. You could also place the dual subs ideally and hopefully avoid the 70 Hz room issue altogether if possible. There is clearly an art to getting a nice phase response (knowing when to invert polarity, when to know when it is optimized for your room, etc....), so hopefully someone with more experience than me helps you!

Thanks. Can't believe the noise floor on these amps. Heard a guitarist breathing for the first time.