Help . . . I’m dumber than my active speakers!


Bought a pair of Dutch & Dutch 8C because I was curious about active speakers. Have read many great reviews and comments, so my expectations were high. Set them up with their app, inputting their distance from the front wall, sidewalls, and listening chair. They are a Roon endpoint, so the source is a Roon Nucleus on my network. They cannot touch my main system and I think I’m doing something wrong. They are not as dynamic as I expected. They have great bass. I’ve read that they have a wide soundstage, but these do not. In fact, they lack dimensionality in my opinion.  I’ve never used REW, but I’m thinking I should get a microphone and give it a try. Any thoughts?
 

The digital side of my main system is:

dCS Bartök Apex

Audio Research Ref 6SE into

Parasound JC1 monoblocks

Wilson Yvette loudspeakers

Transparent Ultra Gen 6 balanced interconnects and speaker cables

Nordost Red Dawn power cords

Carpeted floor over concrete with no other room treatments 

kcpellethead

Try near listening yes but before put some enough big damping weight, concrete in my case , on them...Tune the weight necessary by listening experiment...

And isolate them by some coupling-decoupling sandwich of materials ( granite plate -quartz feet -granite -sorbothane duro 70 plate- bamboo plate-cork plate-oak plate ).

@kcpellethead I think your main system is very good and there is no reason to think the active speakers can do the same. I have heard Dutch and Dutch at shows and liked them. We have to ask ourselves can a built in amp  match these other electronics? Your first system is very well matched. Give the D and D time but I doubt it will be as good.

Try this, I didn’t read your entire post, but this made a huge difference on my active speakers. 
 

Max the speaker volume out and use your source to control the volume. 
 

Turned my Dynaudio from dead to alive. 
 

Best!

The Ref 6 IMO is not a preamp that generally will give you a very open sound stage and that may be why you are hearing what you are hearing.

 

Happy Listening.

Hi kcpellethead,

I think your 8c's are not performing the way they could. Please reach out to me on info@dutchdutch.com. I'd be happy to help you get the most out of your 8c's. 

Best regards,

Martijn Mensink

Dutch & Dutch