2. amps-preamps
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Money well spent on Amp or Speakers

Hey Everyone,

This is my first post on Audiogon so please bare with me. I currently have a very simple stereo setup:
2 B&W xt8 speakers
1 B&W PV1 sub
1 Rotel RC-1550 Preamp
1 Rotel RB-1552 Amp

Everything was selected due to the slim design and that they fit snugly under/near my TV Cabinet. The room with the gear is rather small at roughly 350 sqft and it is mainly used for TV and light CD playback. I just feel that the current setup is missing a lot of mid-range and the disconnect can be audibly noticed in the gap in-between when the speakers seems to fade away and the sup kicks in. I would like to keep everything as simple as possible and wanted to get the communities feedback as to what component in the chain should/could be replaced for the best sonic improvement? I would only want to upgrade 1 component at this time and am leaning towards a tube based amp. Any thoughts/suggestions?
pndxprss99

Showing 1 response by pndxprss99

pndxprss99 OP
1 posts
 
Thanks for the response everyone. The gear seems to handle TV decently, but I was honestly really disappointed when doing CD playback. I have moved gear around, but am a little limited in terms of placement due to the room layout. Here's some more info:

Actual Room Footage: 306ft
TV Area = 195.5ft
Kitchen Area = 110.5ft

My gear is being feed directly from:
Samsung BD-P1600 Bluray player (connected via RCA)
Motorola DCX3400 Comcast Box (connected via RCA)

Room info:
Floor is carpeted (nylon?) with another medium sized wool carpet on top
Window Drapes 75% the right side of the room
Kitchen on the left side of the room (roughly 36% of the room)
5.5ft long leather Sofa 4.5ft directly away from the front of the speakers
XT8 Speakers separated 5.5ft from each other and angled 25% towards the center. Unfortunately they are only 0.5ft away from the wall. It will look very cluttered if I move them too far away from the wall.
PV1 is situated on the right corner of the wall angled 25% towards the center on front of the right speaker.

Current PV1 settings:
The PV1 does have phase shift and is set to the standard setting "+" (0 degrees), the crossover point at 80hz (sometimes 60hz), bass extension at max, and volume at 1/2 or so. Overall it sounds like it's working properly.
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