@catalysis, The Benchmark ABH2 doesn’t have RCA inputs to accommodate the RCA only outputs of the Thiel CS 3.5 ELECTRONIC BASS EQUALIZER.
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Some interesting changes with the AHB2 and the CS3.7 after some playing last night and repositioning. I did the following for todays listen. 1) I moved the speakers closer to the side wall, 26 inches from the center of the tweeter to the side wall. Much closer than the manual recommends. 2) I moved the speaker back closer to the front wall, now 20 inches from the wall. Much closer than the manual recommends. 3) I moved the GIK Acoustic panel that absorbs the first reflection further up away from the speaker by about 6 inches. 4) I lowered the balance adjustment on my preamp from 2 units favoring the right speaker down to 0. I used 2 for the KEF LS50's in a slightly different placement. I am slight off-center in my desk sitting position so this balance adjust was needed. I listen with my back to the speakers. Not as bad as it seems, it is actually pretty amazing given what I have work with. 5) I moved some of my funky audio rack so that there was less surface area of the rack for the sound waves to hit. I hid some of this inside main rack. ******************************************************** Even though this speaker is 8 years old, I think this speaker needed some warmup from not being used for a while. What I am hearing now sounds like a speaker breaking in, but doing it very fast. The seller had a new speaker setup so the CS3.7 was likely not used for a while, not sure about this. This is the sound I am hearing tonight with the same tracks as last night. The Van Halen debut sounds explosive today, just as it is supposed to. It sounds much more alive and large. I can hear the performers with more detail and separation. The bass is still lean but more present, I can hear it better. The great attribute of the AHB2 is the ability to feel like the performers are in the room with you, this is starting to happen. I also played Bob Marley Exodus tonight, which has a lot of bass in the recording and it sounded very good. In my scale from 1 to 100. Right now the AHB2 + CS3.7 is like a 85. This may get to a level of excellence with more break-in or adjustments. I think I will need to give the speaker a few more days of playing to see if it gets broken in more and then do another round of repositioning. My placement from yesterday may have been better. So at the moment. I have much more bass with some room reinforcement and the speaker waking up from storage. Though it is a lean sounding bass and not fat, I like the lean sound. The treble sounds a little harder than the LS50. Not bad but a softening or warming up of the sound would be idea. I am starting to feel good about this setup. |
@unsound I was thinking of getting a hardware based DRC system in the past. I looked at Room Perfect, Space Optimization, Deqx (sp?), and ARC3. I remember Space Optimization was describing setups where you can place the speaker against a wall and have the sound processed as if the speaker was in the optimal positioning away from the wall. The DRC I will explore will be a software based solution running on my ROON Server (in another room). https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/bits-and-bytes/what-is-accurate-sound-r923/ A note about the CS3.7 sound now. I am listening to the radio late at night at low volume. I seem to be hearing everything but just lower volume. I think that is a compliment to the speaker and the preamp (which I rave about). In the past, when I used to go DAC directly into the AHB2 I hated low volume listening. I felt like I was missing parts of the sound, not so with the HPA4 preamp. The CS3.7 is an added bonus for late night listening. Reproducing all that the preamp is feeding it. I posted some photos of my room, https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/7605 |
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