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mystery muffled mids

I have a year-old setup I enjoy very much. B&W D3 805s and Hegel H590. Sound is really great. Imagining fantastic. every second with it is pleasure until I try to play classic rock. Anything by Led Zeppelin sounds like someone has smushed the sound and it lost the mid range, imagining disappears. I tried playing louder but live with too many people around to be able to do that constantly. And it did not improve anything noticably. 
I normally stream from Tidal via Audirvana. Anything by Bill Frisell, for instance, sounds phenomenal. You feel you can grab the instrument from the air. I mention this since he uses similar instruments to Zeppelin. Bowie's stuff sounds awful, as does Queen. I know they should sound better. Kind of Blue is fantastic. Gaucho, Sea Change, Elephunk, Wildfloflowers, Know what I mean? -- all great. To a friend, I said that this means bad recordings sound bad. The friend said that's not it. what do you say? How can I improve the sound? thank you in advance.
petar3
daveman2's avatar
daveman2
58 posts
 
What speaker cables are you using?
iseland's avatar
iseland
108 posts
 
To quote Herb Reichert " all speakers are not for all music "
hilde45's avatar
hilde45
4,783 posts
 
Interesting that it happens with more than Zeppelin. MC makes a good point, and I assume his conclusion applies to the other bad recordings you mention. 
Some address this with a Loki equalizer. Sometimes that works. 
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feldmen4
108 posts
 
Hey OP - can you clarify is it just LZ or pretty much all classic rock. MC’s theory might be right if it’s just LZ but if it’s all/most/ a significant portion of classic rock then his theory doesn’t work. I know MC has a strong bias against streaming and that often seems to cloud his judgement.  Also if this was the issue wouldn’t everyone streaming from Tidal experience this problem?
I had a similar issue recently though it wasn't with classic rock - rather it was just with certain recordings. After looking at interconnect issues and tightening my speaker drivers to no avail I finally realized the DAC I was using, in certain instances, was putting out too much voltage for my pre-amp to handle. Instead of using full output from my DAC I turned it down (randomly to 83/100) and the problem was solved. Not sure if this could be your issue as well. 
petar3 OP
61 posts
 
i played Black Sabath first album, no issues at all. Deep Purple sounds a bit thin. will try others. thanks again, everyone, for helping me with this. 
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