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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
Ag insider logo xs@2x
feldmen4
110 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. 
chorus
976 posts
 
Try a pair of Cornwalls. People on this forum say they are great rock speakers. Oh, you also listen to classical ? Well then you need multiple speakers. About 4 sets and you'll be okay.

Maybe 4 rooms too.

+1 for island
gmercer
193 posts
 
What speaker cables are you using?
Stop. Just stop. 
daveman2's avatar
daveman2
58 posts
 
@gmercer - don't know if you're just trolling, but I will explain why I asked in case you are actually just ignorant, and also for the sake of the OP and others in this thread. The OP has a great amp and speakers, truly excellent stuff in fact. He/she does not need to change those, at least for the sake of quality. Changes in his/her price range would mostly be a lateral move, at best. Tidal, although not as good as Qobuz, should not inherently have "bad mids." So, by process of elimination, there are a few variables left that could be causing the OP's issues: speaker cables, power issues (bad power coming into house/room, limiting/missing power filter or conditioner, etc.), or room interactions (no ICs, so not a consideration). For simplicities sake I asked only about the speaker cables.
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