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I'm depressed, my system hurts my ears.Please help

I've been enjoying my stereo for quite some time now, but my latest component addition is hurting my ears. My system is as follows:

Music Hall CD25 CD player
McIntosh MC2105 amp (30 year old amp)
Joseph Audio RM22si signatures
Signal Cable Analog 2 interconnects
Kimber 4TC biwired speaker cable
Denon AVR1700 HT receiver as preamp

With the Denon the system sounded pretty good, but it was the obvious weak link, and was actually performing its own unnecessary A to D to A conversion). I swapped the Denon for a Creek OBH12 passive. I added the Creek because in my careful, volume leveled comparisons of the Denon compared to no pre at all, no pre was much cleaner and more natural (I an use no pre because amp has volume knobs).

So I put in the Creek passive to keep that clarity along with switching and an easy volume control, but now I can't sit in the sweet spot of my speakers and listen, because my ears start to hurt at volume levels that used to be just fine. Is this clipping due to an impedance matching problem? Is this just me receiving the full spectrum of the sound and my ears can't handle it? I remember having a similar problem with a very nice car stereo I installed, it sounded very good but always hurt my ears compared to my worse sounding older car stereo.

I almost wish I had never started down the audiophile path, this is depressing. It's tough to do swapping style comparisons because once my ears start hurting, any music will make them hurt until they have a chance to recover. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.
matt8268
morasp
48 posts
 
I have the placette passive (pure vishay S102K resistors) and have the same problem to some extent. I fixed it by adding an SCE harmonic recovery system HRS. It really adds to the sound. I still thought the sound was electronic so I upgraded the power supply caps and rectifier diodes, added 3m vibration sheets all over, and upgraded the signal path resistors to Vishay S102Ks. The result...outstanding. Totally natural sound with great dynamics. One other thing that helps is to swab eco antistatic goop on the components from time to time. It takes the edge off of the sound and allows you to hear much more into the soundstage.
subaruguru
1,353 posts
 
Zug: interesting. A check with headphones would quickly establish the problem as either room-related or digititis.
Do it, Matt.
jayctoy's avatar
jayctoy
1,962 posts
 
Matt

I think the walker noise killer will help your
system without losing the transparency.Try it
works with my 2 system.
mihorn
104 posts
 
Matt. Creek is a good pre-amp. After you changed to Creek, the sound comes off easier and stronger from the drivers. You should toe-in your speakers little more toward you. Or, the listening distance should be further away from speakers.

Still you will have little problem with room reflections because there are more musical information flying everywhere. That is what a higher-end do. You have to control those musical information.

You have few ways to control that problem.
1st, you can put "Imager."(http://www.audio-ideas.com/tweaks.html)------
2nd, you can put long and thick sponge all around the tweeter.(NHT speakers has that on one side of tweeter.)
3rd, You can put "Mi-Horn."(http://mihorn.com/index2.htm)4th, you can put alot of damping materials on walls and ceiling. ------

For 1st and 2nd option, You can control only high freq. For 3rd option, Mi-Horn is 20 times more effective than others. And you can control every freq. For 4th option, it will work, but they are ugly and very expensive.

Another recommendation, Kimber 4TC is not a good cable for your system. I think Cardas or Audiotruth will be better for you.

Happy listening!
matt8268 OP
92 posts
 
Well, thanks for all the different suggestions. I ended up replacing both the McIntosh amp and the Creek passive with a Plinius 8200 mkII integrated. System now sounds wonderful, and Plinius JUST went in, so it will no doubt get better as this component warms up.

Before adding the Plinius, I experimented with running through my Denon (crappy) preamp. Although it muddled the sound, it got rid of the ear hurting problem. Therefore, in my system, I believe the Creek was the culprit for the ear hurting problem. It is possible my ears hurt because there was too much accurate musical information coming out of them. I sort of doubt it, however, and know for sure that if that is what accurate music sounds like, I want no part of it.
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