Jim Lesurf wrote:

2) The power amps may have different gains.

They have, but, as I said to Stewart, they each have volume controls,
none is turned up full, and the crossover provides +/-6dB on each
band.

But do you now have the same relative effective gains in the bands as
before? If not, then some of the differences can be due to 'tone
control' effects...

I don't wish to labour the point, but 'before' is history. I don't have the
'before' numbers, so any attempt to draw comparisons is academic.


Not necessarily. :-) The point is that as you go through the
crossover region of the spectrum changing the slopes will alter the
resulting response. For example, using steeper slopes may produce a
'dip'.

Surely the crossover will have been designed to not have a dip?



Alternatively steeper slopes also means that the phases change
in a different way, so you may get other changes for that reason.

I thought this active crossover thing was supposed to be all
phase-compensated or something...


4) The effective gains for the active crossover may now be different
in the various bands.

As I say above, they're settable - even if there are discrepancies
between bands when the gains are set to zero, there's scope to
compensate in any case.

Yes. But if you are doing this 'by ear' to get the result you like,
the result may be that you settle on a different response to before.

'Before' is history. I'm not interested in 'before', I'm interested in
taking what i've got and seeing what can be done to make it more enjoyable.


This then means that you are using the xover as a tone control and
getting 'improvements' from that.

Fine by me. I don't care what happens within the system, so long as I like
what comes out.


Hence having multiple amps may not
be giving you the changes you assume.

They've added power, clarity and dynamics.



As I said, the tri-amped set up is the baseline. The way I see it,
it's easier for me to make changes and assess their effects.

That is fair enough. However as I have indicated, people who have
*not* yet spent the money on more power amps, etc, might find it
useful to be cautious and assess what I am saying. There may be a
cheaper and easier route for them. Difficult to say without suitable
experiments, etc, in each individual case.

I'm doing what I'm doing for myself. What other people choose to do is
entirely up to them.


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