New Cabinets

[boltupright]

Wow,,,,those cabinets are huge!
I wish I could hear them,,,I found that mt 604-8G's in 620 cabnets sounded good with no lacking in bass,,,yours must sound incredible!
Are those the same spec as the big reds?

[selmerdave]

Hi boltupright,

Big Reds are smaller cabinets, around 6 cu. ft. I think. I've heard a few pairs and they definitely sound good.

Dave

[selmerdave]

Hi RKLee,

I probably didn't do as much bracing in mine as you did in yours, perhaps in the future I'll investigate adding more. I have a 2x4 on end vertically on each of the sides and rear, and one going horizontally between the sides and simultaneously supporting the driver. The front baffle is double-thick plywood. At healthy volumes I don't feel much vibration, but I'm sure some would want to go to town with that. As it is whatever these weigh is pretty much at my limits of practicality.

My system is biamped, I tried adding a super tweeter once and was not as pleased with it. I'm happy with how it sounds but to be honest I don't have enough experience with different setups to speak authoritatively on the difference between active and passive generally. I may well go back to passive at some point, but probably not in the near future. While active provides some benefits, some of the downsides are integration between the sound of two amps (if they are different as in my case), limited built-in eq, and the relative cost of a high-quality active xo (four figures) compared to a high-quality passive.

Dave

[bfish]

Originally posted by selmerdave:
...While active provides some benefits, some of the downsides are integration between the sound of two amps (if they are different as in my case), limited built-in eq, and the relative cost of a high-quality active xo (four figures) compared to a high-quality passive.

Dave

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Good point Dave!

Even as much as I tout the active approach, I'm also the first to say it's not for everyone or every app. It's seldom as simple as buying an active XO and dragging an unused old amp from the closet. A poorly implemented active system is no better than a poorly implemented passive.

May I briefly go OT?

Many here (including myself) can attest to the pain and regret of blowing good $ on an active XO, only to quickly learn what we got wasn't what we needed. Once learned, that mistake is seldom repeated.

Rather than gather a bunch of recommended random components and try to integrate what you end up with, take the time to fix a design goal, and select the parts that will get you there.

The good news is that there are now much better alternatives for actives than there was even a year ago, and more on the way. What you can do now with 2U of rack space and $500 is pretty amazing.

If you consider user reviews important consider this. Has the reviewer actually used the unit in question? Seems that for every positive review from an actual user, there's a dozen or more dissing it that never even saw one.

Really nothing new for us, but might save a lurker some headaches.