audio research sp-10

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the 2Ci's have adjustments for the mid and treble drivers on the back of the speaker right near the cable connections. I would check these and make sure they are not set on the high side, e.g. +2 dB. I had 2Ci's for over 10 years and never thought they were bright. I've never heard the SP-10 or D-125 but all reviewers have said the SP-10 was, if anything, on the dark side. Not sure about the D-125, but I don't think bright would apply to it either. You might want to try some good quality budget cables like Kimber Hero interconnects and 4TC/8TC speaker cables in place of the no-name stuff you have. Doubt that is the cause of the brightness but it might alleviate thin bass that could give the same impression.

newbee...thinking about what you said..by axis on the speakers..do you mean to toe them in that much? ive been kinda going on the triangle to the listening position philosophy..equal distance between speakers..and listening position..ughh..listening now..and they really sound BAD on the speaker stands..i mean i was lacking a tad of bass with them on the floor, and a bit of the punch i prefer but the sounstage was awesome and the vocals brought tears to my eyes..geez this stuff is confusing!!!

I'm sure you've figured this out, but the axis of the speaker is on a line perpendicular from the face of the speaker. On axis the speaker would be facing you. Crossing the axis of the speakers in front of you has the principle befit of reducing sidewall reflections and still allowing you to have wide separation and sound stage in a small room. Re height of the speaker - Ideally you want the tweeter height to be level with your ear height, so if your tweeter is 33" off the floor thats where your ear should be. If the tweeter is higher in the speaker than your ears,sit on pillows :-). Re the effect of stands, other than to put the tweeter at ear level...If the manufacturer recommends 6" stands they have probably mounted the woofer so that it works in conjuction with the floor to produce the smoothest upper bass. When you start raising the speaker higher you are going to change this and produce a upper bass suck out. When you lower it you can produce a peak in the same area. I would suggest, for the purposes of getting the best bass response that you invest a couple of bucks in a Radio Shack sound level meter and a test disc with test tones (see the Rives site) - you will learn a lot about speaker set up including positioning of the listening position as well as speakers. Remember, to a lot of us this is a Hobby as well as having access to great music and sound. My moniker is a just a reminder to me about humility - I'm also into flagellation, when all else fails :-). Don't fear moving the speakers about 'til it comes together...every room is different and fractions of inches, ultimately can make a real difference. What you will hear when you really get it right is not only width and height of sound stage, but a depth of image and the sonic illusion of seeing stars on a dark night out in the deep country side. TAKE YOUR TIME, if it were simple it wouldn't be a good hobby.

Wow! I think synthgirl is absorbing a lot of ideas here is a very short time. It was never my intention to put any negative spin on the SP-10. Afterall I owned it for 8 years so that has to tell you how much I liked this product. I was only trying to make you aware that what you have, for the sake of playing CDs, you could make a change to your system at no added cost and gain an incredible amount of improvement. The other point I wanted to make was that the SP-10 can not at all be the cause of any bright or forward characteristic to your system. It has a laid back top end which allows you to hear the magical mids even more....almost too much of a good thing except for us ambience and bloom fanatics.

And yes, I also forgot to mention how fortunate you are to have this music system at the start. The sound quality you now have took many of us 10+ years to achieve.

Concerning the LS5, it came out I think in late 93 or early 94. In late 94 the Mk II came out which had a lower noise floor and changed to use 10 6922 tubes. In 1997, after the Ref1 came along, much of what was gained from this was put into a LS5 III. This had reduced gain and 8 6922s. So many people I met and talked to here in Minneapolis preferred the LS5 III to the Ref1. Do a search here for the LS5 and you will read what I have written on the differences between the II and the III.

Concerning my system, I have not gotten around to listing my system like so many other members. But the magical ARC PH2/LS5III/DAC3II/VT130 has morphed into AesthetixIo/BAT31SE/ManleyRefDAC/Wolcott. Speakers are Magnepan 3.5. I have two TTs: Clearaudio Ref/TQi/Accurate cartridge and VersaDynamics 2 with Koetsu RWS. A pioneer PD65 is my CD transport which drives a Genesis Time Lens which drives the Manley DAC. All cables are NBS Statement except for the phono cable with is SilverAudio SilverBreeze.

And yes, Newbee is clearly anything but a newbie.

So what was your first question again? 8-)

John

hi pmotz...all the controls are in neutral..being the purist i am..however i do think you are correct in that what i am hearing may not be so much brightness as it is lack of bass to balance it. do you have the kimbers on yours? do you have them on the stands they are supposed to be on? i believe that could be one of my big probs as well..not being on the "proper stands", also the speaker wires and as you suggest..that is the only thing that hasn't been changed in my entire system since starting out with nad and the vandies...hey, do you by any chance have the 2ci instructions?? thanks for your input :)