Listening Room or Components or my ears?


My system is sounding a bit harsh, hard, shrill. (Cronus Magnum lll Amp, Focal Aria 948 Speakers, Denon DCD 1700NE CD Player, Shunyata Gamma Cables). It is just CD play back at 1/3 volume. It's a basement, L shaped room. Carpeted cement floors. The Speakers are 3 foot from rear wall. Left speaker 2 foot from side wall. Right speaker is 15 foot from side wall. Speakers are silghtly toed in and a 6 foot apart. Equipment rack and two subs between them. The wall behind the speakers is covered in framed posters. Is this an obvious fault? The walls themselves are wood paneling. Is there a problem with only one apeaker next to a side wall? Ant thoughts or suggestions? Thanks

bzawa

Showing 1 response by steakster

My older Wilson speakers have the Focal 1" inverted titanium-coated tweeters.   They have a bad reputation for harsh highs.   When I first got them, I concurred.   Not anymore.  Now, they sound sublime.   Zero fatigue.   The solution was cleaning up the AC power - with special attention to the digital components.   

All of the above suggestions about the room, room treatments, speaker placement, speaker toe-in are correct - as is clean power.   It takes a fair amount of tweaking to properly dial-in good SQ.    The distance between the speakers is based on several factors.  If they’re too far apart, the soundstage becomes defocused & delayered - a vocalist sounds like their mouth is 5 ft wide.

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