My "room" is completely untreated and has lots of noise provided by my sub zero fridge and freezer units.Sup folks,
I’m surprised respondents in this thread hasn’t jumped all over this part. I’ve been using Magnepan MMGs as my mains for the past 16 or so years and through several homes. One thing is for sure the room had a huge impact on the sound overall. His room is untreated, but that doesn’t speak to what’s in it. I’ve found regardless of the furniture and carpeting (which I don’t believe makes as much as a difference with planar speakers), controlling room modes and diffusing the back wave make a big difference. With equipment like what he has, yeah I think better cables are in order, better made cables, I’m not so sure that means $300 a meter, but just something constructed properly to lose the noise and not affect the signal. I’d suggest looking into room treatments before dumping money into a new amp. You might even play with speaker placement some more after you implement the room treatments.
With that said, I’m in a new home in CA and while flutter echo isn’t bad, I’m sure I’ll need to tackle room modes, just waiting on my gear to ship from NY so I can do some testing and have some fun with my old stuff before my Tekton Moabs arrive. I pretty much ordered speakers that are more expensive than the supporting gear but when I had everything setup and tuned right in my last listening room my XPA-2 amp, two polk powered subs and denon receiver (wish I could remember the model) made some magic. I got usable bass to 18hz and solid 20hz with deviations of 3-6 db through 18khz (I can't hear past 18.5khz) in some areas, nothing crazy, I think I got lucky with that space, it was not your usual dimensions or construction.
The wife and I talked about it and before we dump any money into electronics, treating the room will be 1st priority and then work from there. So, I’ll probably spend another $1-1.5k on room treatments (got rid of some stuff before I moved, I didn’t think I’d be using it anytime soon) before I worry about throwing a couple times that on new amplification. I might even look at a better pre-processor before the amp.
TL;DR Treat the room... And maybe put those noisy devices (fridge, etc) on isolating pads, or consider modifying the motor/compressor mounts), I think Herbies Audio Lab is a good place to start looking for isolation pads.
Kind Regards,
T