High End system sounding Terrible????


Hi. I invested quit a bit of dough in my system and I'm disatisfied to say the least. I have an Arcam AVR-300, Arcam CD-73, and a NAD DVD player with Energy C-3's for my mains and Energy C-C1 Centre. Movies sound fine but when playing music the sound is overly bright (harsh), and bass lacking. The sound is also kind of lifeless, not very involving. I had an old 30 watt/CH Rotel from the 80's that I enjoyed much more for music through the C-3s. Could it be bad speaker matching.I bought the amp new from Creative Audio and even if it's not broke in shouldn't sound this bad.Can someone please help...
djwcalhoon
I second all the great feedback you've received above. Check out the SUB and speaker configuration in the AVR300. The 'direct' mode sounds best as has been pointed out above. In addition (I owned an AVR300 shortly after it went on the market), I found the ARCAM sound to be very dynamic and resolving but far too bright as several people have pointed out above. I found it necessary to go into the System Trims/Adjustments menu and trim the overall Treble setting for the AVR300 by -2db. This improved both HT and 2-channel to the point where I could listen to it as my speakers at the time had ribbon super-tweeters and the 0db setting on the AVR300 resulted in ear fatigue to say the least.

If you want a more natural sounding HT surr/proc, try Sherbourn PT-7010a (a steal a low price), Outlaw, Anthem (D2) or Classe SSP-300 and SSP-600.

The best overall route as others have said is to have a separate 2-channel pre-amp for your music listening.
I also have the Arcam 300 and Marantz CD, Panasonic DVD, with Monitor audio speakers. The Fi isn't Hi enough to be Hi end. I have a 2 channel system for music.