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Great speaker sounds terrible in my room?

So today I took a ride to demo a set of speakers that has had my interest for quite some time, the Ref 3A Royal Virtuoso. These things are completely overbuilt, top notch parts and built like tombstones, the cabinets are made of Corian and are completely inert. They sounded excellent during the demo. The owner was running them with a beautiful VAC preamp / Pass labs amp and a Moon Dac-streamer. They were on 24” stands and approximately 2ft off the back wall. They sounded superb as expected…I pack em up, take em home. I rig them up…my setup is near field with the speakers 10ft off the front wall and the speakers are 5ft away from my listening position. I fire them up and….shocker. They got nothing. They literally were lost with Zero bass response. I actually thought maybe something was connected wrong…I checked the connections ( more on that in a minute) all good. These are higher efficiency (91db) than my ProAc Response D2’s (88db) yet the Ref 3A’s sounded much lower at my usual listening level. I’m still scratching my head over how this speaker is unable to kick ass. I have decent gear with plenty of firepower (ARC D400MKII amp, Levinson 380s Pre, Denafrips Terminator Dac, Aurender N100SC streamer. I’ve had Sonus Farber Concertino’s, Vienna Acoustics Haydn, KEF 150’s and my ProAcs all set up in the same manner and they all were excellent performers. The one thing that I’m wondering about is the Binding post on the Ref 3A…it uses the Cardas screw down clamp type post that only accepts spades or bare wire. my cables are banana terminated and I was using cheapo adapters. Could this all could be a connection related issue or just a speaker/room mismatch?

Thoughts / comments are much appreciated

 

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yogiboy's avatar
yogiboy
5,472 posts
 

Phase and polarity are not the same thing! Polarity is a function of positive and negative wiring, while phase is a function of time.

holmz's avatar
holmz
2,328 posts
 

If they were from a store sale, call the store. Or return them.

If it was a private sale, then offer the fellow, or woman, a dinner (or something) to help you set them up.
(If they did it once, then there is proof that it worked for them.)

chayro
2,927 posts
 

Unfortunate.  The same thing happened to me several times.  I have said many times that in a domestic environment with limited placement options, it is a total crapshoot how speakers would work.  In my own home, a tiny pair of Harbeth P3s had better bass response than the much larger Model 30s.  Totem Forests and Hawks sounded horrible, but the Model 1s were very good.  Outside of finding a better placement, I don't think there's anything you can do.  See if the seller would consider taking them back with maybe a sweetener of a couple hundred for his trouble.  

mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,201 posts
 

It has nothing to do with the binding posts or any defect in the speaker. It is the interaction of the speaker in your room. If they sounded excellent somewhere else than you also can make them sound excellent. Moving them back just a foot can dramatically change the bass response but forget about getting much under 80 Hz with a 8" driver unless you sit a meter away from the speaker. Many speakers have boosted mid bass to make up for no low bass. A speaker that is flat might sound bass light. The best way to deal with this problem is with a calibrated USB microphone and a computer. Knowing is always better than guessing. This is true of any system. Finally, adding subwoofers with digital bass management is an incredible way of making little stand speakers sound like big Wilson's

jasonbourne52's avatar
jasonbourne52
2,863 posts
 

Ten feet from the front wall is way too far! No wonder they appear to lack bass! Try one or two feet instead!

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