Any help / advice appreciated

BigBee

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Hi.

After a bit of advice if possible.

We moved house September last year from an end terrace to a detached bungalow. Stereo sounded great at the old house, NAD352 amp, NAD CD player and Monitor Audio silver six speakers (all three components are about 13-14 years old). Room the stereo was in was a bad shape as far as listening environments go, nothing like square with lots of nooks / windows and had a wooden floor with a disused cellar underneath - so lots of empty space under the floor. Got to the new house, much squarer room with a carpeted wooden floor but the stereo sounded lacking in power - it's a much bigger room.

We trotted off down to our local Sevenoaks December last year and demoed a few amps and settled on an Arcam A39 (it was reduced). Got it home and I immediately noticed certain genres of music seemed almost muffled - particularly in the higher range. I listen to a lot of rock from the 70s / 80s, particularly Rush and with that there's a lot of intricate high hat work going on, and that's completely lost. Sound also seems bassy - maybe overly so. For the most part the overall sound is better than the NAD, but it's just the fact that certain elements seem to be missing.

As I've still got the NAD, I have recently reconnected it and demoed various tracks on that then the Arcam, and higher frequencies do seem to be more pronounced on the NAD but as I say, overall the sound on the Arcam is better - it's just not as dynamic / lively or something... I have Googled 'muffled sound / Arcam A39' and find no hits whatsoever, all I find are people raving about how good it is. I have tried another CD player (an Arcam) as well as an ipod dock and all produce the same kind of results.

What I need to know if possible is, it is possible that the Monitor Audios don't match well with the Arcam amp, or even could the room acoustics be playing a part? Am thinking about seeing if I can at least demo another pair of speakers at home as as far as I can tell, it's unlikely the Arcam is the route of the problem - but I just don't know! I appreciate I should have done something about this a long time ago (we bought the Arcam last December) but as we've only just moved in we've had tonnes of other stuff to do.

Thanks for reading and for any advice / help.
 
Id ask sevenoaks for a loan of a demo other arcam and give it a go
 
Unless your new room is the size of a parish hall, the new amplifier and the MASilver6 should be fine. .. the power ratings match
I might look to the speaker cables and ensure that they are 4mm2 copper or thicker..
Prestige brand names irrelevant. Then i would look towards speaker placement. A big room will have sound reflections off hard surface walls , ceilings and floor later than a smaller room, and will be perceptible. Placement rugs, pictures ,drapes all affect this.
 
Sounds like you have room issues, not electronic ones.

I’d be astonished if the Arcam and MAs are not quite excellent together.

Square, or near square, rooms are appalling for standing waves, contrary to the old room which being an odd shape would have had non sympathetic nodes making them more difficult to ‘hear’ as it were.

A ‘bassy’ or muddled sound is almost always room induced.

I can suggest a MiniDSP DiracLive (about £450 so not cheap) or some room treatment.

But room treatment done so that it actually has some effect is not cheap either, is a pain in the arse to calculate properly and wives are invariably less than pleased.
 
Thanks all for replying. It's comforting to learn that the MAs and Arcam should be good together, but less so to hear the room might need tweaking! The speaker wire is of a good quality, and of the measurement suggested. I take the point regarding curtains etc, I do know the ceiling's lower in our new house so that might be having an effect too. I think what I'll do is to try moving the speakers to different locations to see if that makes any difference at all. Trouble is, following the purchase of my LG OLED (and a wood burning stove!) the options are somewhat limited.

I contacted Sevenoaks today, they were quite bemused to hear of my plight and said I was welcome to take all my stereo components down there to demo and they'd help / assist if they could - so I might try that too. They also suggested I check the connecting wires on the backs of the speakers (I don't bi-wire) and even try using the HF sockets, not the LFs which I'm currently using.

Will give as much as I can a try anyway, as I would seriously love to get to the bottom of all this. Am even considering not having a new carpet, but going down the hard flooring route instead - but am not sure how many sacrifices I want to make in the pursuit of having perfect sound. :)
 
As Paul said, contrary to what you would think, an odd shaped room with lots of nooks or furniture may be better than you new nice neat box.

https://www.monitoraudio.com/site/assets/files/20147/silver-series-manual-multi-language.pdf

The manual suggests fir stereo the speakers should be 6-9’ apart, toed into the listener on an equilateral triangle and 8-18” from the rear wall. If you can get them away from side walls all the better.

I woukd position them as close to this as possible , even if not practical, and see how they sound, then inch them back into place to see where the sound changes.

This is worth a read - Room acoustics for home audio

Noting an 8 ft ceiling will give resonances/nulls at approx 70, 140 and 210hz, if these also coincide with wall distances then you know the cause.

Just to add, taking the kit to a seven oaks showroom with a perfect demo room will not solve your problem, just remove their responsibility as it will prove they sold you good, matching kit. Ideally they should send someone out to review your setup in your room.

Hope this helps.
 
I would try the speaker well out into the room (may reduce bass level).

Also you mention carpeted etc which will tend to absorb the high end way more so than low end with the result that perceived sound may be tilted towards bass.
 
Thanks both.

At present, I would say the speakers are about 15' apart so will try them as close together as possible - reckon I could get away with 8-9'.

Regarding the carpet, there's currently one in the room and the plan is to take that up, repair the sqeaky floorboards then put another carpet down - so there'll probably be about a three day period where it's just bare floorboards. Be interesting to hear the stereo at that time, just to hear how much of a difference that makes. You never know, it might be the push I need to go with hard flooring instead!

Thanks again everyone for all the replies, will report back once I've done some testing.
 
The bare boards might well sound worse. If you were to bring into your amplifer, speakers etc out into the garden, during these fine days and set them up there, that will give you the best sound your system is capable of ,without reverberation or echos. That will give you an idea of what is possible...
 
The bare boards might well sound worse. If you were to bring into your amplifer, speakers etc out into the garden, during these fine days and set them up there, that will give you the best sound your system is capable of ,without reverberation or echos. That will give you an idea of what is possible...

:eek: Rain likely soon...
 
The bare boards might well sound worse. If you were to bring into your amplifer, speakers etc out into the garden, during these fine days and set them up there, that will give you the best sound your system is capable of ,without reverberation or echos. That will give you an idea of what is possible...

Thanks, might try that too! Got plenty to go on now anyway :)
 
Hi did you ever get a resolution to this, I'm noticed a similar problem with my a39. Sounds like sections of certain tracks missing or muffled. As you say more noticeable in rock music. Would be keen to hear what you're outcome was? Thank you
 
If it was with rock recorded in the 90’s and 2000’s then it may well be the recordings which were a victim of the DR (dynamic range) wars that tends to compress the music so it sound good on radio but this has the effect of making it sound flat and muffled.

Does the sound change if you move around your room, keeping your ear at tweeter height, if so then it is more likely room modes.
 
hahaha - if you wire it up with high + low frequency from the same channel you get muffled sound - doh!!
 

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