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Too much bass

Brief equipment list: Rogue Magnum 120 amps, AR LS3 preamp, Vandersteen 2c's.
The bass is overwhelming. Either source, CD or Vinyl I cant turn up the volume over 1/3 of the control knob. The music falls apart. I have had many other speakers using this combo of electronics. Proac, Thiel, Meadowlark and Magnepan.
It almost appears as the amps are clipping. But if I chose a program with very little bass involved, everything is fine.
Could my amps be clipping with these speakers? Are they a difficult load?
Thanks, Scott
scottht
nsgarch's avatar
nsgarch
2,524 posts
 
Scott, I was going to bring up the point Gunbei did, about amp/preamp mismatch, but you indicated that you didn't have this problem with several other speakers.

I suppose it could be the output tubes, as Gunbei suggests, but it seems unlikely they'd all go bad on both amps at the same time.
aroc
760 posts
 
How far is your listening position from a room boundary? I had a similar problem in my room if I was <4.5 feet from the rear wall. When I moved my chair out into the room the problem went away. Also how close to a room boundary are the speakers? One thing that helped me tune all of this in my system was to get a Radio Shack SPL meter and a Stereophile test CD with test tones. I had booms at 40-50 and 125 and suckouts at 70-80 and 160Hz.

My $0.02

Aaron
ubglub
76 posts
 
I had problem once with overwhelming bass after I had a component modified, so of course I attributed it to the equipment mod. However, it was easily corrected by pulling the speakers just a few inches further from the back wall.
eldarado
381 posts
 
I have a buddy that had the M120's(upgraded to the 150's) and Vandy 2Sigs and he never had any issues other than his room. He treated the room to tame too much bass. The Vandy's are 86dB @ 7 nomial ohms. Middle of the road load. I would call Rogue and question them about the issue.

Good Luck,

Burton
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