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Soundstage gone

Hi guys,
I was really happy with the sound I had from my system until I decided to upgrade my turntable to MC stage. What I had: Linn LP12 with Lingo 3, Akito tonearm and Adikt MM cartridge. The amp is MA2275, speakers B&W 802. Recently I upgraded TT with Radical power supply, Urika MC internal phono stage, Ekos tonearm and Kandid cartridge. My amp has only MM phono stage, so tried to plug the cords from the table into other available inputs: CD2, tuner or DVD. The sound was amazing but the soundstage almost gone. I was shocked. There is no more splitting sounds between speakers and all the records plays as mono. Is there a way to fix that? Forgot to mention: I have a dedicated power line and my cables AQ Hurricane, AQ Oak.

lviv

Showing 2 responses by teo_audio

teo_audio
2,197 posts
 
New parts, when breaking in, tend to sound like dirty mono.

then they go darker but cleaner, slowly... and then the speed, imaging and subtleties like plosives and the pop and the like..slowly come back..

Leave the phono stage on, even when not playing anything. Just the quiescent signals will help speed up the break in.

This will take weeks.

teo_audio
2,197 posts
 
When I said weeks, I meant to get to the ’final’ broken in sound qualities. where there is no perceivable improvement, on a day to day basis, anymore.

the majority of the break in will happen in the first few days, but will sound spitty and not clear, for about 3-4-5 days (24-7 line level playback) and then after about 100 hours, will be mostly broken in. Some say it takes about 250 hours, for their gear or cables to break in.

When I said, weeks, I meant the phono section. This is due to the input section of the phono preamp seeing only the milli to micro volt signal levels of the cartridge. Phono preamps take the longest time, as does the cables in a tonearm and the like.
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