[aggielaw]

Well, doesn't life have a great sense of humor?  After almost 3 months, my mini 9.0's are on their way back from Salk Sound, where Jim used very top-of-the-line parts and installed the Murphy XO for me.  

Now that the speakers are in transit, I have been offered a pair of Marble 9's at a reasonable price.  

So here's the question: what do the marble 9.0's do better than the mini 9.0's other than go deeper?  I would attempt to find someone to put the Murphy XO in the marble 9.0's if I bought them.  Given the marble 9'0's weight, I think I'd have to have someone build them and ship them for me to install the XO.  

I'm reasonably happy with my sub right now, so the fact that the marble 9.0's go alot lower aren't a big concern for me.

One other tidbit: I emailed Namphung last week and asked if they had any marble 9.0's left at the factory; she said they have one pair, but they have felt on the baffle instead of leather.  The speakers are black.  She's offering a small discount on them as well.

Thanks for your help with this decision!
Howard

[Marbles]

Other than the bass, they sound about the same.

The mini's are easier to place because of their size, but the marble 9.0's are real marble and the pride of ownership would be a little higher I would think.

The baffle step compensation would be different with the real 9.0's so the DM XO's would not be as good in the 9.0's as they will be in the mini's.

The tweeters are slightly different as well, but probably not enough to worry about.

My guess is the 9.0 would still benifit from the XO change but you should contact DM to see what he would do different for the big guys.

IIRC he has both schematics on his site.

[aggielaw]

Marbles, that's interesting input.  It actually sounds like sound-wise you recommend the mini 9.0 with the sub.  

I agree about the pride of ownership in the marbles; that is certainly a small part of my pursuit of the marbles.  I do have space/room constraints and issues, so maybe I should stick with the minis for now.

I thoroughly read DM's nOrh projects when I stumbled on them a few months ago.  I seem to recall the output is flatter with the mini 9.0's (both before and after DM's XO) than with the marble 9.0's.

Thanks for your thoughts!

[Marbles]

What I was trying to say is if you take the DM XO that you had made for the mini and plop it into the full size marble 9.0, it will not be as good as the DM made XO designed for the larger.  It probably would still sound better than the stock one though.

I think the mini's pretty much have to be crossed to subs.

The Marble 9.0's don't have to be, but almost all 2 way monitor speakers sound MUCH better when the mid driver that is also asked to play the lower frequencies is actively crossed (or passively) to a subwoofer so it no longer has to play those lowest frequencies.  This has a way of opening up the midrange significantly.

[aggielaw]

Rob, great point.  I have heard you guys discuss this before but didn't stop to consider the impact it would have on the woofer performance by eliminating the low freqs.

My sub is a very modest Velodyne.  I do have the option of internal or external crossover with it.  I'll run a 'net search and learn how to do this and report back to you in a couple weeks on the results.

Thanks for the advice.

Howard