why these days music from the 80s is intolerable to listen to

[gregorio]

I maintain that some equipment can be more musically transparent than others.

Then: “show me some audiophile bit of gear with some sort of distortion that only affects the music/"musical message" but doesn't affect any other sort of noise or sound" - Without some reliable evidence of this, you don’t even have a rational basis for making an argument that “musical transparency” exists (as opposed to just “transparency”), let alone proving/demonstrating that argument is correct. Just repeating/maintaining the same audiophile marketing slogan over and over, without any reliable evidence, does not wash as far as science is concerned nor as far as this subforum is concerned.

Yes you did. You specifically mentions specific artist being musical, not the equipment.

The artist is being musical, the equipment is just reproducing the “tune” (musicality) that the artist has created, it isn’t creating it’s own “tune”/musicality. So, no I did not!

I have also specifically said it is nothing to do with harmonic distortion.

I know that and I did not state you did say it had anything to do with harmonic distortion. I mentioned harmonic distortion as an example of a type of distortion that can in a sense create “it’s own tune”. Although that’s not really the case because it’s just producing distortion which is harmonically related to the input signal and will do that irrespective of whether the input is a signal representing music or any sort of noise or sound.

I also have not suggested the equipment "knows" anything. Stop putting words into peoples arguement to make your point of view. Equipment is not sentient.

If the equipment doesn’t “know” what “musicality” is, or doesn’t “know” that it’s even reproducing music, how can it be “musical” or “musically transparent”, as opposed to just having audible distortion or no audible distortion (regardless of whether the signal represents music or some other type of sound)?

Equally you are misleading consumers reading this if I am right.

Then either you’re not reading it right or you need to supply some reliable evidence to support your claim of “musical transparency”. Otherwise, the only thing you’re doing is promoting the audiophile myth of “musical” or “musically transparent” audiophile equipment.

You tell us all off every time if we use a term you do not like …

It’s got nothing to do with whether I like the term “musical saw” and I’m not telling anyone off for using this term, I’m just refuting a mis-interpretation of it. A “musical saw” is not a saw that can create music or has any musicality, it’s a saw that can be used by a musician to create music. And again, before you make the false allegation, this is not pedantry here. The audiophile community has a long history of deliberate mis-interpretation and mis-appropriation of terms, in order to deceive consumers.

G

 

[jagwap]

Then: “show me some audiophile bit of gear with some sort of distortion that only affects the music/"musical message" but doesn't affect any other sort of noise or sound" - Without some reliable evidence of this, you don’t even have a rational basis for making an argument that “musical transparency” exists (as opposed to just “transparency”), let alone proving/demonstrating that argument is correct. Just repeating/maintaining the same audiophile marketing slogan over and over, without any reliable evidence, does not wash as far as science is concerned nor as far as this subforum is concerned.

I have, when answering others in this thread who are actually interested and engage in positive debate instead of your attack. One of them is a lack of group delay to improve things.

The artist is being musical, the equipment is just reproducing the “tune” (musicality) that the artist has created, it isn’t creating it’s own “tune”/musicality. So, no I did not!

You are arguing with me when we both agree again. Why is this your default position if you do not read carefully.

I know that and I did not state you did say it had anything to do with harmonic distortion. I mentioned harmonic distortion as an example of a type of distortion that can in a sense create “it’s own tune”. Although that’s not really the case because it’s just producing distortion which is harmonically related to the input signal and will do that irrespective of whether the input is a signal representing music or any sort of noise or sound.

Irrelevant then in this case. Why bring it up.

If the equipment doesn’t “know” what “musicality” is, or doesn’t “know” that it’s even reproducing music, how can it be “musical” or “musically transparent”, as opposed to just having audible distortion or no audible distortion (regardless of whether the signal represents music or some other type of sound)?

They are the same, except I am being specific: Musically transparent as I described it before is allowing the rhythmic interplay between musicians and passages to be more easy to follow and enjoyable, along with other attributes.

Then either you’re not reading it right or you need to supply some reliable evidence to support your claim of “musical transparency”. Otherwise, the only thing you’re doing is promoting the audiophile myth of “musical” or “musically transparent” audiophile equipment.

Why is it an audiophile myth because YOU decided. You are not the only audio professional here, and you have your area of expertise, and I have mine. They overlap, but mine is not a subset of yours on a venn diagram. I have nothing to sell to you or others except my professional experience. I have not said who I work for, what equipment I make or have made. I'm not looking for a job. I have no ulterior motive, except to persuade those that want to understand, and I include you because you reply, you have experience, and you put up a good fight. I have persuaded similar people many times, but it usually happens in the listening room.

It’s got nothing to do with whether I like the term “musical saw” and I’m not telling anyone off for using this term, I’m just refuting a mis-interpretation of it. A “musical saw” is not a saw that can create music or has any musicality, it’s a saw that can be used by a musician to create music. And again, before you make the false allegation, this is not pedantry here. The audiophile community has a long history of deliberate mis-interpretation and mis-appropriation of terms, in order to deceive consumers.

G

No, that is a ridiculously pedantic point of view, that you can keep in your own little world of pedantry. There are universally accepted terms for things. Good luck fighting the entire world. Musical saws are not related to the audiophile world. Unless Chesky Records released an album of jazz standards on musical saw that I missed. Why not relax and let people call things what they always have before you noticed.

 

[jagwap]

Indeed,
It’s far more profitable to use readily available inexpensive drivers and control unwanted “out of band” driver distortions with higher order crossovers than use expensive drivers that are more controlled and a simpler, 6db/octave crossover, there’s plenty of relatively good sounding speakers using inexpensive components up to a certain level, after that the prices rise fairly quickly, and as usual with diminishing returns ….

6dB/oct crossovers are a nice audiophile idea, particularly on well behaved tweeters. However they usually stop being used due to the power handling issue, and the returns rate as people send them back blown. A practical issue, but one manufactures have learned the hard way costs a lot.

 

[The Jester]

6dB/oct crossovers are a nice audiophile idea, particularly on well behaved tweeters. However they usually stop being used due to the power handling issue, and the returns rate as people send them back blown. A practical issue, but one manufactures have learned the hard way costs a lot.

That usually happens more with 2 way systems as the tweeter is pushed lower, still, given the option of higher order crossovers vs any minor signal degradation of PTC protection i’d go with protection, 3 way or higher and a 6db/octave slope is more than enough for a good quality tweeter, plus with the more expensive speakers the owner is less likely to crank a power limited amp into clipping using them as “party speakers” ..

 

[71 dB]

How does not knowing about the Lexicon 224 make you stupid or a moron? It was a game changer in it's day but apart from old sound engineers around at the time or those well educated in the history of music/sound production, hardly anyone knows about it, including most geniuses (in other fields).

It better be a game changer of its day if it cost $8k at the time. I looked pictures of it online, at it is interesting looking device. Very large processing box and very small controller box attached with a thick cable.

Not knowing that the '80's was the decade which defined the move to digital synths from analogue synths is not stupid or moronic but if you don't know, then making the assertion (or even impression) that it was the era of analogue synths is slightly stupid.

To defend myself, I didn't actually claim that the 80's wasn't the decade that saw the transfer from analog to digital technically. I may not be well educated on the subject, but I know that. My claim wasn't really about technology. It was about artistry and how 80's music appears to our ears (the topic!) We did not have suddenly drum 'n' bass genre for example in 1983. It took until around mid 90's for that genre to emerge. Despite of technological changes, the music of the 80's was an artistic continuum, gradually changing in the way songs where written, what kind of sounds where used and how music was mixed artistically. The way the pop music of late 80's sound make me think the digital gear of the 80's that replaced analog gear had pretty similar, even imitating sound. That is what I mean.

No need to beat yourself up over it though, we're all slightly stupid like this on occasion. I was slightly stupid to state that "musical saws" are identical to ordinary hand saws because although this is sometimes true, I now know that some musical saws are specifically designed to be musical saws. It would have been better to frame my statement as a question or to have looked up musical saws first.

I know nothing about musical saws and I make zero claims about them. Musical saws do not interest me. Not that interested of regular saws either...

Two reasons:

1. The 224 was a stereo reverb. So if we feed say the lead vox into the 224, we start with one recorded track (vox) but we have to bounce down two tracks (vox + stereo reverb). If we do the same with the lead guitar, bass guitar, snare and everything else, we would nearly double the number of recorded tracks required (except for original stereo recorded tracks). Bare in mind that pro audio recorders (digital or analogue) in the 1980's had a maximum of 24 tracks, all or most of which have already been recorded on, so there simply isn't the number of tracks available to do what you suggest. You could in theory buy another 24 track recorder but syncing them together was not very accurate or reliable and it's ten times cheaper to buy 2 x $8k Lexicon 224s than to buy 2 x $80k 24 track recorders.

2. Using the previous example of say the vox fed into the 224 and recording it down, what happens later in the mix process if we decide we need to EQ the vox slightly differently? We're screwed, the vox track has been overdubbed and no longer exists and we can't do anything to the vox without also affecting the reverb recorded with it. Likewise, we can't change anything about the reverb on this stereo track.

Put these two facts together and it's a no brainier. It's a vastly more flexible, superior workflow and far cheaper to have two 224's used with "sends" and "returns" and never bounce down the reverb until the final stereo mix.

G

1. Okay, thanks. Makes sense.

2. Yeah, if you only want to EQ the dry signal and not the reverb you are in trouble unless you have "back-upped" the original vox track somewhere. Of course the overdubbed reverb track has to be considered final so it better be what is wanted. Because of the way I make my own music I also have situations where "going back" is sometimes problematic. Going back to the original track is not a problem, but going back a few steps can be. So, I have to be mindful of what I am doing.

3. Yeah. I think I get it now.

 

[gregorio]

I have, when answering others in this thread who are actually interested and engage in positive debate instead of your attack. One of them is a lack of group delay to improve things.

So are you claiming there exists equipment with group delay that only causes audible distortion with music reproduction but doesn’t cause distortion when reproducing any sound other than music? If so, then I would like to see some reliable evidence of that. But if that’s not your claim, then you have NOT shown “me some audiophile bit of gear with some sort of distortion that only affects the music/"musical message”, all you’ve done is identify a potentially audible distortion that will similarly affect any signal regardless of whether it represents music or any other type of sound and therefore is NOT specifically “musically transparent”….

Irrelevant then in this case. Why bring it up.

I didn’t bring up, you did! This is the first mention of playing or not playing it’s own tune in post #150: “I have been talking about equipment's musical transparency, not playing its own tune.”

They are the same, except I am being specific…

And that’s exactly the problem, you are being “specific” where in fact there is no specificity! There is no “musically transparent” or “musically” anything else with audiophile reproduction equipment. It either has some audible distortion or it’s audibly transparent with sound in general (which obviously includes music) but it cannot be “specifically” musically transparent.

Why is it an audiophile myth because YOU decided.

No, it’s an audiophile myth because it doesn’t exist but is commonly used by audiophiles and in audiophile marketing. Isn’t that obvious?

No, that is a ridiculously pedantic point of view, that you can keep in your own little world of pedantry.

The incorrect and misleading use of term “musical/musicality” isn’t my “own little world of pedantry”, it’s a significant part of the world of audiophiles and audiophile marketing. Didn’t you know that?

G

 

[71 dB]

Agreed on most of that. It seems some designers know how to add a port or passive radiator, many do not. Seal/infinite baffle are usually far more benign in this area. Stuffing the port is not great as the woofer/cabinet will have been designed for ports.

Stuffing the port can work very well, but it depends on how the speaker was designed. In fact, ported speakers should be designed this in mind, because the option to stuff the port and making the speaker sealed increases options to make it have good bass at various rooms.

Other gear can add group delay. One of the worst candidates are crossovers. Even Linkwitz Riley sub crossovers can add several milliseconds around the crossover region.

Speakers again. They are not the least transparent for nothing.

Then all the high pass filters in the reproduction chain add up destructively.

That's true, but the cut-off frequency of these high pass filters tends to be very low so that the group delay adds up destructively at frequencies where it matters hardly at all. It also helps that the cut-off frequencies are probably different from each other so that the cumulated phase shift is smoother in frequency.

Looking at the time domain of transients before and after shows the destruction of the waveform.

Yes, LOOKING at the time domain, but we don't listen to music with our eyes, do we? The audibility of "destruction" of the waveforms is often surprisingly hard compared to how easy it is to see from the waveform how the phase has shifted. Visually we can zoom into these waveforms and see the smallest temporal detail, but our ears/brain has to process sound in real time and our hearing hasn't developped to be that good with analysing group delay. There hasn't been a need. The temporal analysis our hearing does is mostly about spatial hearing and that's not about group delay, but a lot about the interaural time difference, ITD. That has been important in evolutionary point, not the ability to hear destructive add up of high pass filters in a sound reproduction chain.

Visual representation of sound has the danger of misleading us to think everything we see is audible. The reverse can be also true: It is very difficult, almost impossible to "see" the music looking at the grooves of a vinyl. All vinyl records look the same (looking at the grooves casually), but they certainly don't sound the same! One has Dutch techno music on it, the next has Mozart's Jupiter Symphony and the third is a Genesis album! It is all about how we represent information and what senses are good or bad at interpreting the information. Snake oil sellers can take advantage of this and confuse/mislead people into having even stronger placebo effect when listening.

There are other factors, but this area is not well researched.

Maybe the reason why this "area" is not well researched is because there isn't really much to research. One would think a lot of money and effort would have been spend if there was something relevant to research.

 

[gregorio]

It better be a game changer of its day if it cost $8k at the time.

That’s a modern mentality, where top quality pro-audio plugins cost a few hundred bucks or are even free in some cases. That wasn’t the case in late ‘70’s up to around the turn of the millennium. $8k wasn’t cheap but many/most outboard processors were several thousand, mixing desks were hundreds of thousands, the two dominant 24 track digital recorders were around $150k and the only competitor to the Lexicon 224 was made by EMT and was double the price.

My claim wasn't really about technology. It was about artistry and how 80's music appears to our ears (the topic!) We did not have suddenly drum 'n' bass genre for example in 1983. It took until around mid 90's for that genre to emerge.

The new genres took time to evolve and become popular. Digital “Acid House” emerged in the mid eighties but didn’t become popular until the late 80’s and with the advent of samplers and other digital tools quickly evolved and merged to form a range of new electronic genres in the 90’s. So in the mid 80’s the genres were still largely the same but the sound of pop music did change somewhat. Prince is an obvious example but there are countless slightly less obvious examples.

Yeah, if you only want to EQ the dry signal and not the reverb you are in trouble unless you have "back-upped" the original vox track somewhere.

And a backup copy was problematic because you needed another 24 track recorder, no drag and drop back then! Most commercial studios did have more than one 24 track recorder, although syncing, aligning, setting them and tying them both up while you do the copies in real time wasn’t always practical. And of course it wasn’t just EQ, pretty much any subsequent change to either the vox or the reverb was impossible, even just changing the balance between the vox and reverb.

G

 

[sander99]

Maybe above "yes", "no", "yes", "no", "yes", "no" exchange can be solved by noting this:

However what you [Edit: he refers to gregorio here] and BigShot call audibly transparent, because they are a DAC with good specification, may not satisfy the criterion I require to call them musical.

No, @gregorio does not call something audibly transparent because of good specification, he calls something audibly transparent if it has no audible imperfections.
And that means of course that for example two audibly transparent DACs can not be audibly distinguished from eachother, and if they can not be audibly distinguished from eachother then of course one can not be audibly more "musical transparent" (whatever it does or doesn't mean) than the other.

 

[jagwap]

Stuffing the port can work very well, but it depends on how the speaker was designed. In fact, ported speakers should be designed this in mind, because the option to stuff the port and making the speaker sealed increases options to make it have good bass at various rooms.


Speakers again. They are not the least transparent for nothing.


That's true, but the cut-off frequency of these high pass filters tends to be very low so that the group delay adds up destructively at frequencies where it matters hardly at all. It also helps that the cut-off frequencies are probably different from each other so that the cumulated phase shift is smoother in frequency.

Intellectually that may feel right, but surprisingly it is a bigger effect than you suspect. But the speakers need to be sorted first or it doesn't show.

Yes, LOOKING at the time domain, but we don't listen to music with our eyes, do we? The audibility of "destruction" of the waveforms is often surprisingly hard compared to how easy it is to see from the waveform how the phase has shifted. Visually we can zoom into these waveforms and see the smallest temporal detail, but our ears/brain has to process sound in real time and our hearing hasn't developped to be that good with analysing group delay. There hasn't been a need. The temporal analysis our hearing does is mostly about spatial hearing and that's not about group delay, but a lot about the interaural time difference, ITD. That has been important in evolutionary point, not the ability to hear destructive add up of high pass filters in a sound reproduction chain.

Yes, agreed, upto a point. I mention the visual destruction because it is surprising to many, and leads to an openess to the idea that there is a difference. But why do you say we can't we hear it? There is a need, in music. The arrival time of a transient being different to the fundamental behind it does make a difference, between a tight dry bass note and a fat sounding one. This is not hard to hear. I say it also affects the sense of WHEN a note was played, relative to other notes. That is fundamental to music, and we have evolved around rhythmic music for a VERY long time.

Visual representation of sound has the danger of misleading us to think everything we see is audible. The reverse can be also true: It is very difficult, almost impossible to "see" the music looking at the grooves of a vinyl. All vinyl records look the same (looking at the grooves casually), but they certainly don't sound the same! One has Dutch techno music on it, the next has Mozart's Jupiter Symphony and the third is a Genesis album! It is all about how we represent information and what senses are good or bad at interpreting the information. Snake oil sellers can take advantage of this and confuse/mislead people into having even stronger placebo effect when listening.


Maybe the reason why this "area" is not well researched is because there isn't really much to research. One would think a lot of money and effort would have been spend if there was something relevant to research.

Yet it is repeatably audible in DBT. Some do not hear it because they cannot get out of the habit of audiophile listening habits of listening to the detail, soundstage, or what ever list of things HiFi is supposed to do, before remembering to actually enjoy the music. But if you take track, simply recorded live, of great musicians, it is obvious. I have seen experienced listeners do the audio double take of "wait a minute, do that again" as I switch a circuit in and out, so many times. They never go back.

 

[jagwap]

Maybe above "yes", "no", "yes", "no", "yes", "no" exchange can be solved by noting this:

No, @gregorio does not call something audibly transparent because of good specification, he calls something audibly transparent if it has no audible imperfections.
And that means of course that for example two audibly transparent DACs can not be audibly distinguished from eachother, and if they can not be audibly distinguished from eachother then of course one can not be audibly more "musical transparent" (whatever it does or doesn't mean) than the other.

How does he know better than anyone else?

 

[71 dB]

That’s a modern mentality, where top quality pro-audio plugins cost a few hundred bucks or are even free in some cases. That wasn’t the case in late ‘70’s up to around the turn of the millennium. $8k wasn’t cheap but many/most outboard processors were several thousand, mixing desks were hundreds of thousands, the two dominant 24 track digital recorders were around $150k and the only competitor to the Lexicon 224 was made by EMT and was double the price.

I don't have much nostalgia for music production in the 80's, because at the time I knew nothing about music production. I still have a lot to learn as showcased here.

The new genres took time to evolve and become popular. Digital “Acid House” emerged in the mid eighties but didn’t become popular until the late 80’s

While Acid House was born in Chicago in the mid eighties as you correctly state, it kind of died away there by the late 80's because of police crackdowns of parties, but as this happened, it became popular in the UK for a couple of years, but by the 90's it had became underground again and merged with techno (e.g. Harthouse in Germany and Josh Wink in the US). The most "mainstream" use of Acid House I have ever heard is Rihanna's song "Where have You Been" (2012).

and with the advent of samplers and other digital tools quickly evolved and merged to form a range of new electronic genres in the 90’s.

Yes, the amount of new genres, sub-genres and sub-sub-genres is overhelming. From mid 80's to mid 90's was a miraculous "decade" in this sense.

So in the mid 80’s the genres were still largely the same but the sound of pop music did change somewhat. Prince is an obvious example but there are countless slightly less obvious examples.

I never got into Prince's music, so his example is not known to me.

 

[jagwap]

So are you claiming there exists equipment with group delay that only causes audible distortion with music reproduction but doesn’t cause distortion when reproducing any sound other than music? If so, then I would like to see some reliable evidence of that. But if that’s not your claim, then you have NOT shown “me some audiophile bit of gear with some sort of distortion that only affects the music/"musical message”, all you’ve done is identify a potentially audible distortion that will similarly affect any signal regardless of whether it represents music or any other type of sound and therefore is NOT specifically “musically transparent”….

I am saying that is how it manifests itself. Like rolled off HF sounds dull.

I didn’t bring up, you did! This is the first mention of playing or not playing it’s own tune in post #150: “I have been talking about equipment's musical transparency, not playing its own tune.”

Go back further if you really have to answer this correctly, but is there really a point? My “I have been talking about equipment's musical transparency, not playing its own tune.” was answering you criticism, blah blah Hendrix, etc. who cares any more.

And that’s exactly the problem, you are being “specific” where in fact there is no specificity! There is no “musically transparent” or “musically” anything else with audiophile reproduction equipment. It either has some audible distortion or it’s audibly transparent with sound in general (which obviously includes music) but it cannot be “specifically” musically transparent.

This equipment has one job, to the majority of the public: Play music. There is a part of music that makes it fun: rhythm. The interplay of rhythm, it's subtleties, and the emotional effect. If some equipment makes that more open to how it was played then others, I have stated that it is more musically transparent. If the equipment is less so, then it is less audibly transparent. Agreed?

No, it’s an audiophile myth because it doesn’t exist but is commonly used by audiophiles and in audiophile marketing. Isn’t that obvious?

Not when you've heard it. It is a myth in your world because you will not believe it. It is a repeatable fact in mine. You like tearing people down for not having the same world view as you. I don't. I am an engineer, so I do not believe dragons and fairies. I'm not an antivaxer. But I also do not believe we know everything yet. I was lucky to work with people who discovered this and I didn't put my head in the sand, or my fingers in my ears.

The incorrect and misleading use of term “musical/musicality” isn’t my “own little world of pedantry”, it’s a significant part of the world of audiophiles and audiophile marketing. Didn’t you know that?

You are replying to another point here. I was talking about the title of the instrument of "musical saw". You are losing you threads here.

G

Is there even the possible thought in your mind that there is something new you hadn't thought of or experienced yet?

I am enjoying learning more about Lexicon 224.

 

[71 dB]

Intellectually that may feel right, but surprisingly it is a bigger effect than you suspect. But the speakers need to be sorted first or it doesn't show.

What "bigger effect" do you mean? And what do you mean by sorting first?

Yes, agreed, upto a point. I mention the visual destruction because it is surprising to many, and leads to an openess to the idea that there is a difference. But why do you say we can't we hear it? There is a need, in music.

Well, yeah, in the 21st century we have music everywhere, but our hearing is a result of millions of years of evolution and for example 20.000 years ago the ability to hear group delay in music wasn't very relevant for survival. In fact it isn't any more today unless you are a sound engineer and your income depends on your ability to have analytic hearing.

The arrival time of a transient being different to the fundamental behind it does make a difference, between a tight dry bass note and a fat sounding one. This is not hard to hear. I say it also affects the sense of WHEN a note was played, relative to other notes. That is fundamental to music, and we have evolved around rhythmic music for a VERY long time.

The reason why we hear difference in bass response is because speakers can create huge phase distortion depending on how they are designed and what kind of compromises have been made. Again speakers! Other parts of audio chain are unlike to even cumulatively create audible level of phase distortion. That's why you can have your "fast" or "slow" or whatever you call them bass by changing your speakers.

Phase distortion is something that can be audible, but it is also measurable! In fact, it isn't difficult to PREDICT mathematically the amount of phase distortion by calculating the electric, mechanical and acoustic properties of audio gear. So, often measurements are merely for verification of the estimated properties. If you are after audible things that can't be measured, phase distortion is not that.

Yet it is repeatably audible in DBT.

Yes, audible phase distortion should be audible in DBT. What is the mystery here?

Some do not hear it because they cannot get out of the habit of audiophile listening habits of listening to the detail, soundstage, or what ever list of things HiFi is supposed to do, before remembering to actually enjoy the music. But if you take track, simply recorded live, of great musicians, it is obvious. I have seen experienced listeners do the audio double take of "wait a minute, do that again" as I switch a circuit in and out, so many times. They never go back.

What is this circuit you switch in and out? if it causes audible phase distortion then of course experienced listeners should hear the effect of it.

I am not denying audible distortions. My claim is that those are mostly generated by speakers (and headphones) while the other parts of an audio chain are nowadays often very transparent and probably under the threshold of audibility.

 

[old tech]

6dB/oct crossovers are a nice audiophile idea, particularly on well behaved tweeters. However they usually stop being used due to the power handling issue, and the returns rate as people send them back blown. A practical issue, but one manufactures have learned the hard way costs a lot.

If so, that would depend on the type of speakers? Mine have 6th order Linkwitz crossovers but they are only required to handle line level power before amplification.