Great speaker sounds terrible in my room?

@ishkabibil 

it is what it is brother. There was no way to replicate my set up at the sellers room. Truth be told they are sounding pretty sweet right now with the Rel dialed in. A much more detailed & spatial presentation than my ProAc’s.

@lemonhaze 

I think “IF” I had the space to add another Rel, these Ref 3A’s would be incredible. I emphasize “if” because I really don’t have the space right now…although I’m wondering if a single better sub (Rel S510) would be a game changer or make matters worse. 

@mozartfan The force of the speaker merry go round is strong 😁

@qwin These are the former top of the line monitors from Ref 3a so they have several years on them.

@jond @roxy54 

I have verrrry limited placement, I’ll experiment tomorrow. Thing is, at best I can move them back another 3 feet so they will still be 7ft away from the wall. These Ref 3A’s have 8” woofers, my ProAc’s have 6.5” and can rock my room. I’ve never expected this just based on the specs of the 3A…I had little ass KEF’s in this room that sounded better!

@russ69 why would the amp & pre be an issue if I’ve had nothing but great results with every set of speakers up till this point?

@jasonbourne52 

I’ve had the same near field set up for 2 years, utilizing the front wall is not an option due to the layout of my apartment. As I previously stated I’ve never encountered this situation before, I’ve had smaller speakers kick ass in this setup. My ProAc Response D2’s are unbelievable. I’ll move them around today and see what I can get outta them.

@chayro 

As I’m typing this I’m listening to some Beth Hart on my ProAcs. It’s laughable how much better they sound and they are 1/2 the size, weight and less efficient than the Ref 3A’s. Something tells me it’s gonna be a long day trying to find a happy place for these 3A’s 

@fiesta75 

no, no not arguing, I’m very appreciative of the support and it identified the problem…Thank you all. Placing them closer to the wall is not doable. I’ll just have to try and work around it. 

@russ69

I’m happy with the ARC/Levinson, I’ll most likely just have to wave the white flag and sell the A3’s if I can’t get them to work their magic in my room. If they were an end-game speaker i’d definitely go down the path of upgrading components. These were intended to be used for late night listening. My thought process was that a speaker with all the attributes of the 3A (higher efficiency, larger drivers, very dynamic) would be better suited for lower volume listening sessions. I didn’t weigh too heavily on my set up conditions because of the success I’ve had with lesser speakers. Duh-oh! I still have faith…we’ll see!

@musicaddict 

I have a Rel T9x in my rig. I’m holding off on it while I try to get these bad boys to work on their own.

@mapman 

These are the biggest monitors I’ve had in my rig (H15.7 x W12 x D13) and they have to be close to 40lbs each. My listening area is 15x12 (but the front wall actually recesses to 17ft.) The room I demo them in was a dedicated room substantially larger. As I’m typing this I have them pushed back about 3ft from where they started and put about 1” of toe-in. HuGe frickin soundstage but still thin on the bass. Still more tweaking to do! I found the specs online:

8 ohm / 44-22000hz / 92db / dome beryllium 26mm tweeter /  8” hyper-exponential graphite membrane woofer. 

Update: I sent an email to the manufacturer and he graciously responded with a copy of their setup instructions. I’m still tweaking the positioning but boom! Game changer. I was waaayy off on positioning. The 3A’s are still a little light in the bass or perhaps my ProAcs just do low end better? definitely different presentations between these two. Bigger soundstage & very detailed without being offensive. Very nice, although I don’t think these are going to give me what I was looking for at low volume. I’ll do more tweaking then I can’t wait to hear what they do when I kick on the REL.

@bjesien I have them on sand filled steel monolith stands spiked into my carpet…suckers are HEAVY and I use Herbies square dots between the plates and speakers.

@oldhvymec

I don’t have a dedicated listening room. I’m in a studio apartment and my listening area is basically my living area / kitchen so I have to keep things aesthetically pleasing and utilitarian as opposed to looking like a hi-fi shop. That’s just not my style. That being said, My floor is concrete and granite with a carpet covering the listening area. Spikes are purely for keeping the stands secured as I heard no difference between the spikes and the footers. I prefer Herbies fat dots under the speakers as they are nicer don’t ruin the finish of the speakers like blue-tac or sorbothane. As hard as I’ve tried, I can’t detect the micro nuances of coupling material, outlet covers, ethernet switches and cable lifters although I’ve kept a few tweaks that I thought made sense and were well made (eg: damping plates).

Also, The REL is raised off the floor on a 1.5in granite slab. I had ridiculous room boom with the sub on the floor and putting it on the slab and taking it out of the corner solved the problem perfectly.

@tony1954 

Thanks for this. That pretty much does sum it up. I repositioned the 3A’s as closely to the manufacturers guidelines and then played with micro adjustments, I’m pretty sure I have them as good as I’m gonna get with what I have. These speakers are definitely light in the bass, I was playing some bass demo tracks and it sounds like the best I’m getting is in the 60’s Hz. Meanwhile this speaker looks like it could shake the fillings in your teeth loose.

@oldhvymec 

Retiring soon brother and leaving this God forsaken state. a dedicated listening room is in my plans and down the audiophile rabbit hole I will go. Might even do the ugly chick thing too…Haha! 

@mapman whats the worst that could happen if I mess with that?

@tony1954 Listening to Johann Johansson “Orphee”, the detail and depth/height of soundstage and is amazing. This is the best mids & upper end I’ve ever heard in my room. I need to find a speaker that can do all this and have low end punch. I’m about to flick on the Sub and see what it brings.

@rbstehno 
 

Well I thought about doing that but the owner’s room was big, way bigger than my room so pulling them 10ft off the wall in a room that size seemed kinda pointless. 
I don’t doubt my amp. It’s more than capable, 200 w/ch, 1st 25w run in class A. It’s very neutral and dynamic w-excellent control. not to mention it’s too big and heavy to drag around speaker shopping. If I decide to sell them then lesson learned.
 

@baylinor  From what I’m hearing right now with the REL T9x in play, these would be magnificent with dual subs…but of course I don’t have the room for that.

Duh-oh! 

@ericsch  Yessss Sir. 

@mapman  ok so just swap the red/black connection on 1 speaker?  

@vuch All I wanted was a secondary set of speakers for late night listening. Seemed simple enough but noooo.

@mapman No bueno! Definitely not right, I turned off the Rel as well and the music was skewed/not right. You know, bass issues aside, I must say these speakers hide nothing. If a recording is garbage or awesome your damn well gonna know it. Not too sure if I dig that. Totally different listening experience than my ProAcs.

@pesky_wabbit 

You ain’t kiddin! If your familiar with Rel settings, my ProAcs are xover 6 clicks and 11 clicks of gain. So far with these Ref 3A’s I had to bump it up to 12 clicks on the xover and 18 on the gain and I’m still not done dialing it in. Seriously anorexic! 
 

@sandthemall  I had them completely wrong. The manufacturer recommended using a speaker to listening distance ratio of 1 to 1.2 with no toe in. So I had to push them away as far as I could and bring them closer together with no toe in. This really made a substantial difference but unfortunately the bass only slightly improved. The manufacturer told me that the best bass response requires 3ft distance off the wall. 
 

@holmz Good find! Thanks for this.

@larry5729
Larry, I do not have a dedicated room, my listening area is the back end of my living space and cannot be rearranged. The room is 15x12 (17x12 if you count the recess in the front wall). The speakers are 5.5 ft apart, soundstage is deep and wall to wall, higher than what my ProAcs were able to do. At this point I have no complaints other than the bass response which is, what it is with my set up in this room. Hopefully I can get my sub to pick up the slack.

Btw: the room is fairly well behaved. Recent addition of floor to ceiling corner bass traps in an offensive corner solved my biggest room issue.

@kingsleuy here’s the general layout.

@rocray  I could leave today but I’ll make a run for it probably in 2-3 years. I’m in love with the build quality of these speakers, the Corian cabinets are incredible. I’d consider tucking them away until I move if I have to. In the right room with dual subs they would be insane and I already heard what they are capable of in a bigger room. The manufacturer still offers full service on them even though they are no longer in production so no worries there. Oh did I mention that I stole these for a fraction of the msrp ($4K+).

@rocray  Ha-ha! Oh but I have! Everything from a sofa with a pullout bed to an Air mattress. If I didn’t cherish sleep so much it woulda been done!

@baylinor

As I previously stated, it’s my living space not a dedicated listening room. I’m not into living in an apartment that looks like a Hi-Fi shop. When non-audiophile guests come over I tuck the speakers away in the bedroom which gives me maximum living space. If you haven’t played with near field listening then you wouldn’t believe how fantastic it can sound. Near field negates a lotta issues and puts up a big soundstage. I’ve demoed for a few audiophile friends who were skeptical and they all had the same eye brow lifting look on their faces. 😃 I’ve learned to never take any system for granted. Been in rooms with a ton of expensive gear that sounded meh, and been blown away by the simplest of set ups. 

@fleschler as I had mentioned throughout this thread, my room isn’t dedicated and rearrangement is not an option. Speakers are not new. I’ve had several decent monitors in my rig and they all performed great with my ProAcs being exceptionally good. In hindsight I guess I expected the Ref 3A’s to dominate my room based upon their build quality and how good they sound during the demo. For whatever reasons my room just does not play nice in the sandbox with them. The saving grace has been my Rel T/9X. With the Rel, the presentation is quite nice and I have no complaints other than the mid bass having a tendency to be light (depending on the recording).

I appreciate everyone’s input on this thread. You guys have been very helpful, thanks for helping me figure this one out. 👍

@audioguy85 Common sense solution that is impractical in my situation. It’s all been delineated in this thread.

@johnk I think we got it figured out…but thanks for your comment.