ARC SP16 vs SP8

The SP-8 was just below the SP-10 in the product line. It is an expensive proposition to keep the SP-10's phono stage in low noise tubes. The SP-8 had a tube regulator and was more tube sounding than the SP-16. The SP-16 is more accurate and is a really good preamp. Crosstalk should not even be an issue unless there is a problem with it. You could have a noisy regulator in it. When was the last time it was retubed?

Barruch, I don't mean to sound critical here but I believe too many people waste money changing gear when a better system set up might give them what they are looking for. If you were 6' away with speakers spaced 4' apart I'm not surprised if it sounded like mono.

Now no one can tell you exactly how to set up your speakers because there are too many variations with room interaction. But some basic guidelines can help. I agree with Newbee that an equilateral triangle between speakers and listening seat is a good place to start. If your room allows you to be a little more than 6' from the speakers I'd try that. Then, whatever that distance, I'd experiment starting with the same separation between speakers as listening distance, then incrementally reduce the separation between the speakers up to an 80% of the listening distance. Hopefully somewhere within that range will optimize your room.

If you haven't seen a copy, Jim Smith's book "Get Better Sound" will offer far more information on all this.

Not sure how much plugging and unplugging of left and right channel cables you have done lately, but you may want to be sure all of your right to right and left to left connections are correct.

Thank you everyone for your help. I think im gonna keep the preamp and work on speaker positioning. Moving them around as wide as i can get has helped. I also tried tilting the speakers slightly downward because the stands made for the mc1 are 24 inches high, making the speakers 70 inches tall. My seat is 16 inches high. I think that was part of the problem. Hifi geek, i do hear noise in the power supply, i did recently retube it with arc's west germany tubes from arc.

Wow i gotta say with the speakers 6 feet apart, 4 feet out into the room and sitting 8 feet back, the system is much more stereophonic. Fantastic actually you guys nailed it and i was looking at the preamp. The speed of the sp16, vs110 and maggies is jaw dropping.