Question at bottom.

Channel 1 on my 223xl dropped the lows, like engaging its Butterworth low cut. But it did it all on it's own and the low cut switch operates normally. When I pushed on the faceplate on ch1 side, the lows came back, until I let off. So odd.

So I disassembled the whole thing, the XLR jacks sprung back towards the IC when unscrewed from the chassis. Yikes! The IC is anchored to the chassis in the middle and then the front pots and rear jacks are each screwed to the front and rear plates, respectively. The tension is notable, and for old school tin soldering and all that heating and cooling with vibration. All the traces and joints looked good.

So, I put it back together and it works. Like I trust it now, but at least when it goes bad it is obvious. That's an engineer's blessing. I think I notice some distortion, after 12 years the caps are probably a bit dry. I can patch my Apogee direct to the dbx and that feeds the KRKs through about 4 feet of Mogami Neglex. The sound is amazing but both the KRKs and the dbx are older now. I recapped the major and secondary cap sets on the 6s, that helped with presence. I can definitely notice bypassing my Soundcraft mixer, also 12 or so years old, and going direct to the dbx. All gear has light use and had been behind a Furman AR-1215.

I can tell the difference between better highs from my Shure SRH840s plugged into my Apogee and those of the Rokit 6s though it via the dbx crossover. So, I'm wondering if I should replace the crossover, at the very least with a new model of the same. As my ears are trained for it. I was also looking at an Ashly XR1001, thinking it may give me more sculpting ability when tuning the room. I have some treatment but have not measured yet, all by ear for now.

I may get a Macike Big Knob to switch between the Apogee direct to the KRK 6s or the Apogee direct to the dbx. Then I can tell if the dbx is a limiting factor or not. And, how much any crossover I add will make vs going direct to monitors without the sub. Will also come in handy because I need a second speaker set on my left hand keyboard stack.

Any thoughts? Until I can remodel the room I'll wait for the expensive monitoring gear/reference monitors, trying to get the same or a bit better. Maybe a tick above what my monitors can reproduce. I'll get some reference monitors later and set them to patch direct to my Apogee for detail work and troubleshooting.

The right wall in the pic is studded but has only a thin plywood, it needs to get drywalled. Thinking of a combination sauna/vocal/foley room on the other side.

Attached files