Vandersteen 3 w/ARC d240 MKII

I'm pretty good with Vandersteen's. Unfortunately, there's more than one thing that can cause your problem. Hold off on buying cables. I don't think they're to blame. Try 2 things first. Make sure you have the speakers positioned, and the back tilt set like it tells you in the owners manual. After that, closely examine your speaker cables. Its possible that you made a mistake when hooking them up. Make absolutely sure all of the cables are where they're supposed to be on the binding posts. For example, maybe you put the + on the -, or the - on the +. If you did that, and the speakers are wired out of phase, it can sound exactly like your description. Its a very common mistake.

I forgot to mention this in my last post. But do you have your 3's on stands? That's very important.

"The speakers are set up "pretty" good now, but ill work on the tilt and toe a little more.
The room is large at 16x16."

I don't know if you have the owners manual, but you need to follow the formula Vandersteen gives you to set the back tilt. Also, since your room is fairly small, and is close to being a cube, you're going to have to try different placements, and will probably end up being different than where your SL-2's were. Vandersteens don't need to be too far apart, like most other speakers do. Start off by putting them 6 feet apart, from inside edge to inside edge. One thing that you will have to watch closely is how far away your listening chair is from the rear wall. When you use the formula, your listening chair has to be a certain distance from the speakers, in order for the speakers to work properly. You don't want your head up against the rear wall, and that may require you to move the speakers closer to the front wall. You'll have to experiment some, but always make sure your listening chair is at the distance the formula gives you. Leave that as a fixed variable.

Looking at your cable situation, its much more important that you biwire the speakers with 2 completely separate runs of cable. No internal biwire. The good thing is that you don't need to use really expensive cables. It might be a good idea to go to Best Buy and pick up a spool of Audioquest bulk cable and cut 2 pairs at whatever length you need. For the time being, it should work fine.

Overall, I think your overall strategy will have to be getting the speakers placed properly. Your SL-2's are much easier to place in a smaller room, so expect to put a little time in experimenting. Also keep in mind, the Vandersteen's are much more revealing than the Martin Logan's. Especially in the high frequencies. Do all of your setup work with the contour’s set flat. When you feel like you've done the best job you can setting the speakers up, then make some small adjustment if you really need to.

"02-04-15: Plasmatech
The D240 has plenty of muscle."

They sound very good too. I've always felt the whole D series was very under rated. Its a great sounding, all around amp.

"I just find it hard to believe this much resolution could be affected by toe and tilt, but stranger things have happened in my world....lol"

Its more of a timing issue than resolution. Once you get your speakers set up a little better, play some music while sitting in your listening chair, and then stand up. Notice how much the sound changes when you do this. You'll see right away as to what I'm talking about.

"The Vandersteens only seem to come alive if the volume is high, and that is why I was curious about the amp."

That's not necessarily true. It could be something else, like your amp.