In an active five way system five dacs are needed a passive speaker with a normal crossover needs only one. That’s perhaps the reason for Hermits confusion?
Yup, could be. Adam wants to do the crossovering digitally, so he’ll need 5 (stereo) DACs after he’s done that. In principle he could still do active by following one DAC with a 5-way analogue crossover. But that way madness lies !
VB
Yeah I do like a digital crossover - being able to control it finely in software is great. It may be that there’s too much DSP, and this comes with many compromises, but the ease is everything. I really wouldn’t fancy doing it passively, that has its own set of compromises as well, and will be an expensive PITA.
is that I would have imagined there was a more elegant solution. 5 dacs FFS.
Have you seen the basement system?
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There is nothing elegant about multi horn systems!
(Especially if Adam is building them 
)
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Four way is much easier, as there are many 8-channel solutions out there. 10 channels is much rarer - you’re looking at pro sound kit. You can get them, and I considered it, but sound quality is not necessarily great. Since I already had the digital sound card, when these DACs came out they struck as the perfect solution - small, cheap and highly rated.
But yeah as Edd says, it’s not an elegant system 
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Harsh but entirely fair!
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Have you every seen a 5-way analogue crossover? Might not be the most elegant thing either.
You’ve obvs just got too many ways; Durr !
A random conversation in the pub has resulted in a friend lending me a TV that they had in storage. Faffing with audio settings is rather annoying - my system has an audio lag that can’t be avoided. This can be corrected in audio players like JRiver and VLC, but not with Netflix. Oh well.
Unfortunately, the sound stage is several times the size of the screen (40"), so it’s kinda odd, and also cinema seems configured for slower, thumpier bass than the Labs.
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Always disappointed to see half arsed commitment to hifi like that… 
makes my Cheviots look like satellite speakers
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Thanks for this photo Adam. Whenever an editor goes "why don’t we do a piece featuring reader’s systems?’ (something that happens perhaps every 12-18 months), I can simply show them this picture and consign the idea to the scrapheap without need for any extended arguing.
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Should I paint the mid bass horns white, do you think?
My hunch is that a true high end finish might be more than a coat of paint away but I’m no designer.
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Is this the basement system with the new DACs?
The multicells, are they original metal ones or wooden clones?
Would love to have a listen after the shit storm clears (he said hopefully)
It is. It sounds fucking epic tbh.
The weird thing is how delicate it sounds. It’s really not what you expect. But it works well whatever you play, whether loud or quiet, music or film.
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That’s what we like to hear.
Looks epic as well.
But only in a good way of course…
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