For over 25 years, I’ve been playing with these crappy Dolby and DTS upmixers and never getting the satisfaction of taking a 2 channel mix and properly spreading it throughout 4 or more channels plus Subwoofers.
Well, I’ve had the Black Ice Audio Fusion 360 for several months now and was just using it a nice way to give my STAX SRM007-tA Electrostatic Headphone Amp and Koss 95/X Can some nice Bass extension without screwing up the mids and highs. I was skeptical about doing the 4 Channel setup and having to break down my rats nest of cabling just to accomplish this.
Well last week I decided to try it out. I was up until 2am listening to music in 4 glorious channels with no compression or DSP (well……ok the Bose 901’s have miniDSP….but that’s at the end of the back channels audio chain). CSN’s debut album is an all new auditory experience for me. As are several other Albums I have with some very cool out phase things going on. The dancing lights are a nice touch by the Late Great Jim Fosgate who designed this Preamp. Note Tone Control switch is in “Bypass”.
My God. I’m hearing things in the mix I never noticed before and the way any out of phase information is spread between the two 901 Stacks removed any artificial gimmickry and just shows off the music in the 2 channel mix. You’ve heard the overused and abused “it’s like the Band/Musicians are in my living room”. Well for the first time I got that feeling over and over again.
But these Audiophile “tchotchke’s” do have limitations. Listening to live Rock Concerts buries the vocalist and playing with the “Dimension” knob helps but something is lost in the front two channels while over emphasizing the rear channels. Yes, there is a back channel level knob but it doesn’t help much. In my system it works best at “11” (dots that is 
).
So I put my DIY hat on and tried a ONE Little Bear MC103-Pro XLR Switcher. These little passive devices from China are actually well built for what they do. And there’s no degradation (to my ears anyways) inserting these devices (I’m using 3 in Tandem…but more on that later) into my rats nest of cables.
Using three Douk Audio XLR Switchers, my “Three Little Bears” created the perfect switching Matrix for less then $200USD on Amazon.
Now that problem with vocals getting buried in the mix is now solved. I can via The Three Little Bears run the BAT VK50-SE directly on the front channels bypassing the F360’s front channels but keeping the F360 back channels with the Dimension & Back Level knobs max’d out. For most Studio recordings, I use the F360 exclusively who front left & right signals are fed from the BAT. Careful adjusting of all volume controls avoids any distortion creeping into this audio chain.
The best part is after tearing down and then putting back together my entire rig. The GND loop I had feeding through the F100 Tube Amps is know a thing of the past.
I never tried the Hafler circuit but a friend gave me a Dynaco ST-80 Integrated (I blew up the Amp modules) that has the extra binding posts and wiring to make it work. Would have been a cool little comparison though.
It’s always easy to tear everything down.
I couldn’t clean up behind the Onkyo AV Preamp.
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