Kef 205/2

I never used them but Nordosts have a reputation for being fast and transparent but on the lean side, so cabling may be a good place to look for improvement.

If someone had told me this 2 months ago (before I exprienced it myself), I would thought this was a completely insane claim, but swapping out your cables for Transparent Audio reference will do as much for bass response as adding a subwoofer. At least it did in my system.

The question is what level cable to get - the current model references are prohibitively expensive, so you can either get old model reference or newer model of lower caliber. There has been some discussion about these on the forum which you may look into. I personally opted for buying old reference cable (i.e. over 10 year with so called XL technology). I paid between 650 and 1100 per pair for three pairs (2x balanced IC, 1x 10ft speaker cable). This was $15,000 worth of cabling 10 years ago. I could not be happier with the results.

The biggest improvement came from the DAC to Preamp IC. I suggest you shop around for a good deal on one, give one a try and see if you are getting the results you are looking for. If you don't, resell (loose may be a hundered bucks), if you do (like I did), get two more. Good luck.

I've recently had 2 dedicated circuits installed as the last cheaper option before swapping out cables!
Wow! I'm shock, the low and real extended bass are there now.
I re-did A/B test with the Dynaudio Focus 140. The Kefs are better this time, the bass is real extend and deep.
I couldn't believe how 2 dedicated circuits have made such a big difference!
However, I now wonder what more can do to take my system further:-).
I'm very tempting to replace:
1. The Bi-Wired Red Dawn SC's with the latest Grover Bi-Wired SC's
2. The Red Dawn IC's with Quattro Fil to make all IC's to be Quattro Fil
3. PS Audio PPP for CD, Pre with Shunyata Hydra 6 to make all conditioners to be Shunyata. May also swap power cords to Shunyata Python for amps, cd and 20amp Anaconda for pre. IMHO, Shunyata is better than PS Audio in conditioners and cables

Oh dear... the cost will be high. This is a very expensive hobby! But again...

Primare,

Have you done direct A/B comparison between PS audio power products and Shuyata? I have no experience with the latter, but to me PS audio are the only power products that did anything for me (I had Furman Reference and Stealth conditioners, and a bunch of different cables before).

So if your are planning on throwing some (more) money at power, I personally would much rather get the new PS Audio P5 which is supposedly a step up from the PPP. In fact this is precisely what I am planning to do.

Also, before spending obscene amounts on Shunyata power cables you owe it to yourself to audition the (slightly less obscenely priced) PS audio AC-12's. They are phenomenal cables.

Edorr,
I run Hydra 2 for my mono blocks and I feel Shunyata doesn't limit the flow of music, etc. I'll look into PS Power Cords for the ARC Ref 3 and Primare CD31 as they are connecting to the PS Audio PPP.
I think the same brand conditioner and cables may work better

Has anyone listen to Grover cables? Grover allows in home trial so i've given a go and placed the order for a 6 ft pair bi-wired SC's. According to Grover, the high and mid cables will have a mix of silver, copper and titan wires. The low section will have copper wires

Hi Primare,
If you have your bass problem solved, groovy! If not, try the following.

Unplug one Kef205. Put your system in mono. Play test tracks from a test CD or test source (I use mac the scope/signal generator). Take a db meter and note the out put of the speaker at 100hz, 80hz, 63, 50, 40, 31.5, and 20. Make notes of the db readings. Now with out touching your volume control or settings, shut your amp off (Even though it is a MC501 a good idea), put your other speaker in the exact same position as the first speaker. Now run the exact same test and see if the speakers are matched or different. They may not be perfectly matched but they should be pretty close. You will be able to see if there is a speaker problem this way.

If your speakers are matched and playing low bass notes properly you can eliminate the speaker and move on to other issues such as positioning and placement. I have put a variety of speakers in the spot where my Merlins work best and the results were wildly different. In fact a very expensive set of Avalons sounded awful, yet positioned differently were amazing.

GOOD LUCK!!!!!!