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
Why would you demo a new speaker in a setup that you can’t match? If you can’t move the speakers closer to the wall, you should have demoed the speakers the same distance from the back wall as your room dictates. Also, an amp can have a big impact on how the speaker performs. I’ve taken my amp to demo a set of speakers before to make sure the amp I had would drive the woofers to my liking. |
Just jumping in this discussion. For the last 8 years I have used speakers with very decent bass, the Ascend Acoustic Sierra towers and now the PBN MONTANA XPS towers. Both can get the job done but the dual subs I have puts them in a totally different category for bass. I have no idea why many audiophiles oppose the use of subs, but if placed and dialed in correctly, they will completely disappear and allow your speakers to shine. Just my experience. |
@jl1ny it will sound different. Bass either stronger or weaker. Probably less holographic if better bass. That’s it. I recall a while back on another thread someone indicating ref 3a speakers were wired out of phase either by design or accident for a more holographic soundstage with most recordings. Easy to try and see/hear. |
Well I thought about doing that but the owner’s room was big, way bigger than my room so pulling them 10ft off the wall in a room that size seemed kinda pointless. @baylinor From what I’m hearing right now with the REL T9x in play, these would be magnificent with dual subs…but of course I don’t have the room for that. Duh-oh!
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