New 2nd system set up

[Mr Peabody]

My work out room moved which required a new music set up. I ended up with only 13" x 9" area which is pretty full of work out gear so no room left for stereo gear, so time to see what's out there for alternatives. I ended up putting the gear in a closet, using Audio by Van Alstine Fet Valve preamp into my Threshold S300, still have the Emotiva ERC-1 for now. I got a deal on an Artison set up which gave me two on-wall speakers, the older model with two 5 1/4" and two tweeters, a passive subwoofer RCC600SM with it's matching amp RCC600SA. I was skeptical of the sub set up, the passive sub uses oval drivers with two firing at one another, the cabinet has four drivers, the amp is Class D 600 watts RMS with auto EQ with microphone and a few other nice features. I used Siltech MXT New Yorker between components, Transparent to sub amp and all speaker cabling is Tributaries Type 8 which is certified for in-wall runs. On the floor I have that rubber type covering you see in some work out rooms, and one side of the room is open, plus I have a few closet doors with mirrors. Despite what I thought would be an acoustic nightmare this system sounds incredibly good, probably too good for the application....nah, how can it be too good . The Artison stuff is excellent although not cheap. Their on-wall speakers have a great set up for mounting beside flat panels, the speakers have a top and bottom to each, you wire the top two together for a center channel and the bottom are the left/right mains. I didn't use this set up, I just wired the top and bottom in series for stereo use. This gives a nominal impedance of about 10 ohms which seems to be fine. I thought 2.5 ohms nominal, parallel, would be pushing it for most any amp. The engineering on the sub must really good because it sure does perform. I'm tempted down the road to go in-wall with a couple Artison subs and remove the SVS. I love the SVS but if I can get close to it's performance and not have to look at it in my room it would be worth it. On the other hand it was sure a topic of conversation for a while. The microphone was missing from my amp box so the sub is just set by ear so far. I have one on the way, it will be interesting to see what it does. If I had to critique the on-wall speakers seem to have a bit of a boxy sound in a certain bass range, like some stand mounts have. I'm wondering if crossing them over would help, I could do that with the Emotiva USP-1 but I would lose a lot of sound quality otherwise. Any one know of a quality high pass crossover?

[blackraven]

Your second system is better than most peoples main system. If your system sounds too good for its application, I will gladly trade you my little Grant Fidelity Preamp and my Class D Audio amp for your Van Alstine preamp and Threshold amp!

[Mr Peabody]

For some reason I didn't get any interest when trying to sell the AVA preamp, I thought if I was too high on price some one would at least make an offer. So I figured I would just use it. It has two sets of outputs and sounds great.