It’s worth mentioning that the Duos are far more imposing in the flesh than they appear in the photos. They’re roughly 5’7” tall and the horn is quite a bit bigger than the Fino.
I had to hide my surprise and pretend that I was expecting this and in any case they are only marginally’ bigger (they’re much bigger).
The XD dsp interface looks less user friendly than the dials of the previous generation, with changes now requiring you to peer at a small lcd display and fiddle with small buttons etc.
Tweaking begins this morning with expanding the horn range a bit and nudging up the bass volume slowly.
Finally starting to get some kit out of storage and a new arrival is an armboard for my Raven One TT. Stupid money but beautifully finished and at least I got to p/x the SME board I had.
Next up is a facelift for my Aesthetix pre for no reason other than all of the rest of my system is black. May be able to sell the silver one I suppose
So day one of dsp faff. I’ve quickly worked out that the controls on the XD are nowhere near as flexible or intuitive as the previous rotary dials for bass volume and horn frequency range. As @browellm will know, once you get the hang of these it’s pretty easy to dial them into a room setting and then fine tune from there.
In contrast the XD interface is a bit limited through the back panel with only 3 settings for horn frequency, but you do get more bass volume and boost settings. These have bigger bass drivers than the previous Finos so they do sound more ‘weighty’ but it’s hard to get the same midrange dynamics and transparency (so far).
The XDs do allow you to plug your laptop in and alter a range of step points in the bass frequencies either boosting or flattening, with some smoothing to the horn, but you need baseline measurements to begin with.
I can appreciate that. Fortunately I’m not too prone to anxiety and autistic level twiddling. I just know there’s more from these and I’m not close enough yet to go fuck it that’s good enough.
I bought a huge lid (620 x 450 x 200mm) to sit over the SP10. It was custom made with cut-outs for the arm and mains cable and side handles. Absolute steal at £95 delivered.
