everything sounded great until the upgrade


In short: I loved the sound of my modest system, until I upgraded my amp. Now it  sounds pretty horrible. It went from a warm sweet embracing easy-to-listen sound to knives and forks trying to escape from a bathtub.

So...

1. I can just unplug this new amp (used) and sell it

Any other options? I could upgrade my speakers but I have no budget for that.

2. I could sell the speakers and use money to buy used ones that go with the amp. 

3. Lastly I could change the source, but was it the culprit - to begin with?

btw - the sound of the "new" amp is decent with my turntable, and terrible with my CD player.

(If I wrote brands and models it would throw the discussion into "A sucks, B is great")

grislybutter

Showing 3 responses by russ69

2252B

OK, this is easy. The top end of the A3.2 is going to be a little softer than the 2252. Give yourself some time to adjust to the new presentation. Also work on your speaker placement. If you can make your room a little brighter with more reflection that will pick up the top end a bit. And just to throw this out there a cable change might help but work with what you have for now. 

I can't speak about the A300 but I have two friends with A3.2s, one with Maggie 1.6s and the other with Martin Logan Requests. I spent a lot of time listening and improving those systems. Both were in very good rooms and both sounded very good. I think the A3.2 can play well with some proper set-up. Give it time and good speaker placement. 

I am going to research what goes best with Musical Fidelity integrated amps.

MF amps sound best with many loudspeakers. I'm going to guess but you had a solid state amp of perhaps not the best quality. I think you just need a little time to acquire the taste for the new amp and maybe a little break-in time? I'm just guessing but nobody dislikes the sound of a well matched MF integrated that I know. So let the cat out of the bag, what MF is it and what was your old amp?