Carpet Killed High Frequencies In My Music Listening Area


My basement play room is 14’x30’.  My music listening area is 14’x12’ of that. The remainder of that room holds my pool table.  I decided to install new floors.  In the pool table area and the rest of my basement will be “luxury vinyl” flooring.  In my listening area, I went from an area rug to wall-to-wall carpet.  

Now, high frequencies are faint and some music sounds dull. Bass is fine and the mid range sounds better than before.  Vocals and most instruments sound better.  Gone is the cymbal decay, solid ringing of bells, and other percussion sounds are dull.

The carpet is a week old, the rest of the flooring is scheduled to be installed on October 15th.  I’m tempted to have the carpet replaced with luxury vinyl and go back to my area rug.  I’d rather find a way to increase the high frequencies because I like how my system sounds otherwise.

My system,
PS Audio BHK pre amp
PS Audio BHK 250 power amp
PS Audio DSD DAC
PS Audio Stellar phone pre
Innous Zenith MKII streamer
Technics SL-1200G TT
Tannoy DC8 Ti speakers
Transparent super XLR interconnects for my digital gear and Transparent RCA interconnects for my TT
AudioQuest Rocket 88 speaker cables

What can I do to bring out the high frequencies?  

  
128x128oldschool1948
Just looking at your components, there is no way that highs are faint and dull. Just no way. Other than compared to what you had before. My bet is you went from way too bright and reflective a room to about right, and haven't adjusted yet to the fact you changed the sound when you changed the room.   

I highly recommend giving yourself time to recalibrate before doing anything.


What angle of toe-in do you have on the Tannoys?

Tannoy recommends setting the toe-in on their speakers such that the "imaginary line" from the speaker crosses just in front of the listening position.

What are the speakers standing on?
- spikes through the carpet and underlay?
- no spikes - just sitting on the carpet?

Do the speakers rock a little (front to back) i.e. if you apply a little pressure to the front of the speaker?
- or are they rock solid ?

If the speakers are moving, even slightly, this can sometimes detract from top end performance.

My speakers had a little "rock" to them and it took a while for them to compress the underlay under the carpet, but after a couple of months they settled in nicely - no more movement - great sound

I basically made outriggers to eliminate speaker movement

Regards - steve




Problems with audio systems are not resolved by sitting and doing nothing. All that does is allow you to slowly accept inferior sound.  See my Audiophile Law articles on Burn In/Break In at Dagogo.com, where I demonstrate that systems do not change over time either with use or warmup. You are wasting your life by sitting and waiting. 

This major change due to a different room is typical, not a problem per se. You're room is radically different than before. You were hearing a lot of extraneous sound, much more reflectivity, and that is why you now hear so much better into the sound, i.e. midrange. You had "Hall effect" and now have "studio effect". I built my room to avoid the high reflectivity that imo impedes hearing into the system and music.

Go back to step one and configure the system in all possible iterations. i.e. preamp and amp settings, power cables swapped, or IC swapped, etc. You most likely can significantly change the ratio of treble to the rest of the frequency spectrum through trial and error. Try the system without the power conditioning and you may prefer it that way now that the carpeting is in play. Now that the environment has changed, you have to try all permutations to fit it to your tastes optimally. It will likely be configured somewhat differently as a result.  :)