Please talk me out of buying a power amp!

Room treatment, placement, etc!

By far the biggest advantage of headphones is that they take the room totally out of the equation.

 

You won't get those things from speakers but there are many area's where headphones lack, such as the full weight and viscerally impact of base drums an other instruments that seem to contact your whole body rather than just your ears. With my headphones, when I put on a disc and wait for those first few notes to jump start the event I'm someone disappointed by the lack of power and mass. I compare these issues to turning off the sub channel on a movie track, that deep punch in the chest feeling and room pressure are gone. Some may say this is an added pyrotechnic effect but it ads excitement and involvement to the performance that you won't be able to live without once you've experienced it.

 

Hi,

So you wish to be talked out of buying a power amp??

OK..........Buy a new digital source then!!!!!!!!!

I am assuming that your SQ concerns relate more to digital than analog??

Everyone is posting about amps, speakers and room which is all relevant BUT.........

It ALL starts at the source and your Sony C67ES CDP is OVER 20 years old!!!

You have several choices here as far as I can tell........


1. Listen to a couple of decent UDP's (OPPO, CA...etc)

One may be a perfect "one box" solution for you with the added bonus of hi rez formats and USB to play with.

2. Check out some of the latest dedicated CDP's if you are happy with your Pana for BD/DVD.

3. Use your Sony solely as a transport and check out some of the latest DAC's.


The value of each of these potential solutions is mainly dependant on your current music library being disc based
and if you are looking to go with ripped files/streaming in the near future or not.

If SQ issues extend to your TT as well then sorry.........not knowledgeable enough to offer any advice there.


GOOD LUCK!!!

 

If you want to begin upgrading your system buying a better amp is a good place to start, but realize that this is just the beginning. After getting a better amp perhaps new speakers or a subwoofer, if you want more bass. I would suggest buying a used NAD 272. They are 150 watts/channel can be had for less than $400. on ebay.

 

Please don't shoot my dog!!!! Ok, ok, I get it...no power amp for me!

 

Thank you for taking the time to add all the links. I'm hoping to read up a bit more on the subject and these will be very helpful.

Any advice as to how to determine if/how big of a difference the acoustical treatment would make?

 

Thanks for the reply! I'm not really looking to "upgrade" anything else as this point. I love the equipment I have, but hoping to squeeze a bit more out of it. However, would you mind explaining point #3?

3. Use your Sony solely as a transport and check out some of the latest DAC's.

Half my collection is CD, the other half is vinyl. I have some stuff on my cheapo mp3 player that I use with the system on occasion.

 

Buy it, I just did

 

So did the guy ever play you some metal or just the black album?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

Ha! The only music they had were digital tracks from an Apple laptop...the black album was the closest thing to METAL they had. I was was hoping for some Master of Puppets...or some Priest! I had him play "Of Wolf and Man" and it sounded killer!!!

 

Hi,

No probs....

Using your Sony as a transport just means using it's digital output instead of the analog ones.
By doing this you are now sending the digital signal to an external DAC of your choice for superior conversion and output.
You have "bypassed" the old DAC in your Sony.

DAC's have digital inputs and analog outputs so hooking up is very simple.
In your case it would need an Optical Input which is quite common.

These days a lot of the latest DAC's sound excellent across multiple price points.
Finding an affordable one that sounds clearly better than your Sony should be pretty straightforward.

A lot of users have PC based systems and the upgrade in SQ from a soundcard can be massive.
It is also a very simple way to improve your SQ whilst keeping what you already have.

As long as you think the Sony has some decent years left in it then adding a DAC might work
out better for you than buying a whole new player.

Check out some of the DAC Threads here for more info if you want.

On a personal note I own an OPPO 105 UDP which has great inbuilt DAC's, plays everything and sounds wonderful.


Cheers

 

I would think the only way for you to get some idea how your room could be improved would be by measuring it with REW and looking at both the frequency response and something called a waterfall plot.

Here are some of my examples although unfortunately I don't have any that show before and after with room treatment. Perhaps someone else has such things they can show us?

These show equaliser adjustments:



This is a frequency response from 32 to 500 Hz - bass. Red is before and green is after I'd adjusted an equaliser. Green is flatter and sounds better. There is little I can do about the sharp dips such as at 50Hz and in fact I don't notice them when I play test tones. The big 12dB peak at 42Hz can be heard as boomy bass on a very few tracks and in fact I later made EQ adjustments that dealt with this. I found the 40-50Hz area difficult to get right because of traffic noise having similar frequencies. Eventually my ears and test tones sorted this out, rather then microphone and REW.





These are waterfall plots from the same measurements as the frequency response. Not only do they show the FR but they show how the sound decay. You can see that most decay down to 40dB by 250 milliseconds. Without room treatment the decay times will likely be longer, perhaps quite a bit longer, and more varied. The peak at 42Hz is visible and it can be seen that it both decays more slowly (it's boomy) but it also seems to continue at about 47dB, which I think is traffic noise. This is confirmed on another type of plot called a Spectrogram:



This is from another measurement but it shows the signal REW made at roughly 0ms but that around 40Hz and 80Hz there seems to be a noise that started before REW's signal and continues way after the signal has decayed. This again is traffic noise. If your amp hums you can see this on the waterfall and spectrogram plots too.

All I can say is that room treatment makes a bigger change for the better then practically anything else, except maybe speakers.

GIK Acoustics offer a free advisory service in the hope you will buy their products (which I use).

 

All kidding aside, it is a great hobby but it can get expensive. I recommend you spend hours reading and more importantly listening to as much as possible. Have fun, the journey is going to be awesome. chuck

 

You can get good stuff without breaking the bank. The blue lights, however...

Maybe a disco ball?

 

They had the same McIntosh set up when Tri-City Electronics was open in Charlotte. Not sure if they still have theirs in the remaining Newton Store. If the sales guy was to be believed there were only a couple dealers in the country with that demo.

 

I have a light up Maidenform mannequin from the 60s plugged into my H.H. Scott preamp, so that it comes on with the stereo.

 

Put on some really good headphones and never take them off.

 

Thanks again, Linger. Well, I just added the Sony CD player about a week or 2 ago; got it off Craigslist for $30 and it works beautifully...so I'm not looking to get rid of it just yet. I also just added a better RCA cable to it and it sounds a little bit better to my ears; it definitely sounds louder.

I was wondering if I could add a digital interface that I use to connect my guitar to my laptop, instead of having to get a totally new DAC. It's a Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6...not sure if you're familiar with those. It looks like this:



Is there anyway I could use it in my vintage system? I'm not using it for anything else, so I thought I would get some use out of it before I sell it. The CD player has an optical output and a set of fixed and variable RCA connections.

 

Thanks for taking time to post the pics and explain them! Those are some pretty interesting graphs. Is there anyway I could measure it with my vintage system? I have no idea where to start with something like this.

Also, is there a way pre-treat, or test, areas before going out and buying or building acoustical treatments? I've read about someone tacking up blankets to certain areas of the walls to get a sense what the treatments might do. Not sure if that would work, but I would like to test before I start the project. My room is a bit odd with the placement of the doors and furniture. I would like to start out behind the speakers, since it would be less obtrusive to the design/decor of the room. Thanks again!!!

 

Hi,

To get the most out of your Komplete Audio 6 you would need to hook up your Sony to a digital input.
The problem is that your Sony only has Optical Digital OUT and your Komplete Audio 6 only has Coax Digital IN.
I suspect that there would be a cheapish special convertor box/adapter thingy out there that would solve your problem.
Otherwise you could try and hook up at analog level as it may still have some positive effect on SQ.

I still think it would be much better if you could hook up digitally though as you could then use the DAC (and maybe other features)
in the Komplete to further improve your SQ.

Good Luck.

 

Thats a good start without having to throw down some obscene amount.When I went to separates for the first time I noticed a cleaner sound.There is a long way to go up from an unrestored Marantz 2270.

 

Ok, so you fine folks have done a fantastic job of getting me off the power amp kick, and for that I thank you all.

I tried stacking the JBL L26 on top of the Quartets and it sounded pretty good, definitely made it seem like it sounded "taller." However, it kind of sounded like the speakers were out of phase with one another, and I also couldn't crank it up as loud. I flipped the JBLs on their head and back again and it yielded little improvement. So I took off the JBLs, then toed-in and tilted the Quartets back by sticking a thin paperback book under the front and it sounded way better. I also had the JBLs on some makeshift speaker stands (milkcrates) which made them sound a lot better. I stuck the Quartets on the "stands" and HOLY CRAP!!!, they sounded better than anything I had tried before. I also upgraded to a cheap $10 RCA cable for the old Sony CD player. With the Marantz at about 35-40%, it measured at around 98-100 db on the sound meter app on my phone. That is plenty loud for me and I can "feel" more of the music.

Aside from experimenting with some acoustical treatments for the room, my next tweak will be to try a pair of Kimber Kable 4PR that I have on my modern AV system to see if there is a noticeable difference than with the 14 gauge Monoprice I just put on her. I also want to try controlling the shrill honk I sometimes get with the Quartets. I've read of some guys taping tissue paper over the horns...we shall see.

Thanks for all the advice so far!

 

http://www.roomeqwizard.com/

See help files.

The (digital) signal REW makes does need to go into the system somewhere (in my case it's connected to my EQ) but for you I don't know where. It will need some sort of digital in. That's the only connection needed to your system.

To get an idea of the effect for the higher frequencies, duvets, blankets, pillows and the like can be used. These can be placed at points where you think reflections occur - side walls, front walls or gear, rear walls.

The real improvements though come with bass treatment and I don't know how to experiment with that. Bass traps are most effective in corners, wall/wall, wall/ceiling and wall/floor. They are usually first placed in the corner walls behind the speakers. The only way I can think you could try is seeing if you can borrow rolls of loft insulation in sealed plastic bags and just pile them up in the corners (still in the bags).

Maybe others have better ideas.

 

I haven't parsed every statement but to me your posts are not entirely consistent in what you say your goal is. You started out being overwhelmed by a high impact store demo but then you started talking about better midrange and followed that with the accurate sound you get on your headphones.

Store demos by their nature only have to impress for a short time. It tells you nothing about listening fatigue or whether all your own recordings are going to sound satisfactorily on the system. For people who value what I would call external attributes eg bass, loudness, dynamics, soundstage these kind of demos have more relevance. However you veered into midrange naturalness and general tonal accuracy. If you are digital only then I would start out with the source. I would recommend either used Marantz, Esoteric or Sony ES SACD/CD players. They have less listener fatigue IMO. You can also look for room correction DSP devices which lessen the need for expensive room treatment. Cables are the last thing you need to worry about until the system is in place. Otherwise you have a moving target. Just my thoughts based on your various posts.