How to warm up cold-sounding Rotel/B&W system?


I recently purchased Rotel 1062 Integrated, Rotel 1072 CD player and B&W 703 speakers. Perhaps system will settle in over time, but at this point it sounds very cold and clinical to me. Highs on many cd's are downright painfully harsh and generally the sound is fatiguing. "Warm and musical" it ain't. I tried the CD player with my old set-up: Nakamichi RE-1 receiver and B&W P5's, and this coldness was not apparent. I also tried substituting the P5's for the 703's with both Rotel pieces and the sound was still pretty chilly, though not quite as bad. Any suggestions? Maybe it's the amp? I have Transparent "the wall" speaker wire and whatever the cheapest Transparent interconnects are. I've heard people call Transparent stuff "cloudy" but never "chilly". Any suggestions?
stuartk

Showing 1 response by darkmoebius

I know exactly what you are talking about and some. Five years ago, I had a Rotel 980BX amp and RC-995 preamp driving B&W 602 S3 speakers.

Obviously a big step down, speakerwise, from yours. But, I ended up getting rid of the whole setup because of the extremely aggressive high frequencies. My ears simply could not take it. I tend to be sensitive to HF's and prefer soft dome tweeters to metal anyway.

I tried a lot of different things to smooth things out, but nothing ever made it to the tolerable level. Rotel+B&W = cold&hard, to me.

How many hours play-time do you have on the system?

But, keep in mind, I am the low-power SET tube amp + high-efficiency single-driver system kind of guy. Many perceive what I like as soft and mushy with no balls.

Different strokes for different folks.