How to fix my detailed, accurate but BRIGHT system

Greg,

I've faced a very similar set of problems in my setup and room - an otherwise great sound that was just too bright. My room has wood floors and a tile lined fireplace/wall that I can't do much with. That said, I have two specific suggestions:

First, spend $50 and get Jim Smith's book Get Better Sound and make sure your setup is as optimal as you can get it. I thought I knew what I was doing before, but even some subtle changes in speaker placement and where I sat in relation to the back wall made a big difference in cleaning things up for me.

Second, if adjusting your room (to whatever degree you can) doesn't do enough and your ready to swap out a component, then my experience says the culprit is likely the DAC. I've been using the exact same PS Audio DL3 with Cullen level 3 mod and had consistent problems with brightness and listening fatigue - even after improving my room. Just this week, I've replaced it with the new PS Audio Perfect Wave DAC and the results have been fantastic. I've had three listening sessions of more than three hours each with no fatigue - something I could never do with the DL3. As an added bonus, I got $1,000 credit for trading in my DL3 - which is what you could get for it here on Audiogon.

But definitely start with Jim's book and whatever room treatments you can muster first.

Good luck!

I have a lot of glass and all tile floors. Room treatment is not an option as this is our main living space. Should I try a tube DAC, Tube Pre., tube Buffer? How do I warm up the sound I'm getting?

Sorry, but it *has* to be room treatment. Nothing brings out glare at higher volumes like glass, and tile doesn't help. Changing your components out is completely barking up the wrong tree. You need a thick area rug over the tile and drapes or pleated shades at a minimum for the glass.

Take a look at the Stereophile test measurements for your speakers: Three things stand out: 1) the sensitivity is *very* low at 84.5dB (your Butler TDB 2250 should be a great match as you say); 2) this system is nearly devoid of panel resonances, so it's probably not cabinet colorations creating the forward sound; 3) the response curve is *extraordinarily flat*

Your other components are also very linear and if anything, the Butler and the PS Audio should be on the mellow side. Early floor reflections off the tile and side reflections from the glass are almost certainly the culprits.

There are many room treatment panels available now that look like hanging wall art or at least decorator panels. You really need to look into these, or you need to switch to a speaker that has no vertical dispersion to speak of and tightly controlled lateral dispersion as well. That would be a shame because you have a great speaker.

My first response would be to address the room issues as others have mentioned. But you clearly state that since this is a living space your options there are limited. By far the easiest thing to do would be to experiment with different interconnects, although you don't mention what you're using currently so it's tough to make any recommendations at this point. But something like an Acoustic Zen Matrix Reference might do the trick, and it shouldn't cost you much more than shipping to give them a try. Best of luck.

These speakers are best driven by an amp that doubles power output as impedance is halved... so that the volume in the bass is equal to the volume in the mids and highs. Your Butler 2250 does not double power as impedance is halved.... The result is that the amp produces somewhat louder volume in the highs than it does in the bass, which causes a tonal imbalance that emphasizes the highs....

As long as an amp produces more decibels into higher impedances (treble region) than into lower impedances (bass region), the speaker will sound louder in the treble.

Tvad, this is one of the rare occasions on which I must disagree with you. Unless the amp is approaching the point at which it would be running out of either current capability or voltage swing capability, frequency response flatness will have nothing to do with the ability to double power into lower impedances. Basically, the amp will provide a flat frequency response into the speaker's frequency-dependent impedance as long as the amp's output impedance is low.

The 2250's output impedance (or equivalently, damping factor, which as I'm sure you know is output impedance divided into 8 ohms) does not appear to be specified. However, even though it is a no-feedback design, I would assume it is a small fraction of an ohm, which would result in just a small fraction of a db difference in voltage delivery into 4 ohms compared with 6 ohms or 8 ohms.

Any difference in power delivery which that may result in is a function of the speaker design, not the amp design, as long as the amp remains within its output current limitations, which it should as even the last line of your last post seems to indicate.

I think the posts by Johnny, Rich, and others about addressing the room issues are very well put and on the mark.

Regards,
-- Al