High end sound


So I'm gonna get to the point. My system sounds kind of flat and dull

It doesn't seem to have crisp tight sound it all. It should sound much better. I think than it does. I'm wondering if it's the old speaker cables and interconnects and I have a old vintage phono cartridge it just seems like it's kind of dead sounding...Vpi classic 

Goldstein ph10

Audible  Illusions  m3a.  New tubes

Bryston 4bsst 

Magnapan  1.7i

Here comes the questionable part, the cables. I have old cables monster m one thousandHere comes the questionable part, the cables. I have old cables monster M 1 series. One speaker's cables M 1000 series.One speaker's cables m one thousand series one interconnects ..one pr.m1000 is

Talisman s cartridge retipped. I don't have a lot of extra money. My wife just died last year. Can anybody give me a hand with this? Thank you much.

 

 

But i

pointtrucking

My condolences for your loss. 

My room is pretty well the same size as yours 14.5 x 20 x 9.5 ceiling. It's funny because this past week I started playing around with speaker repositioning and was utterly amazed what simple tweaks actually did for the better.  Lowering the gain on my amplifier also fine tuned the sound making the soundstage wider vs forward, and more holographic with defined imagining. I also experimenting with USB, speaker jumpers and power cords. While my new custom Furutech power cord that is replacing the factory cord for my Innuos Pulsar Streamer has made improvements, my older Ansuz X2 USB sounds better than the newer Audience FrontRow USB, and my Klipsch LaScala factory jumpers also sound better than the Furutech JumperFlux-S jumpers.  Lot's of trial and error! Room treatment is next on my list.  There's a lot of great info on room treatment on Audiogon.  

Take exelent cables from Ice age audio USA -  hi end cables for reasonable price !

Sorry about your wife.  

Cables can indeed make a difference, but it involves a lot of trial and error to find what you like. 

Have you considered room treatment? 

Servicing the amps seems prudent too at some point 

There are also some good mods and upgrades available for the crossovers of your Maggies. Some not only improve sound quality, but make them easier to drive. 

Sorry about your loss.

It sounds to me that your main input is turntable?  If so, can you hook up another source, as an experiment?

You most likely have a cell phone. Spotify lets your stream music at CD quality. Getting the spotify signal into your stereo, could be tricky.  You can hook up a PC with the output from a sound card to your stereo. Maybe your PC has a CD drive?

A pawn shop type of outlet lets will sell a Blu Ray player or CD player for less than $100. Blu Ray and DVD players will play CD's. Try one of those as a source, to see if the sound quality changes, for the better?

Just throwing ideas out there.  See if a different source makes a difference. If the sound stays the same, it points towards the amp / speaker combo.

You’re getting the usual go-to solutions - buy more expensive cables, upgrade your gear, yada yada yada.

The truth is, speaker placement and room treatments have far more impact and are more important to sq than upgrading cables or gear. 

Get that sorted first, and it’ll take some effort, before reaching for your purse to buy more gear.