New Q Acoustics 3020i muffled

[nart]

Hi all - I've recently started replacing my old super budget system with something a bit more decent and that supports the latest formats, etc. The front stage is comprised of Q Acoustics 3020i's and C3090i.

The minute I plugged in the front speakers I noticed one of the 3020i's sounds noticeably more muffled than the other one. I triple checked the cables/polarity/etc and even swapped them around (so using different cable and port on receiver), the same speaker continues to sound more muffled. I've done some tests with high frequency sweeps and the problematic speaker fades out the output from about 9-10kHz, while the other one fades it out from about 14-15kHz (to my ears anyway), so pretty clear a tweeter issue I would say?

I have to mention the receiver is also new (Denon AVR-X2700H) and this is the first time I plugged everything in, so no calibration or anything yet, just done the basic setup. I am also still waiting for the sub to arrive so this initial setup assigned the front left and right channels to "Large" with no crossover. Initially I thought maybe the receiver is doing something weird trying to force one speaker to focus on lower frequencies in the absence of a sub, but as I said, swapping them around doesn't move the issue to the other speaker, which sort of implies to me it's the speaker that has the problem not the receiver. I'm not sure running the calibration or trying again after the sub arrives is going to help or not, but I would expect these to sound balanced out of the box?

Any ideas? I can obviously return/exchange them but just wanted to make sure I'm not missing something obvious here.

 

[password1]

What are your other speakers.

If you're used to higher end speakers, e.g Top of the range Pro ac, spendors and monitor audio golds and platinums then these budget 3020i are going to sound not great.

 

[nart]

What are your other speakers.

If you're used to higher end speakers, e.g Top of the range Pro ac, spendors and monitor audio golds and platinums then these budget 3020i are going to sound not great.

That's definitely not the case and I certainly don't claim to have super trained audiophile ears either.
Other speakers are Monitor Audio Bronze FX for surrounds and Q Acoustics QI65CP for in-ceiling Atmos.

The difference between the two 3020i front speakers is quite noticeable and as I said, the one exhibiting the problem doesn't even play the same frequency tones (above 9-10kHz) to the other one. In normal content (music, movies) it sounds significantly more muffled to the point that even if I would've listened to it in isolation to the other speaker I would've still thought there is something wrong.

I'm pretty confident it's a problem with the speaker now and I've arranged a replacement.

 

[password1]

If the issue still happens when you swap the speakers to different channels then it's most likely a problem with one of the speakers. Contact the seller if you bought them new.