2. misc-audio
  3. 994560456

Not happy yet

I have recently discovered "hi-fi" and have been replacing a few parts of my system. But I have not yet got the involving sound I am looking for. My judgement of the sound: the bass is too loud relative to other sounds, and the voices aren't prominent and involving enough. The loss of tone controls in my new higher-end pre-amp and amp (replaced older receiver) means I can't throttle the bass back as I used to do.

Any advice on where to go next? Here is the equipment:

Yamaha CDX-410u CD player (older single-play player)
Classe CP-35 pre-amp
Rotel RB-981 Power amp
Celestion S300 speakers
Cabling is generic

Room is about 12' x 25', with 8' ceiling. The speakers are at one of the room, several feet from back and side walls. Bare hardwood floor, bare ceiling, fairly sparse wall decoration.

Music is mainly Jazz, older rock, folk. I notice the well-recorded jazz sounds pretty darn good, very good highs, decent voices on the best recordings. Jazz tends not to be bass-heavy to start with.

Any ideas on what the next upgrade or change (room treatment?) should be? I have to go one thing at a time, but I expect to replace almost everything (except possibly the pre-amp and speakers) along the way.

Thanks for any advice...
ehart

Showing 1 response by dds_hifi

dds_hifi
26 posts
 
My vote: replace the CD player and improve the room environment - forget about the cables and power cords (you've got bigger fish to fry!).

First, the CD player. You don't have to spend thousands of dollars here. There are a host of really good players for a $1,000 (Thule, Arcam, Classe - used). My recommendation, though, is that you buy a good used transport and buy an inexpensive but good DAC (Perpetual Tech, Monarchy, etc.). DAC prices are coming way down. Over the past twelve months I've compared some very expensive ones with these less expensive ones, and the difference is becoming fairly small.

Second, the room. Your room conditions suck. I know this becuase my room was fairly similar to yours. However, I've made a number of changes that have dramatically improved the sound performance. Without going into to too much detail, go to the TAS website (www.theabsolutesound.com), access "Free Articles" and read REG's article on the eight ways to improve your speaker perfomance. This is a great article and will address the host of problems you are facing in your room. After making all the changes in my room I have improved the soundstage and frequency response. It's a striking improvement.

Good luck, and enjoy the music!
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