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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

 

128x128jl1ny
fleschler
2,031 posts
 

 

@ ishkabibil The manufacturer stated that the best position (probably for bass) is 3 feet from the wall, not 7 or 10 feet.  Plus, did the demo pair have 1000s of hours on it and yours is new?  Woofers can take 500 hours to break-in.  I have a higher end system with a $150,000 custom built listening room where I avoid problems and enhance the sound (bass traps built-into walls with multi-panel activated charcoal filters).   Besides the point, which is the location of your speakers, your room layout which doesn't look good to me (rearrange it as suggested) and break-in allowance for the woofers.

audioguy85's avatar
audioguy85
2,022 posts
 

Who has 10 feet to spare to set up speakers in this way? Not me...anyhow, I agree with previous posters/respondents, move the speakers closer to back wall. 

jl1ny's avatar
jl1ny OP
419 posts
 


@fleschler as I had mentioned throughout this thread, my room isn’t dedicated and rearrangement is not an option. Speakers are not new. I’ve had several decent monitors in my rig and they all performed great with my ProAcs being exceptionally good. In hindsight I guess I expected the Ref 3A’s to dominate my room based upon their build quality and how good they sound during the demo. For whatever reasons my room just does not play nice in the sandbox with them. The saving grace has been my Rel T/9X. With the Rel, the presentation is quite nice and I have no complaints other than the mid bass having a tendency to be light (depending on the recording).

I appreciate everyone’s input on this thread. You guys have been very helpful, thanks for helping me figure this one out. 👍

jl1ny's avatar
jl1ny OP
419 posts
 

@audioguy85 Common sense solution that is impractical in my situation. It’s all been delineated in this thread.

sandthemall
544 posts
 

I had a room with perfect sound once. Then I moved.

Took all I learned from that room into the new one. I have good sound now. But not like that room. It was a near perfect listening room.

What made it so great? Without a doubt the acoustic ceiling. It was the early acoustic ceiling made from concrete. No asbestos. 

One side was mostly rock wall. So had to fill the other wall with many carvings and sculptures to mimic the other wall.

Anyway, will probably never see a room like that until I can find someone who does concrete spray ceilings. Brilliant. Hope they come back in style.

 

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