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Balanced input / output upgrade
Convert your equipment inputs and/or outputs from RCA type single-ended to professional XLR type balanced connections. Maximize noise rejection, minimize hum and crosstalk. This upgrade is especially beneficial if your audio equipment interconnects are long or run alongside power lines. Esoteric high end audiophile cables won’t help if you have a problem with poor quality, single ended line drivers or interference from adjacent circuits and signals.
Amplifier upgrades
The objective is to reduce noise and distortion, improve transient response and power handling and eek out the best possible performance from your existing amplifiers. Possible modifications include, replacing power supply components such as smoothing capacitors, rectifiers and regulators, adding additional decoupling, upgrading transistors and op-amps to higher performance parts, adding RF rejection circuits, upgrading signal path coupling capacitors.
Speaker upgrades
Loudspeaker testing can reveal a number of shortcomings that can usually be resolved. From cabinet integrity issues such as panel resonance and vibration to pressure leakage and port turbulence to crossover problems like coil saturation, cross-coupling and capacitor and coil dissipation. Older speakers can be dramatically upgraded by installing state-of-the-art drivers whilst making use of the higher quality, traditional cabinetry. Many older drivers from the better manufacturers now have re-cone kits that actually improve the original performance.
Soft-Start and Speaker On-Delay Circuits.
You should never hear a thump as you turn on or turn off your system. These uncontrolled transients put huge stress on crossover components, drivers and amplifier output stages leading to early failure. Protect your investment with a speaker on-delay circuit. Does your high power amplifier occasionally trip the breaker on power up? Inrush currents into high powered amplifiers can be in the order of hundreds of amperes if not properly controlled, these transients can propagate throughout the house wiring. All high powered systems should have a soft start circuit.
Bi-amp / Tri-amp Conversions
Sometimes it is not possible to design a linear phase passive crossover network for a particular driver – cabinet combination. The low operating impedance and non-linear nature of driver impedance make it difficult at best, requiring incredibly high performance and expensive capacitors and inductors. The result can be such a challenging load that only a few very stable amplifiers can drive it successfully. In situations like this, the best solution is to convert to an active crossover before the power amplifiers. This has the benefit that each driver has it’s own, dedicated amplifier; each amplifier has it’s own simple load and the degrees of freedom in the crossover design options expand exponentially. In fact the latest DSP based crossover designs not only provide linear phase, coherent crossover functions but also correct for individual driver magnitude and phase imperfections and even compensate for some room anomolies. The resulting improvements to imaging and detail can be stunning.
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