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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

 

128x128jl1ny
holmz's avatar
holmz
2,328 posts
 

@holmz Good find! Thanks for this.

@jl1ny  (your question may  have helped me more than it is helping you)

I have been though 25% of the papers (adjacent to that link.)

 

I think,,, that the best way to approach the problem is with some shift in perspective  to make it a challenge.

Maybe see if you can demo some subs…, if you read the lin, then you know what I would suggest.

They (subs) work vest in the corners, but the speakers pull out from the wall is better for imaging.

And we put speakers near that wall to reinforce the bass…

So a multi purpose room is a challenge, but there may be a lot of existing work that can guide us.

Approaching it as an engineering challenge is different perspective, than it being solely a problem. And likely brings a better mindset for opening up the solution space.

3sa_uk's avatar
3sa_uk
7 posts
 

Just wanted to add my profound observation that boundary reinforcement for lower bass is better achieved by the listener moving back towards the wall behind them. This usually gives the most even and lowest boost.

rocray's avatar
rocray
1,448 posts
 

baylinor's avatar

baylinor

281 posts

Couch lol
 

I remember when the term “Davenport”was the norm. Lol! SOFA. There,I fixed it. 

ishkabibil
422 posts
 

10 ff. from front wall?

Do you expect that much air from the speakers to impress at that distance?

When you demo"d what was the distance?

 

ishkabibil
422 posts
 

Ahhhh....

 

2ft off the back wall in your demo.

 

And you go 8ft more........

 

Need we say anymore?

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