I need some clarity


Hey guys, can yall give some suggestions on how to brighten the sound of my system. It consists of:
Ah! Njoe Tjeob CDP with the Burr Brown OPA627 Op-amp upgrade
Van Den Hul The Bay C5 IC
Parasound HCA 750 power amp
Acoustic Reasearch speaker wire (to be replaced soon)
Magnepan MMG

The midrange is quite nice and strong, the bass is fine, but I need more clarity and detail. My options in placement is very limited because I live in the dorm at my school, plus I have a roommate so I only have half of the room. I'm hoping I wont have to buy a pre amp with tone controls or brighter speakers. Any and all suggestions are welcome.

Thanks
lawbadman

Showing 4 responses by dekay

What tubes are you using in the Ah! deck? These would seem to be a likely candidate as it's the source.

Plenty of info on tube rolling with these units @ AA.
The late production Sovtek 6922's have about as much HF extension as most of the more desirable 6922's (exceptions would be early Amperex USA 7308's and Tungstram 6922's), so if you are not hearing HF detail then it's not the tubes.

A silver IC will change the sound. A good/inexpensive silver IC is the Homegrown Audio Super Silver (used ones show up in the classifieds) and it has an exciting sound to it.

Instead of spending more money @ this point I will suggest more time/effort in regard to setting up the system. Try placing the CD player on different surfaces, organize the cabling and experiement more with speaker placement (a few inches or degrees of angle will alter the sound of your speakers). In other words get the most out of what you already have and then go from there.

You are probably dealing with a bad room and a bad power source to start with, but fudging these factors runs into some money. Start with the easy/inexpensive things first.
So ZaiK:

What decent small monitors do you suggest in the $0-$50 price range? This is the budget that I ended up with in my last post.

The MMG's can sound quite good when set up half way right and this takes some time if you are not experienced with planers.

I do not see any problems with the system (should sound pretty damned good if the speakers can be placed 24" from the front wall) and suggested further work on setting it up properly.

As far as some of the silver IC's go I feel that they work quite well with softer sounding speakers (like the less expensive Vandersteens and the little Maggies). Since when is using the proper IC a tweak if it balances out what is otherwise lacking (in this case dynamics and HF's)?

Oh, and the same to you Dweller (we probably listened to the MMG's in the same shop - Shelly's). They sounded good and musical to me for a $550 planer.
ZaiK:

Looks like we agree more than disagree.

What do you think of our future Lawman trying some DIY diffusion panels for the back wave (place them on the front wall behind the speakers)?

There are some examples of these @ the Cain & Cain website (photos of their listening room) and it looks like two panels could be made with a single (4 x 8) sheet of MDF and a scroll saw (glue them up).

I had once considered using these with a pair of the little Acoustats in our spare bedroom which is about the same size as a typical dorm room and in which the speakers would have had to be approx. 24" from the front wall. I gave up on the project as the room was converted from a non-cat zone (we needed to add a second litter box in the bath off this room due to the addition of a psycho cat).