Old recordings sound poor on my Burmester 232


Burmester 232 is a fine machine. But for older recordings the sound is bright and poor compared to my Willsenton R8 which is excellent bang for buck and handles old recordings well  Will adding a quality tube preamp to my 232 help? Is there any change I can make? My system is Burmester 232 + Focal Kanta 3s + LTA Aero DAC + Musical Fidelity MX streamer + Cardas clear reflection cables.

mramaswamy11

@mramaswamy11 I have a boulder 866 integrated paired with Wilson Sabrina speakers. I have Nordost Tyr 2 XLRs between my DAC and boulder and Audience FrontRow speaker cables. Power cords are Kimber PK14 Ascent on DAC and PK10 Ascent on amp. 
I recently auditioned Cardas Clear Reflection XLRs. These cables exaggerated sibilance in female vocals and the highs were not as natural and airy as they are with my Nordost Tyr2. The mids were pushed forward and sounded more strained than the relaxed sounding Nordost.
I sent them back after giving them a couple of weeks.

Reason I’m bringing this up is when you figure a full loom of cables into equation with a highly resolving system you end up compounding the effect. You are most likely experiencing this phenomena.
I heard the burnester integrated and it is accurate and resolving. And so will be the upper tier Audio Research. 

Before you abandon Burmester, I would encourage you to try to address room acoustics first and try different cables. Focals will seek you out in the untreated room and hurt you. Secondly, try different cables. Start with replacing Cardas power cords with stock cords. Begin with amplifier. Get a feel for what that does. If it’s a positive effect then you know you need to experiment with different cables.

personally for me a full loom of the same cables never worked. 
 

Good luck. 

And please provide a list of bad sounding recordings. This will provide additional insight. 

This is a good example of how a reasonably highly resolving system accentuates the shortcomings of poor recordings. The LTA MicroZOTL Level 3 Pre pairs well with the Aero DAC, but it does not add much warmth, as one might expect from a tube preamp. It probably won’t magically fix harsh mastering. On the other hand, adding a heavily colored tube amp could compromise the clarity of the Burmester.

I’ve experienced a similar situation, but later I realized that what I needed was not warmth, but smoothness and liquidity. Based on my research, you could try a line-transformer passive pre like the Phasemation LT-1000. You can also explore forums to find other potentially suitable options, but I keep seeing reports that transformer-coupled I/O passive units often outperform many tube or active preamps.

You have a 25K integrated amplifier, I think part of your problem is your electronics 

You have a 4K DAC, Not a very high quality streamer, 

Focal kanta 3 are good, But for that amplifier your equipment is the weak link 

I owned a pair of kanta 3, with a Macintosh MA9000 integrated those two were good match but when I upgrade it to D'Agostino monos 

Progression, My speakers were the weak, I also had to upgrade my components 

To get everything humming along with all my cabling when you get a good amplifier you need good matching components and cabling it wouldn't hurt to run a dedicated line also, Yes it's expensive but everything comes and bits and pieces until you get it where you want it, But that burmeister 232 is a hell of a integrated