[Mike D]

Gassers:

Sorry I dissappeared since I moved from Highland.  I am now living in Urbana IL. 

I am now the band director at Champaign Centennial High School.  www.chargerbands.com

Last December I bought a tri-level house.  The basement is far from idea for audio, but it has a fire place.     My big Maggie IIIAs are down there with a big Samsung 1080P TV.  The amps are the crown K2 on bottom and a new, used Odyssey Stratos dual mono fully beefed to 180,000uf per side on mid/highs.  I'm still using the crossovers that me and Steve K built.  Of course I bipassed the shit out of them with various caps.     The crossover is a digital DBX Driverack PA fancy deal that lets me independantly control 6 output channels with balanced cables.  Any crossover slope or frequency or phase or polarity is available, independant to each channel.  It gets overwhelming. 

Soon, I'll hook up my Rogue M150 heaters to run the mid/highs and move the stratos to the bottoms.  The crown would then power a soon-to-be-purchased pair of maggie rears attached to the ceiling behind my chair. 

Why not triamp?  Because I spent too much money on all of the caps and inductors in the mid/high crossovers.    

My hales and klipsch reference bookshelf speakers are set up as a theater in my living room (ground floor).  The sad part is that the hales are being underpowered by a, I'm embarrased to say, Pioneer Elite receiver.     It is my way of making the maggies downstairs seem to sound that much better.  Some day I'll get a big Nad or B&K to power the ground floor theater.  I might just move the crown upstairs and use the preamp outs to power the Hales with big, huge, high feedback power.  The crown puts out and insane amount of watts... something like 900 or more per side.  It is not a finese amp.   

Upstairs, I am going to take the larger guest bedroom and turn it into a music studio for my tpt/guitar playing.  I'll put my computer in the center of the long wall with the MG 12s that I got from Steve K in the corners.  I'll use the Jolida 302a to power them.  The computer will run the Band in a Box program so I can input any jazz tunes I'd like and play along with the chord changes played by the midi "band" in the computer.  It should be great.  I'll slide my chair back from the computer to sit in the sweet spot for playing.   

The best part: my girlfriend, who is an incredible sax player/band director, wants to help me do all of this.  This girl is incredibly cool for an audiophile/musician.  She LOVES my sound systems and can play circles around me in jazz.       

Sorry again for dissappearing.  I'll set up the GAS page as my start up page so I can see what's up in San Looweee.

Mike D

[Blackmore]

We miss you, too!  The Scotch consumption has really fallen off since you moved. (although Willie and Steve K have tried, God knows they've tried.)  Scott has the new "floating" Lowthers, more Merlins are amongst us, Chris Hoff has a wild ribbon-based open baffle design, I got more Yamamoto stuff, steve k got a VTL preamp,etc.  The GAS boys have been busy and you really need to make a trip down to see everyone.  And our wives are making it out to meetings, so bring you girlfriend down for a weekend get-away in St. Louis and hang out with us.  We'll save the sweet-spot for you!!

[jcrane]

Mike-
Glad to hear things are good up your way. I just got married and started a new job so I have been pretty much MIA myself.
So how is the Golf game going?

Stay in touch


Jamie Crane

[DeadFish]

Glad to hear from you Mike!  Twas great talking at you, but I hear too poorly to have decent conversations that way anymore.

Sounds like you have enough room for a 'road trip' crew to throw a sleeping bag, eh?  aa

If I ever get all the crap done to my house that keeps my insurance agent happy and my Mom too, well, maybe you can show me the joy of a 'college town' again.   

Sounds like you've got a handle on it, take care!!

Best Regards,
Bill

[Mike D]

Mark, Jamie, Fishhead:

Wow!  Sounds the bank accounts have continued to deplete.  Glad to hear everyone is staying true to the cause. 

My golf game got better when I bought a set of Mizuno MX 19 irons.  Then my golf game dissappeared for the summer when I accidently bought a Harley!  HA!  I'll try to figure out how to add pictures and show you guys.

Bill, thanks for calling me and getting me back on the page.  Please come up some time, all of you... or up to two or three of you.  I have one guest bed and one couch and one fouton matress that can be laid out for a relatively comfy bed.  You can't have my bed and you can't sleep with me.   

I'd love to show you guys around campus, our local audio stores, and my favorite restaurants. 

Steve, Holy Cow Man!  a VTL preamp too?  I need to get down there.

Mike

[jedi35]

Hey Mike,

How are you? I noticed that you have the DBX Driverack PA unit. Does it do room correction as well? I'm being pointed towards the Driverack 260 for my crossover needs, and I'm interested in all of its capabilities with equalization and room correction, as well as delay. I currently have a pair of Martin Logan Monoliths which are actively biamped with ML's Exos crossover (it was designed for the Monoliths). However, I cannot change the xover frequency, slope, and it does not do room correction or delay. There is limited eq and gain control, but I wonder what would happen if I could control everything. My Threshold Model 4000 is on the panels, and my 2 Krell KMA 100 monoblocks are waiting for me at a repair shop. I've got to cough up about $500 to get them back. Curreny, Scott's Spectra Acoustics amp is on the woofers and doing a fine job.

I also wonder if I'll lose sound quality by leaving the $3,000 ML Exos and going with the Driverack 260. What do you think, since you have a DBX piece?

Adrian

[Mike D]

ADRIAN!  Great to hear from you. 

I would fight the temptation to go with the Driverack 260.  I is very cool, it does do everything you would like to do, but it has no soft start.  That is why I returned it and went with the Driverack PA.  It does do a soft start to protect my maggie ribbons.  If the pop is not a concern, they are around $200 to $300, I think.

I did not notice a jump is sound quality from the 260 to the PA.  There were just a few more options. 

You could open it up and change out resistors for an improvement.  The resistors are sand-cast.  The caps are electrolytics that are used due to their small size.  The boards are so small that I decided not to mess with any of the guts. 

Your current crossover must be far superior in sound quality.  With a set crossover point, the signal would have fewer hoops to jump through.

If you really want to get something cool that is high quality and does everything that the PA does, research the DEQX.     If I had the money, I would buy that one right away.

http://www.moon-audio.com/DEQX.htm

Mike

[jedi35]

Thanks Mike,

I didn't know that the 260 has a loud pop when you turn it on. Ideally, I would leave it on at all times so the system wouldn't have to suffer the pop very often. The 260 was suggested by another Monolith owner on the ML lovers board, and he swears by it. There are one or 2 more pieces that the 260 needs to go through because of the lack of RCA connectors, and he hasn't complained of a pop. Isn't the 260 supposed to be an upscaled version of the PA? Are you still getting room correction and everything with the PA? I looked at the DEQX page, and that piece is too expensive for my blood right now. Thanks again, and let me know what you think.

Adrian

[Mike D]

Actually, I have whichever one is the upscaled version.  The upscaled version (260 or PA) does have all XLR connections and the room correction, etc.  I love it, but it doesn't actually sound any different than the one that costs less than half as much. 

Mike