Riiiiiight.

Some of you may remember the catastrophic attempt at having a shop install my beloved Soundstream gear? Anyway, in a week or so, the shop will finally receive their RTA, and I can begin working with them to get it right, though if you've read the list of problems I've had, I have my doubts "tweaking" is going to solve very much!

OK

Here's my latest addition: a Phoenix Gold EX215x, coming shortly. Using standard RCA's, its a dual 15 band EQ, which I'm hoping will resurrect my flagging SQ spirits. Additionally, it has 24db/octave crossovers, which I could feasibly use if I removed the SS Balanced X-over (which has only 12db slopes (well, 24db slopes on the sub LP).

I could use the PG (EQ only) in conjuction with the SS (by bypassing the x-overs, simple), thereby retaining the balanced gear (which I"m kind of fond of!! )

Or, I could rip out the balanced line driver and the balanced X/O and run rca's to the PG, fully utilising both of the EQ215x's EQ and crossovers.

What do you think? Does running balanced gear have that big an effect? Will adding an extra component make setting the gains and so-forth on this already painful system even harder??

What advantages and possible headaches do you see??

Seeing I can't locate my old thread: my system is:
Clarion DRX-9255
SS Exact 5.25" Splits run off SS Renoir
Orion XTR8MB 8" run off SS Reference 700
2 x SS Exact 10" subs run off SS Rubicon 501/
SS BLT balance line driver run to the Balance X/O active crossover.

Dude I think that it will make things even more complicated to get right and that eqs shoiuldnt be used to mask bad system design.

however, it will definately make it sound better, it cant make it sound worse, so yeah in that regard it'll work very nicely also i'd go with the 24db slope of the phoenix gold.

Just remember though that if there was a guy with the perfect installation and the same eq his car *MAY* sound better purely because the eq doesnt have to do as much tweaking to fix the installation errors....

try it and see, if u dont like it i'll buy it of u nyways at 5% below dealer price

whilst i don't have any personal experience with BLDs and balanced outputs, i honestly can't see them offering any audible benefit compared with a high quality high-voltage preout setup.

that is, given both the HU and PG EQ will offer high voltage preout signals, this will be all you need to overcome any noise and signal degradation issues. the BLD setup is unlikely to surpass this.

so i'd feed unbalanced RCAs from the 9255 to the PG EQ, then onto the amps.

It's not so much that I think the balanced setup will be better, just that it's all matching equipment, and it looks purdy......

System design will be looked at, most likely with the 5.25" drivers coming out of the fabricated kicks and added to the door pods. failing that, there's going to be a hell of a lot of classy Soundstream gear for sale fairly soon, and a match in the fuel tank.