My stereo isn't doing it for me. Need advice


I have been trying to get a great sounding room for a while now and it still doesn't sound great or even good. I have a Prinaluna Dialogue 5 power amp and a Primaluna Prologue preamp. All with stock tubes so far. A Marantz c6005 CD player. Morrow mc3 interconnects and Kimber 8tc speaker cable. My speakers are Dynaudio x12's which sound the best in my room. I also have Dynaudio x32 speakers and a pair of KEF LS50 speakers. Also a REL T-5 subwoofer. My room is my office and is 9 x 11 with 8 Foot ceilings. Some acoustic stuff sounds great but the louder stuff not so much. I find I listen to music that sounds good rather than music I want to hear. Any suggestions on what I can change. I also bought a Class D Audio 200 watt per channel amplifier that makes everything sound even worse.
128x128dylanfan

Showing 1 response by rlwainwright

It would seem that even a cursory reading of the responses indicates that you have a room that is your main problem. The speaker/room interface is, BY FAR, the most important arbiter of good sound quality.

The folks who are advising that you run around throwing equipment at your problem are way off base. Adding an AC power conditioner isn't gonna do jack sh!t for you. And neither will expensive speaker cables and over-priced AC cables.

You *must* improve your speaker/room interface. The best ways to do this are:

1) Carefully "tuning" of the room/speakers to eliminate early reflection points and peaks/nulls caused by standing waves.

2) Employing the use of "room correction" software (RCS). Surely you've heard of Audyssey, Dirac, Trinnov and other such systems? If not, time to get on Google and start getting educated. The better RCS systems can do an astonishing job of taming problem room/speaker interfaces.

In fact, your best bet is to combine 1 and 2 above. Read up on how to "tame" your room with acoustic treatments and employ the tricks learned there. Then get an RCS system and spend a coupla days or so dialing in the room using the RCS.

I flat guaran-damn-tee you that if you do these two things your system will sound *worlds* better!! And the knowledge you gain from this exercise will allow you to setup any future system much more quickly, easily, and accurately.

Feel free to contact me off-list if you'd like some help or advice....

-RW-