2. amps-preamps
  3. 1043613580

I'm depressed, my system hurts my ears.Please help

I've been enjoying my stereo for quite some time now, but my latest component addition is hurting my ears. My system is as follows:

Music Hall CD25 CD player
McIntosh MC2105 amp (30 year old amp)
Joseph Audio RM22si signatures
Signal Cable Analog 2 interconnects
Kimber 4TC biwired speaker cable
Denon AVR1700 HT receiver as preamp

With the Denon the system sounded pretty good, but it was the obvious weak link, and was actually performing its own unnecessary A to D to A conversion). I swapped the Denon for a Creek OBH12 passive. I added the Creek because in my careful, volume leveled comparisons of the Denon compared to no pre at all, no pre was much cleaner and more natural (I an use no pre because amp has volume knobs).

So I put in the Creek passive to keep that clarity along with switching and an easy volume control, but now I can't sit in the sweet spot of my speakers and listen, because my ears start to hurt at volume levels that used to be just fine. Is this clipping due to an impedance matching problem? Is this just me receiving the full spectrum of the sound and my ears can't handle it? I remember having a similar problem with a very nice car stereo I installed, it sounded very good but always hurt my ears compared to my worse sounding older car stereo.

I almost wish I had never started down the audiophile path, this is depressing. It's tough to do swapping style comparisons because once my ears start hurting, any music will make them hurt until they have a chance to recover. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.
matt8268

Showing 3 responses by marakanetz

marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
kimber is too fast for fast josephs.
the suggestion for MIT is right on.
you might also try AQ Midnight.
wire creek to mac with MIT-s as well.

your amp/passive pre- combination is near-perfect with high input sencitivity, low feedback and high input impedance of your poweramp.
also you might not have enough power to swing RM22 and I would suggest to get another same Mac(plenty on ebay to fight for) to use them as monos.
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
There is another cheap solution to acquire Musical Fidelity X10 tube buffer for your CD-player. Despite adding extra pair of interconnects this unit realy brings lifeless digital components with CDs together to the life.

I believe in your situation you simply experience "digital sickness syndrom" that I used to have not a long while ago thus transfered my collection almost entirely to vinyl. As to this X10 unit it realy brings digital playback to life since I heard in ensemble with vintage NAD CD-player.

It is well known that re-locking errors, lack of resolution brings very unpleasant audiable waveforms onto the wide-band amplification components that can affect upper mid-range, high freequencies and even but not to the significant level bass. Your new passive Creek tend to reveal everything good and bad so the solution is to improve the source at first.

Also you can try to get high quality DAC such as Bel Canto DAC1 that can also someway cure DSS.

As to my digital setup I have a very good transport with relatively mediocre DAC. It doesn't produce any fatigue freequencies to me but I admit sounds cold. For now I only care about analogue and digital setup will probably be for the separate system(bedroom).
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
I believe that Plinius 8200 is the best integrated for the money.
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