A Bright Pair of Watt Puppys


I'd love some suggestions on taming my bright system. My Watt Puppy 6's are really bright and it often seems on many recordings as though the tweeter and midrange are just way louder and more dominant than the bass. Often, to get more bass punch (or just warmer sound) I find myself wanting to turn the volume up. This helps the bass level a bit but also sends the rest of the spectrum thru the roof: it gets very loud.

Although I assume my room is too small for these speaks and I need some treatment, can't believe this is the only issue here. Watching other woofers at CES for example, the things extend rapidly right out of the enclosures on systems that sounded warm to me. My drivers barely move at all. Just doesn't seem right.

Also was told by the designer of Genesis speakers that my amp isn't powerful enough to control the bass on the Watt Puppys. That was a surprise.

Here's my system configuration:
WP 6
BAT VK-600
Bat 31-SE Preamp
Kimber 3033 speaker cables
Synergistic Research Alpha Sterling ITC
Shanling CD-100 dual output cd player
Furman power conditioner
Room Size: 15 x 25

Any suggestions? Anyone?
Thanks
/Lee
graywind11
You know, it could simply be that you like "too much" bass. I know some people who find my system lacks bass but my frequecy response actually shows I have a little too much.

Then I have visited dealers who have so much bass going on that you can't hear the midrange - but to them, it is perfectly normal and the way it should be.

The point is you spend all this money to be happy so maybe what you need is a sub. You may want to try this route if your speakers placement and resistor attempts still fall short. Afterall, personal taste always plays a role.

Arthur
Have you checked to make sure the Puppy is working?
The speaker cable from Watt to Puppy could have detached.
If the puppy isn't working because a cable came loose (the tail), then the watt wouldn't work. The watt receives its signal from the cross over in the puppy.

I don't know your cables very well, but cable matching is definately more apparent with a highly resolving speaker, like the W/P.

Not being a bass fanatic myself, I find that the bass on my WP (5.1s) is quite good, certainly tight and fast. However, I recently installed a pair of balanced Cardas Golden Cross when I purchased a new CDP and found that I lost some of the speed and impact of my bass with these cables.

My guess is that there could be a couple of things at play; cables, other components (you mentioned with the Hales you also felt the sound was too bright), and a combination of placement and room acoustics.

As for room acoustics, I would buy a couple of panels of the Auralux foam and mount them to a very simple frame to make them more rigid (I just cut strips of thin plywood and glued them to the foam to make them rigid enought to lean against things/walls without sagging too much). With about 4 of these, you can then place them around the room in a temporary fashion, combined with adjusting the speaker placement, tilt, toe-in, etc. . . This is a very low cost approach to help determine what changes in the room will really help. You can buy the Auralux at most Guitar Shops. It may not be the best product (it is pretty good), but this is cheap and can tell you a lot about where you might be having problems in your room.

To me, it sounds like you have a very strong bass null or void in your room and a lot of upper frequency reflections that are creating this bright sound. FWIW, I have found that my W/P are not bright, detailed definately but not bright like I have had with other speakers.
I don't know if you can do this with the WP6 but on my WP8 I called up wilson and had them send me new transistors or something to drop the tweeter a db or two.
This is possible with the previous (to the 8s) and can help if you are too bright. However, unless you are fairly skilled I would suggest having somebody else do it. The Duettes (and possibly other models of newer Wilsons) come with external tweeter resistors that can be changed out for just this purpose and is no more difficult than changing speaker cables. This is not the case with the older Watts.