Things not working out...anyone use B&K?

All is NOT well with my new-to-me Vantages. While I like the airy feel of the music, I cannot get over the brightness and the resultant ear fatigue. I am used to a laid-back warm sound presentation. My Rotel RC1070 and RB1080 combo went well with the vifa ring radiator in my Polk LSi speakers but they are not well matched to the Vantages for my taste. After trying all different combo of wires that I have, and getting it toned down somewhat, it became apparent no amount of tweeking with cables is going to get me where I want to go. So I gave up and swapped in my Harman amp and it was much better but still not quite there. I swapped in an Harman AVR as a pre-pro to try to further tame the sound and it helped a bit more but not enough. I have a big Marantz AVR I could try but my impression is that it is more forward and ore neutral than my Harman stuff so I don't think it will help further.

So, I am selling one of my Rotel amps and adding a bit of funds in search of warm, laid-back, airy sound out of the Vantages that won't cause ear fatique. Harmon is known for that but apparently, not enough for the Vantages for me. I seem to recall B&K amps have warm and mellow sound to them, at least when I listened to them 10 yrs ago. Anyone use B&K here and if so, what model do you use? I am presuming that a replacement amp will make more of an impact as compared to a preamp but not sure ..may have to do both....My budget is limited to about $600. Any thoughts? TIA.

Try a tube preamp in the system.

having used Rotel in the past myself with my Vantage's of the time I didn't experience your problems.

Have you done your due diligence with respect to room / acoustic treatments ? Regardless of which route you take with 'gear' it's all pretty much a waste in a poor listening environment.

I think the RB1080 is a class D amp right? I would suggest a Class A-B or better yet a Class A amp. Class D amps never sound right to me.

Joey_V said:

Try a tube preamp in the system.

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+1 on this... I like my cary slp98p..... but even used 600 bucks is not going to get you there. I don't recall your particular room setup either as others have mentioned... Couple of things for me.... I have oddysseys... and when I first got them - I was using the typical speaker wire from best buy.... there was a slight harshness.... I got some audioquest cable - and that issue went away.... Again - not a big change.. and not the big pricey cables (think i got them on sale for 450/pr for 2 8' runs - but enough to make things better to these ears. Secondly, room positioning... and the room itself.... Bad things -- Lots of glass.... Pictures with glass..... Hard surfaces for the most part give a harsher sound... Ceramic tile...... anything like that can cause a bit of harshness to the sound in my opinion. I don't recall - I assume you can adjust the rake angle on the vantages... that can make a diff on this too.... along with the actual positioning in the room .... and using the flash light technique to get the inner third of the panel pointing at the listening position.

just my 2 cents...

Thanks everyone for your thoughts. The Rotel is actually class ab and it is supposedly neutral although it is apparently not as detailed or refined as higher level amps.
Joey, I don't know of any appropriate tube preamps ....have you or anyone ever tried any tube DACs such as Music Hall dac 25.3 or tube buffer? Dave and Timm, the system is in a living room so I am limited in what I can do but there is not that many problem areas. There is a huge rug, microfiber furniture and minimal hard surfaces. There is some peripheral glass surrounding two paintings on the wall but there is not that much glass. The panels are only 2 feet from the wall but they are toed in so that flashlights reflect on the inner third of the panels. Small part of one of the panels is obscured a bit by the couch arm but only about 2x3 inches on the lower part of the panel.

So no thoughts on B&K? I do get the impression that I may be asking the wrong crowd...you guys seem to play with a significantly higher level of equipment. Unfortunately, funds are not as plentiful as my ears desire...but I guess that can be said of everyone regardless of the level of toys you play with. Maybe I will get an HK preamp and try to tweak a bit more using a DAC. Let me know if you have any other thoughts or ideas. Thanks.
Daniel

PS: Joey, I remember you from AV123/Onix. I just sold my Rockets to defray some of the cost of the Vantages.

2+2, I remember back in the day B&K was a Buffalo, NY based company with an emphasis on value (like Adcom) but since they have been sold off and moved to Ca I've no current knowledge.

I still think your room and set up is part of the issue, 2 feet off the wall IS NOT enough room, if you can't increase that buy at least another foot (preferably another 2 plus), then consider treatments

2+2 said:

Thanks everyone for your thoughts. The Rotel is actually class ab and it is supposedly neutral although it is apparently not as detailed or refined as higher level amps.
Joey, I don't know of any appropriate tube preamps ....have you or anyone ever tried any tube DACs such as Music Hall dac 25.3 or tube buffer? Dave and Timm, the system is in a living room so I am limited in what I can do but there is not that many problem areas. There is a huge rug, microfiber furniture and minimal hard surfaces. There is some peripheral glass surrounding two paintings on the wall but there is not that much glass. The panels are only 2 feet from the wall but they are toed in so that flashlights reflect on the inner third of the panels. Small part of one of the panels is obscured a bit by the couch arm but only about 2x3 inches on the lower part of the panel.

So no thoughts on B&K? I do get the impression that I may be asking the wrong crowd...you guys seem to play with a significantly higher level of equipment. Unfortunately, funds are not as plentiful as my ears desire...but I guess that can be said of everyone regardless of the level of toys you play with. Maybe I will get an HK preamp and try to tweak a bit more using a DAC. Let me know if you have any other thoughts or ideas. Thanks.
Daniel

PS: Joey, I remember you from AV123/Onix. I just sold my Rockets to defray some of the cost of the Vantages.

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Can you try pulling them out... to see if it fixes the issue... or if things go in the right direction? Not that you would keep them there... but it would put you in a position to determine some things..... or if you can put a thick blanket up on the wall behind each speaker - any old way temporarily of course.... again to see what direction it takes you.... all of these suggestions are just to see what might be causing the issue... not permanent solutions... but, in the end could save you some coin....

In the same direction that Dave suggested. Try covering the wall behind each speaker with heavy blankets or pillows to stop the reflection from the back of the panel. Even though you don't think your room has any acoustical problems it most likely does.
This is not to say that different electronics won't help but playing with the room acoustics is much less expensive.
Let us know how things progress.

Thank you gentlemen. You are all likely right that the room acoustics is probably a significant contributing factor. I will have to try pulling them out some tomorrow...as of now, kids just went to bed. The thing is, because it is in the living room (and not a very big one at that), there is very little I can do to change much of anything. It has to be inviting and nice for me and guests and having speakers three feet into the room is just not going to cut it. Right now, I am using my HK receiver as a preamp and HK amp which is 80w/ch but high current (73 amps) and it sounds better than the Rotel combo on the Vantages. I have never used tone controls before but for kicks this afternoon, I turned on the tone controls on the AVR and turned the Treble knob from 12 o'clock to about 10 o'clock. It lost some air and space but I was able to listen for an extended period of time without discomfort. Voices of Krall and Jones sounded more natural and less sibilant. I will have to figure out how to post a picture here. Thanks.

here is the pic. To the left is the dining room. Behind the single chair is a hallway from the front door, and my office door. The big couch cannot be moved to the other side because there are columns outlining the living room space and the couch is too big to fit between the columns. I could put a skinny table about high as the chair railings between the speakers and put some things there but not sure if that will help.

I'll throw a couple thoughts in here. Nice, clean looking setup. I can see why using treatments might be tough to swallow, but . . . if the speakers can't be brought away from the wall, treatments are going to be a must.

A very short summation of my experience:
At 3' from the front wall my speakers started sounding really good and easy to listen to, less fatigue. I now have them 6' from the wall - I'm not married - the speakers sound absolutely great!

Amps helped greatly, but really made the most difference at normal to higher listening volumes. For the electronics, I got the biggest leap in great sound when I discovered which preamp worked best with the amp I ended up keeping. I ran the gamut on speaker wires trying low-gauge zip, and high-gauge zip; low $$, mid $$$, high $,$$$ AudioQuest; but now that the electronics are all happy my speaker wires are DIY $0.33 per foot 4-conductor wire.

I use minimal treatments. First reflection on the front wall (but it's behind my tv panel and mostly for its effect on room ambience, taking these two absorption panels out doesn't destroy the great sound, it just gets slightly more lively sounding), and first and second reflection on side walls.

Trading speaker placement from 6' down to only 2-1/2' (the minimum that has any chance of working IMO) would require thick absorption panels directly behind speakers -- or -- like I've seen here and there, absorption tubes attached to the back of the stat panels.

Stronger toe-in along with greater distance between the two speakers can help a little with being too close to the front wall.

I tried a gazillion speaker positions and toe-in/toe-out combinations with the speakers against the wall to 3' from the front wall and 4' apart to 10' apart in a 13' wide room. Until I tried 4', then 5', and then 6' BINGO! I didn't know how good these speakers could sound. And . . . this far out from the wall the simple flashlight toe-in spec works great.

I hope sharing my journey can help spark some thoughts you may come up with to alleviate some of the negative issues you're dealing with.

There is a company (I can't remember the name, but someone else here will) that turns pictures into room treatments. You could do that with your pictures (maybe one large one spanning the whole space?), then below the chair rail (behind the speakers) you could put neutral-coloured panels that would not detract from that clean decor.

You could also pull out the speakers for serious listening, then put them back when you're done.

You should post your system in the members' systems section.

First, nice room, and a real challenge to fit ESLs into, but there are some things you can try that will substantially help.

As others have indicated, you have serious issues due to the reflected energy from the rear of the panel hitting a wall that is both too close (untreated) and too 'head on'. Remember dipoles emit 100% as much energy to the rear as they do to the front, what happens in both trajectory and level to that energy is *critical* to how the speaker will be judged to be performing. In your case, the energy is reflecting back from the wall behind the speaker, and then coming right back through the ESL panel as out phase, delayed (about 4ms) and mixing with the front firing wave of the ESL. As you might imagine, that's not at all good. The effect is called comb-filtering, and quite visible in measurements and quite audible as 'smearing' of the sound.

One of the reasons you hear people advising you to 'pull them out into the room' is that adds significant delay (sound has to travel further) and once the reflected sound has a delay of >7ms or so, the ear interprets the sound as a reflection, not a distortion in the main signal. Secondly if you also follow the 'separate them and toe them in more' advice, you benefit from that rear energy now bouncing off the wall behind the speaker at an angle (vs straight back through the esl) and then reflecting off a side wall (again, increasing the delay) so that the reflected sound now comes from the side of the room (giving an illusion of a broader soundstage).

My advice is to try the test of dampening the rear wave reflections with some absorption, as that addresses the comb filtering issue as well as some others I won't go into detail on right now. That test will help you understand your options better.

As a data point, I have a custom designed room, and I treat the *entire* front wall and the majority of my side walls with absorption. Before I did that, that room was waaay to reflective and I'd experience some of the same issues you noted regarding fatigue. Now, I can listen for hours at reasonable volumes with no ear fatigue.

Bernard said:

There is a company (I can't remember the name, but someone else here will) that turns pictures into room treatments. You could do that with your pictures (maybe one large one spanning the whole space?), then below the chair rail (behind the speakers) you could put neutral-coloured panels that would not detract from that clean decor.

...

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Yep, you ask and here it is: http://www.gikacoustics.com/product/gik-artpanel-acoustic-panels/

these can look stunning, look at their gallery for examples. I happen to like this one:

JonFo said:

Yep, you ask and here it is: http://www.gikacoustics.com/product/gik-artpanel-acoustic-panels/

these can look stunning, look at their gallery for examples. I happen to like this one:

View attachment 17955

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Yes, the panels I have at the back of my room were from a photograph I took and sent to GIK for processing into a tryptych similar to that one. If you click on my system link below you can see them there. Great folks to work with. Very professional and the panels arrived within 8-9 days I believe and look great.

Thank you all for your advice and suggestions. I really do appreciate it. I will look into the linked sound panel company and see if that is a viable option.

Per the suggestions, as a test, I pulled the Vantages out so that the panels were 3 feet from the wall and listened for about 3 hrs today. I also had to bring them a bit closer to clear the couch arm. The sound did noticeably mellow out about the same degree as when I went from Rotel to HK gear. That sound was much more natural and acceptable. I did notice tho that the sound stage had narrowed to within the boundaries of the speaker and not beyond (if that makes sense). I presume that could be a toe issue that I didn't optimize. However, the 3 foot position is just not going to happen as it literally blocks part of the couch and kinda looks ridiculous. I moved the couch about 2 inches and moved the speakers about 2 inches further away from the original position which obviously didn't impact the sound much. I did put the matching skinny long high table (I cant remember what these things are called) between the speakers and put a long runner that drapes partly down the sides of the speakers and put a bunch of picture frames on it around the level of the chair rail....it helped tinsy bit. I am thinking it is impeding some of the reflected waves but who knows. All I know is that it was a step in the right direction acoustically. Am I there yet? No. I just unhooked my office system and brought the Music Hall Maven and hooked it up to the Vantages to see how that gear sounds. I was hoping to avoid all this swapping of gear but I am forced to at this point. Unfortunately, the kids went down for the night and I will be gone until after Memorial Day so extensive audition will have to wait. It would be nice if I didn't have to rip my home theater system down to try out the Marantz 8400.

I went to the local ML dealer and they had two setups, one driven by McIntosh and another with ....Denon receiver... I thought that was interesting. I didn't audition them though. In speaking with the sales guy and explaining my situation, he suggested a Yamaha integrated or a Peachtree integrated which I also thought was interesting.

Anyways, again, I do appreciate the suggestions all.
Daniel

Secondly if you also follow the 'separate them and toe them in more' advice

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JonFo, quick question: what does the "separate them" part of this advice mean? Is it just increasing the spacing between the speakers? And how much toe in are we talking about? The flashlight adjustment in the manual says within a third of the panel. Maybe at the middle?
Thx.

ttocs said:

absorption tubes attached to the back of the stat panels.

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I am going to have to look into this as well...thanks.

2+2 said:

I am going to have to look into this as well...thanks.

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I found the post showing the tube traps a fellow forum member made:
http://www.martinloganowners.com/fo...he-Back-Wave&highlight=15003&d=1321129532