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Not happy yet

I have recently discovered "hi-fi" and have been replacing a few parts of my system. But I have not yet got the involving sound I am looking for. My judgement of the sound: the bass is too loud relative to other sounds, and the voices aren't prominent and involving enough. The loss of tone controls in my new higher-end pre-amp and amp (replaced older receiver) means I can't throttle the bass back as I used to do.

Any advice on where to go next? Here is the equipment:

Yamaha CDX-410u CD player (older single-play player)
Classe CP-35 pre-amp
Rotel RB-981 Power amp
Celestion S300 speakers
Cabling is generic

Room is about 12' x 25', with 8' ceiling. The speakers are at one of the room, several feet from back and side walls. Bare hardwood floor, bare ceiling, fairly sparse wall decoration.

Music is mainly Jazz, older rock, folk. I notice the well-recorded jazz sounds pretty darn good, very good highs, decent voices on the best recordings. Jazz tends not to be bass-heavy to start with.

Any ideas on what the next upgrade or change (room treatment?) should be? I have to go one thing at a time, but I expect to replace almost everything (except possibly the pre-amp and speakers) along the way.

Thanks for any advice...
ehart
ehart OP
215 posts
 
Sean and Glen (and others), thanks so much for your thoughtful responses.

I will review some past threads on speaker placement. I don't think I've tried everything; in fact, I've noticed that moving the speakers closer to the sidewall does sound a bit better (bad for soundstage though).

We do have a basement, and the floor does resonate. I have spikes (unused right now), but that would make things worse, right? So I'm thinking to try setting the speakers on milk crates to start, or on partially inflated bike inner tubes somehow. I will try the various other suggested tweaks (CD player isolation, speaker ports, etc.) also.

I wonder if source material is part of it. Has my system become "revealing" of bad material? I listened to John Hiatt's latest yesterday and Lucinda William's first album today. Both sounded good. The Allman's "Eat a Peach" on the other hand sounded all mushy and boomy, drowned out the good guitar work. I bet it would sound better in my car.

Great advice to "take your time." I don't know for sure what sound I'm looking for. I will try to be patient!
Post removed 
nomad
21 posts
 
Ehart. In addressing the bass, I think Sean is right on about experimenting with speaker height/isolation. I'm not familiar with your speakers but you said your speakers are floor standers. The tweeters in you speakers should be very near ear level when you are in your listening position. If this means they need to be put on small speakers stands I would try this first. In my past experiences this has always reduced the impact of the bass as well. My $.02.
Happy Tweeking!
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