I think I will go and order the kit. Can anyone recommend an installer? For example I don't have the tools to create the input + IEC holes, and I need someone to set up the gain using an oscilloscope, and hook up the IEC. I will want to use a nice schaffner filtered IEC
Before you go down that route, it would be worth considering some of the reasons that led me to switch to using miniDSP units.
Firstly, crossover frequencies. The xkitz units are pretty inflexible when it comes to changing crossover frequencies - they are programmed for a particular frequency by means of a bank of 10 resistors on a plug-in carrier. Yes, you can order a range of these if you aren't sure what crossover frequency you are going to need, but the options for fine-tuning that you get with DSP-based devices (and commercial analogue crossover units for that matter) simply don't exist and would be difficult to implement. Great if you are absolutely sure of your crossover frequencies, not good if you want to be able to fine-tune or experiment.
Secondly, the gain of each section of the crossover is set by means of a PCB-mounted multi-turn pot which needs screwdriver adjustment; again, not ideal if you want to be able to fine-tune, and as you observe, you will need to set them up carefully because you need the gain on each crossover board to match accurately (I assume you realise that each of their crossover boards is only good for one speaker, so you will need two of them to make a stereo crossover). It would of course be possible to remove each multi-turn pot from the PCB and wire in panel-mounted pots, but that needs thinking about from the start.
Thirdly, it is often the case (particularly in 3-way designs) that it is desirable to reverse the polarity of one of the drivers to get the best FR in the crossover region. Tricky unless you include suitable switching before those output sockets...which are board mounted, so this would be a major pain. You could make up an inverting XLR cable to fix this, but not ideal.
Fourthly, if you are thinking that time alignment between drivers is something you would like to correct for, it simply can't be done using these units, so your only option is physical driver placement to make corrections of that kind.
Fifthly, the xkitz crossovers are fixed L-R 24dB/octave devices. With the miniDSP units, you have the option of changing the response curves at crossover - to use a steeper response (they support up to 48dB/octave), use curves other than L-R, and even (which I have used a couple of times) use different crossover frequencies for low pass and high pass.
When I changed to miniDSP, there was always a thought in the back of my mind that at some point, once I had fixed the crossover frequencies etc. I would switch back to using the xkitz crossovers; somehow there has never seemed to be a compelling reason to do that.
