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Help! Advice and Recommendations please (system sounds bad)

Good day everyone,

I am at the end of my wits. After being without my rig for 11 months due to a move, I am trying to dial in my system with horrible results at the new home. 

 

I feel it goes beyond room differences and speaker placement.

Everything is identical (except the sound). 

 

I would love a recommendation for someone in the CHICAGOLAND AREA that would be a good fit to tune my system. 

 

In the meantime, I humbly ask the the group for any opinions on things to try. I am hoping that one of the settings is just wrong on the plate amps or the crossover, but I have experimented with all I can think of. I  hope it is my ignorance on something obvious. 

 

The mids seem muddled. Not rich. I am getting some perceived distortion and harshness when the mids peak.  When the music is displaying a strong full spectrum I lose a lot of detail and separation. 

The soundstage seems to lack depth. The speakers do not disappear as much. 

 

It feels as though something is not being very efficient. Please note that the mid and low dials on the crossover, at my previous home, was turned to about 2:00-3:00. Now it is closer to 11:00. I had to turn  it down otherwise the problems with the mids were worse. 

 

I have the high gain setting selected on my DAC. Low seemed incredibly dull. I am utilizing the mid/high and sub inputs on the crossover. 

 

I have included pics of the setting and room. Thank you in advance for any help. It is greatly appreciated. 

Equipment:

I know you have access to all the audiophile publications, reviews , and best practices, owners manuals, and such. I have the following two-channel system:

Conrad Johnson Art Mono block amps

Conrad Johnson Act 2 series 2 pre-amp

Magnepan 3.7i speakers 

Lampizator DAC

SublimeAcoustic K231 3 Way Active Crossover

2 GR Research 3x12 subwoofer towers powered by a rythmik A370PEQ plate amp. 

jordanmj
baylinor's avatar
baylinor
1,670 posts
 

+1 @rhljazz 

I also noticed the dropped down ceiling. As @barts said, it has to be the room. The equipment is outstanding but the room is far from it.

tosnc
30 posts
 

I agree the room is probably the culprit, especially the ceiling.  They are called acoustic ceiling tiles for a reason.  You may be able to replace the existimg tiles with less absorbent tiles or even diffusers.

Some other things to consider, when I had Magneplanar 3.5’s I always had them with the ribbons on the inside. Also, they really liked fake ficus behind them in the corners and hated having anything in between them. In this new room you may have to start from scratch on every aspect of speaker and even equipment placement.
 

As suggested above, I would start with a basic system, no subs, just source and amps and experiment with placement until optimized and then start adding things back in one at a time. It would not surprise me if you ended up with only amps by the speakers and subs in opposite corners of the room. 

tosnc
30 posts
 

Something like this may help

https://www.soundacousticsolutions.com/product/pyramid-diffuser/

Not the prettiest but you get the concept. 

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