[George Prentice]

Originally Posted by tdelahanty

I am not surprised by your comment, congestion in the mids and highs. The temptation to over adjust a subwoofer is an easy trap to fall into. I have O'3s and Sumiko sub (same as REL), the crossover point is set barely above 30hz and volume is set where you don't hear the sub but simply feel the impact at very low frequencies. Try these settings and you should get teriffic bass and added air and space in the mids and highs.

Well, as a follow up. The central congestion did not go away with removal of the sub-woofers. I surmised that part of the problem was noise coming through both channels... da. Vinyl noise comes all over the soundstage because it can be in either groove or at bottom, so picked up by both channels... but noise from both channels comes in the center soundstage... daaa. This is so obvious in retrospect. I am not talking about ssssss noise... but the stuff that fatigues the ears but you can’t hear directly... like you can an instrument. Once I realized this I decided it had to be my streamer (I have a decent DAC with the $9K power supply... didn’t think that was likely the issue). So I upgraded the Auralic Aries G2 to a Aurender W20SE... all congestion completely gone. The images in venter separated in complete silence. Of course the whole soundstage benefited... but the central issue completely gone.