Hmm also worth checking polarity from amp to speakers. Perhaps some break in time required as well. Always check for bad connections when things seem way off. I'd run a sound meter check to see what's actually happening at different frequencies. decibel app on an iphone would do.
Great speaker sounds terrible in my room?
So today I took a ride to demo a set of speakers that has had my interest for quite some time, the Ref 3A Royal Virtuoso. These things are completely overbuilt, top notch parts and built like tombstones, the cabinets are made of Corian and are completely inert. They sounded excellent during the demo. The owner was running them with a beautiful VAC preamp / Pass labs amp and a Moon Dac-streamer. They were on 24” stands and approximately 2ft off the back wall. They sounded superb as expected…I pack em up, take em home. I rig them up…my setup is near field with the speakers 10ft off the front wall and the speakers are 5ft away from my listening position. I fire them up and….shocker. They got nothing. They literally were lost with Zero bass response. I actually thought maybe something was connected wrong…I checked the connections ( more on that in a minute) all good. These are higher efficiency (91db) than my ProAc Response D2’s (88db) yet the Ref 3A’s sounded much lower at my usual listening level. I’m still scratching my head over how this speaker is unable to kick ass. I have decent gear with plenty of firepower (ARC D400MKII amp, Levinson 380s Pre, Denafrips Terminator Dac, Aurender N100SC streamer. I’ve had Sonus Farber Concertino’s, Vienna Acoustics Haydn, KEF 150’s and my ProAcs all set up in the same manner and they all were excellent performers. The one thing that I’m wondering about is the Binding post on the Ref 3A…it uses the Cardas screw down clamp type post that only accepts spades or bare wire. my cables are banana terminated and I was using cheapo adapters. Could this all could be a connection related issue or just a speaker/room mismatch?
Thoughts / comments are much appreciated
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Saw that in Stereophile. I had a pair of Response D2's and thought they were great. Can you put them near the walls just for a short time to see what they do even if you don't leave them there? How are the mids and highs? |
Update: I sent an email to the manufacturer and he graciously responded with a copy of their setup instructions. I’m still tweaking the positioning but boom! Game changer. I was waaayy off on positioning. The 3A’s are still a little light in the bass or perhaps my ProAcs just do low end better? definitely different presentations between these two. Bigger soundstage & very detailed without being offensive. Very nice, although I don’t think these are going to give me what I was looking for at low volume. I’ll do more tweaking then I can’t wait to hear what they do when I kick on the REL. |
@bjesien I have them on sand filled steel monolith stands spiked into my carpet…suckers are HEAVY and I use Herbies square dots between the plates and speakers. |
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