They give you a break in time for these?
.
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
- ...
- 113 posts total
Let's see if I picture this correctly. Studio apartment. Cannot place them closer to the front wall. Maybe could place them 2-3 feet closer to the front wall. Would like to keep aesthetically pleasing and utilitarian... I picture the "front wall" as being the kitchen/dining area? Is room rearrangement possible? I had a studio apartment about 20x35 feet. Entry, kitchen/dining, living area, sliding door, lanai, then10 story down. My placement was reverse of yours. My front wall was the sliding door. My back was the kitchen/dining area. 1- You are near field listening anyway, turn everything 90 degrees. Use those walls. 2-Reverse like I had. Have the kitchen behind you. If rearrangement cannot be possible, maybe something like of a reflective room divider 2-3 feet behind your speakers. Haaa, Just for picture imagery. A pair of Magnepans. Or two. |
Sometimes in life,it is what it is. @jl1ny, how long until you bug out of ny? Maybe these aren’t the speakers for you right now? I’ve heard really great things about Ref 3A. However they seem to be a little fussier than the ProAc’s. If you can live with the shortcomings until you move,cool and the gang. If not, nothing wrong with revisiting them down the road. |
- 113 posts total