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Great speaker sounds terrible in my room?

So today I took a ride to demo a set of speakers that has had my interest for quite some time, the Ref 3A Royal Virtuoso. These things are completely overbuilt, top notch parts and built like tombstones, the cabinets are made of Corian and are completely inert. They sounded excellent during the demo. The owner was running them with a beautiful VAC preamp / Pass labs amp and a Moon Dac-streamer. They were on 24” stands and approximately 2ft off the back wall. They sounded superb as expected…I pack em up, take em home. I rig them up…my setup is near field with the speakers 10ft off the front wall and the speakers are 5ft away from my listening position. I fire them up and….shocker. They got nothing. They literally were lost with Zero bass response. I actually thought maybe something was connected wrong…I checked the connections ( more on that in a minute) all good. These are higher efficiency (91db) than my ProAc Response D2’s (88db) yet the Ref 3A’s sounded much lower at my usual listening level. I’m still scratching my head over how this speaker is unable to kick ass. I have decent gear with plenty of firepower (ARC D400MKII amp, Levinson 380s Pre, Denafrips Terminator Dac, Aurender N100SC streamer. I’ve had Sonus Farber Concertino’s, Vienna Acoustics Haydn, KEF 150’s and my ProAcs all set up in the same manner and they all were excellent performers. The one thing that I’m wondering about is the Binding post on the Ref 3A…it uses the Cardas screw down clamp type post that only accepts spades or bare wire. my cables are banana terminated and I was using cheapo adapters. Could this all could be a connection related issue or just a speaker/room mismatch?

Thoughts / comments are much appreciated

 

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Showing 3 responses by oldhvymec

oldhvymec
5,101 posts
 

Beard the speaker stand. Just use a piece of cardboard the width of the speaker all the way to the floor from the bottom of the speaker. I bet that fixes it.

THEN understand what you did and make a real nice looking piece to make permanent. Not all bass drivers are created equal or stands perfect for every speaker either.. The right stand can make or break a stand mount..

You can place them where you want, with a lot better BASS..

Regards

oldhvymec
5,101 posts
 

So you spiked the stands to the floor but isolate them from the speaker or coupled them to the speaker too. Your going to run a REL sub (coupled to the floor) with floor spiked speaker stands and coupled monitors?

OK!!

I’ll step aside on that one. Have fun.. We think WAY different..

Regards

oldhvymec
5,101 posts
 

Good to hear you did decouple. The way they are made you did the best thing you could to actually make a music sub. REL is old tech with great paint. I've fixed quite a few VMPS and REL subs for music.. Boom Boom is easy. Audiophile is a little tougher.. I secure a butt plate and add, springs, pods or air ride. I've used all with great success. Air bags decouple the most complete, they can be a PITA if not thought out.. I used a 10 and 15" bicycle tire tube under 2 400lb columns. worked perfect for 15 years.. You could tell when they needed air. Once a year two pumps each. 

Nobound with ear plugs stuffed in the springs does ok.... :-) Get the black ones, they don't stand out like a sore thumb..

I'm only in to ugly women, my gear has to look really good. Easier maintenance for both to tell the truth. :-)

Regards

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