2. speakers
  3. 166269-141476

mystery muffled mids

I have a year-old setup I enjoy very much. B&W D3 805s and Hegel H590. Sound is really great. Imagining fantastic. every second with it is pleasure until I try to play classic rock. Anything by Led Zeppelin sounds like someone has smushed the sound and it lost the mid range, imagining disappears. I tried playing louder but live with too many people around to be able to do that constantly. And it did not improve anything noticably. 
I normally stream from Tidal via Audirvana. Anything by Bill Frisell, for instance, sounds phenomenal. You feel you can grab the instrument from the air. I mention this since he uses similar instruments to Zeppelin. Bowie's stuff sounds awful, as does Queen. I know they should sound better. Kind of Blue is fantastic. Gaucho, Sea Change, Elephunk, Wildfloflowers, Know what I mean? -- all great. To a friend, I said that this means bad recordings sound bad. The friend said that's not it. what do you say? How can I improve the sound? thank you in advance.
petar3
mofojo
2,289 posts
 
The Stereophile speaker measurements show about a 5db dip throughout a lot of the mid range. That could be some of it. 
Also I like the idea of doing a Quobuz trial. 
speakermaster
738 posts
 
It is the b&w speakers holding you back they are volume and dynamic limited because of crossover and driver coil saturation you need to switch to a different speaker and your system will come alive.
daveman2's avatar
daveman2
58 posts
 
I'm done with these forums. I don't ever see respectful discussion, but rather prideful lunacy. Good luck filtering through all the BS. My parting gift - https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/3-ingredients-to-a-healthy-audio-community
peterdavis
14 posts
 
You didn’t mention which format. I have a pressing of Led Zeppelin 2 that sounds as you described. I have LZ 2 on cd and it sounds nice. There may have been a weak run of vinyl at one time. Just my personal observations. I’m pretty much a vinyl loyalist so the album really was a bummer. 
asvjerry's avatar
asvjerry
4,608 posts
 
@iseland, +1...but one runs the risk of a listening space starting to look like a dealers' showroom....or like you 'do review'....;)
More to discover