Several months ago I pulled the woofer XO out of my speakers and have been actively biamping via a Marchand XM-44 crossover. I have a heavily modded SB2 feeding the Marchand and it's driving a Rotel 1080 for the bass (400W/4 ohms) and R.E Designs LNPA 150 monos (150W/4 ohms) for the mids/tweets.
Unfortunately I've been borrowing the Marchand and I need to return it soon. This raises the question of whether to buy another Marchand or other analog crossover or to go digital with something like a Behringer DCX2496.
The Marchand is a known quantity and I'm enjoying my system more than any other I've ever owned. I don't have much desire to tinker with it, I'd much rather just relax and enjoy the music.
The Behringer offers a some advantages, mostly in the realm of EQ for the bass region. There are quite a few folks modding these and the most common hacks are to remove the output op amps in the same fashion as the Squeezebox mods. This will actually simplify my signal path as the Marchand has 14 op amps inside. The unknown, at least to me, is how the DAC's in the DCX2496 sound in comparison to the SB2's DAC.
The downside is that I know how the analog outputs of the SB sound and I've been very happy with it. Additionally I have a pretty good vinyl setup and going with a digital XO means I'd have to convert the signal from my phono stage to digital although I could do this at 24/96 and feed it to the DCX2496. I suspect it would sound very good this way but it certainly won't be pure analog any more.
I'm trying to weigh the pluses and minuses of both solutions and any input would be appreciated. I don't play my vinyl nearly as much as the SB, simply because it's not as convenient and often I just want to sit and listen without messing about.
Thoughts?
Mike