The chart below shows the final measurements, taken from my seating position with 1/24 octave smoothing and a 2mSecond window. The RED trace is with the grill (as recommended) and the BLUE trace is with the grill removed:
The image below is from the Sound and Vision review with the grill on. Note in particular the 10K peak and ragedness around 5kHz which are gone, those are probably thanks to the liberal use of felt on the grill and tweeter housing:
And lastly the grill removed, which is the image most make fun of:
Not only is the grill less important, but the tweeter balance is different. Instead of trying to push the tweeter up at the last octave, I've gone for a smoother response from 2-10k, that goes generally downward. Crazy? Well, by accident it actually measured much closer to the Focal Utopia's of 2004. Check out this chart from Stereophile:
Of course, I'll never get the output, especially in the bass, of the Utopia, but it does sound much smoother and coherent than it did before. Should you buy a Profile 918 and hack the crossover like I did to get a poor man's Utopai? No way. The value just isn't there overall. The value IS there if you want to take this on as a learning experience though.
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