If you can get your hands on an MEN220 to demo, that may be what you are looking for.
Adding room correction to my system was the single biggest bass improvement that I have ever did.
I am a believer now for room effects, so it sounds like that could be a factor.
I have a friend running more power hungry speakers with 100wpc, so I'd bet room is a bigger factor vs. your power.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BWB75
We are trying to break in our new Studio 2s, and to adapt the rest of the system to these new loudspeakers. They are replacing a pair of bookshelf Sonus Faber Concertos (18 years old and still great). As noted in previous posts, it turns out that a major change in speakers is not always a plug and play experience.
They are now in our living room, looking pretty great in gloss black. They are plugged into a McIntosh MA7900 200wpc integrated, which itself is plugged into a Transparent Powerwave 8. They are positioned about 16 inches from the rear wall and about 18 inches from the edges of the credenza. The credenza holds out TV and the turntable. It is an Ikea unit.
We were lucky enough to be able to sample them at the audio store using a McIntosh MA8900 on the 4-ohm taps, which is substantially identical in power to our MA7900 at home (the MA8900 has a modular digital section... smart).
We are still in the break in period, we think. They have been running quietly at night and louder for listening sessions during the early evenings (mostly) (okay sometimes) (okay pretty late in some cases) (every night). We plugged them in on Monday, and it is now Thursday.
Initially the bass was very thin. They were delivered and installed while I was at work, and my wife was so concerned with the sound that she checked the connections. It turned out that they were still connected to the 8-ohm taps. Oops. She switched to the 4-ohm taps before I got home, saving me the needless panic attack.
The bass was still thinner than we heard in the store, but we know the break-in can take some time. Over the past few days the bass has become more and more full, and they sound pretty balanced now. The highs have also smoothed out.
Here is where it gets complicated. The bass on the turntable was still thin on a lot of recordings. A/B between the CD player and the turntable on the same material sounded thinner (and a lot quieter) on the turntable. In addition, as the bass improved, it caused a warbling feedback loop on the turntable, so anything like normal listening level sounded like the vocalist was doing vibrato. Very bad!
I mitigated this somewhat last night by slightly increasing the tone arm weight. That seemed to make the vibrato effect go away, at least at normal to loudish levels. it also seemed to improve bas performance on LP playback. It reached a point where Leonard Cohen's Ten new Songs on CD and LP were indistinguishable. The LP was a more airy, but the overall tonal balance was sufficiently close to the same as to make no difference to me. It is still necessary to turn up the volume level for the LP playback to reach the same output. The LP system is an unsuspended table with a low output MC.
Now the bass is good, but still not quite as tight and confident as we recall from the dealer.
We are not sure what to do about the bass. The room is our living room, so it may never be perfect, and maybe they are still running in. It seems like the sound is different every day.
What if the bass continues to fill out? The dealer said it could take 30 days for the speakers to fully break in. (!!!!) More bass might shake the turntable even more.
All of this is to ask:
Is cartridge weight really affecting how much room energy gets sent through the needle? Or, do we need to move the table further away? Replace the credenza with a proper audio rack? Our old speakers had way less bass, so we did not have to contend with the issue of isolating the turntable to anything like this degree.
Are we underpowered? The demo was with 200wpc, so why would it be different at home? Should we skip the power conditioner and plug straight into the wall?
How long does break in take with these things? Has anyone had it take more than a few days?
Caveat: They sound awesome. The improvement is sufficient to warrant the upgrade. We are not unhappy, just looking to get the most out of the system.
Solutions not requiring a major spend (like a couple of MC601s) would be helpful. The credit card is still warm to the touch.
Any feedback will be read with interest and appreciation!
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