Tired of boring, polite, laid-back sound.....

Audition a subwoofer in your system. Some Velodyne products are making proper intigration with room and system very simple. And remember you can always turn it off.

Here's one out of left field. How about EQ? Yeah, I'm a philistine. But, I've gotta say, adding a Behringer DSP8024 digital EQ between my CD player and preamp has breathed amazing new life into my Martin Logan Aeriuses. It fixed some serious room resonances and suckouts in the bass, smoothed out the slightly warm vocals, and tipped up the Aeriuses' downward-sloping treble just enough to yield flat response up to 16Khz and really make cymbals and hi-hats present without becoming brittle or fatiguing. When I switch out the EQ, I can't believe I lived with such a warm, opaque sound before. Lest anyone jump to conclusions, I'm not a "thump & sizzle" guy. My previous speakers were Spica TC-60s. I let the auto-EQ set flat response, then reduced the midrange and treble corrections by 1db to restore a bit of the Aeriuses' warmth.

My preamp's an Adcom GFP-555, and power is from two GFA-5200s - generally considered "bright". The CD player's a Harman/Kardon 8550 changer, and the Behringer's DAC is certainly no worse. The unit adds absolutely no noise to the system (cranking the preamp all the way up with a CD paused produces no noise or hum at all). And, since EQ happens before the digital signal is converted to analog, there's (Behringer claims) no phase shift either. Maybe I've got a tin ear, but the Aeriuses just sound lots better to me with the EQ. Even imaging seems better focused, probably due to compensation for differing reflectivity on the left and rights sides of my room.

If I had known this would work so well, I'd have gone for a DEQ2496 for another $150 for its reportedly better DAC and higher resolution. But I'm cheap, I didn't know what to expect, and the DSP8024 with mic and AES/EBU digital input was just $150 on eBay. State of the art? Not. A bargain and a joy? Definitely.

hi phasecorrect, could you specify the components you feel are responsible for the type of sound which displeases you ?

EEK! I hate these myths about classical music.

FYI - "laid-back, boring and polite" is hardly good for classical music. For large scale, complex music, dynamics and timing are extremely important.

So are other things of course. Resolution, transparency, timbral accuracy, balance. And no, I don't want in-yer-face, bright, glassy massed strings, thank you very much.

But classical music needs dynamics (macro-micro), pace and rhythm as much as the other virtues if it is to be compelling and true. You can have tonal beauty and PRAT too y'know. No music is life-like without it.

I haven't heard any MF amps in a coon's age so I can't comment on their equipment. But yes, their designer plays chamber music (clarinet). Don't think that automatically makes his equipment one thing or the other.