Keith aka Amfibius System

[Amfibius]

Hi all, by way of introduction I thought I would post a few things about my system. The whole system has been evolved around my speakers, a pair of Acapella High Violon 2001's. This is what the system looks like now:







And the current list of electronics:

Source
- Playback Designs MPS-5
- Micro-Seiki BL-99V, Micro-Seiki MA-505 Mk.2, Lyra Dorian, RCM Sensor Prelude

Amplification
- Cary SLP-05 preamp
- Cary CAD-211AE power amp
- SGR EL30S power amp
- Marchand XM44 active crossover

Speakers
- Acapella High Violon 2001
- JL Audio F110 subwoofers x2

The journey with the system has been rather long and involved. When I bought the speakers in 2007, I identified the bass as being a problem. It was slow, muddy, and sounded wrong compared to the rest of the system. On the other hand, the midrange and top end were exceptional - clear, precise, full of timbre, and incredibly dynamic. At the time, I thought that it would be relatively easy to fix the bass.

So out went my CAD-805AE 50W SET, and in came the 110W CAD-211AE's. For the loss of some midrange magic and transparency came much better bass control and even better dynamics, but it still did not sound right.

The next step was to buy a pair of JL Audio subwoofers, and use an active crossover to remove bass frequencies before the power amp. This has a number of theoretically positive effects - it reduces woofer cone excursion, therefore reducing break-up modes. The amplifier is free from working with bass frequencies, giving more apparent amplifier power. The subwoofer can be placed optimally to produce the most linear bass. All in all, I nearly achieved my aims of cleaning up the bass AND the midbass while giving a useful boost in dynamics as well.

But I was still not happy. The measurements indicated that everything was nice and flat with hardly any F/R anomalies. I could not see what was wrong, but I could hear it.