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Why are my SF Venere S Speakers not sounding as warm?

I have a beautiful pair of Walnut Sonus Faber Venere S speakers and I use them for everyday surround sound/music listening in our living room.  The issue is I fell in love with these speakers in the showroom, and when I set them up in my living room they sounded almost piercingly bright and not nearly as balanced and pleasant.  I have bi amped them with my Marantz SR 6012 Surround Receiver, ran the room EQ set up as well as tried to manually EQ the system.  I was able to take some of the brightness out and get them to a more balanced sound.  I am VERY happy at the un-hindered sound quality they produce.  However there is not near as much bass as there seemed to be in the showroom (I had them disconnect the separate sub).  Now I understand my room is not treated and that of course makes a difference.  I added a Definitive Technology SuperCube 2000 and that has helped, surprising amount of bass for such a small discreet sub.  What are your suggestions?  What am I missing on the set up of these speakers to get the full range from them?

We have a tile floor and a raised ceiling that is at an angle from approx 9' up to 15'.  We have a large fabric couch with an area rug and wooden coffee table.  The dimensions of the room are approximately 14' deep and 19' wide.

tice34
caphill
674 posts
 
@tice34 

First let me ask you this : are you only doing stereo setup for listening to music only or surrounds for both HT and stereo music? Cause you are using the Marantz SR6012 av receiver so I automatically assumed that you have a surround system setup. 

If you're only doing stereo and use your setup to only listen to stereo music I wouldn't get AV separates, I would recommend getting a good quality stereo integrated amp or good quality stereo preamp + stereo power amp. 
Stereo gears will sound better than multi-channel gears. 
tice34 OP
9 posts
 
Wow, THANK YOU everyone for the insight and education I very much appreciate it and is exactly what I was looking for.  I definitely know I need to do some treatment to my room but I was really wondering about needing better amps and such and you all gave great advice.  I will start doing some research, I am also going to return to the show room to see what I missed.  I know they used McIntosh equipment with the Venere S setup they had I just don't know what else they had or how much power they actually had running to these.  This will be a work in progress as I am sure most of you have your own audio projects ongoing.  But this gives me a good direction
mtrot
804 posts
 
If you are buying Sonus Faber level gear from this dealer, they should be willing to go to your house and evaluate your listening space and try to find out why it's sounding bad. 
tice34 OP
9 posts
 
Caphill,
I am using this system as Stereo and as Surround for my families everyday use as well as my sweet spot on the couch stereo playback.
caphill
674 posts
 
@tice34

You should upgrade your electronic. Your Marantz SR6012 AV receiver is holding back the performance of your system. It is far from ideal pairing with your SB Veneer S speakers. You should make efforts upgrading from your Marantz SR6012 av receiver.

Since you’re doing both stereo for music and surround sound movies I would recommend getting AV separates.
What’s your setup? 5.1/5.2 or 7.1/7.2 or 9.1/9.2? Marantz makes really good AV preamp surround processor (pre pro) and you should seriously consider the new Marantz AV8805 pre pro or a used recently discontinued AV8802/AV8802A pre pro. Other great sounding pre pros that I highly recommend would be the Classe Sigma SSP (optimized for stereo music playbacks), a used Classe SSP 800 (discontinued), NAD M17, Krell Foundation, a used Krell 1200U (long discontinued), Anthem AVM60, Cary Cinema 12. But the Cary Cinema 12 consistently has had HDMI board issues. Their HDMI boards start failing after couple yrs of use. Seemed like most or all units have failing HDMI boards.

As for a multi-channel power amp I would highly recommend either the Rotel RMB-1585 five-channel amp or the Parasound Halo A51 five-channel amp.

These AV separates will elevate the performance of your system to a whole new level than what you currently have (Marantz SR6012 av receiver).
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