2. amps-preamps
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Von Schweikert VR4JR & Tube Amp???

So...without boring you with too much details, I've been FORCED to move my rig into a small dedicated room in my basement. I currently have the above speakers, Marantz SA8260 SACD/CD, Marantz PM7200 (95wpc), Kimber Silver Streak, Audioquest Montblanc & CV-6. My room is only about 12x10 and it's in a corner of my finished basement so, I have two walls that are poured concrete behind the paneling. Obviously, the sound sucks. Since the room is fully enclosed and mine alone, I literally had to surround the room with R-15 Insulation covered with heavy felt moving-blankets and built some baffling in the corners. Ceiling is typical foam drop-ceiling tiles. Floor is carpeted. After some experimentation with speaker placement, I have ACCEPTABLE sound accross most frequencies except the bass (too boomy). Now here's the question: I'm hoping to make the following hardware changes as final adjustments since I might be here for awhile: Replace the PM7200 with a Primaluna Prologue 2 or Manley Stringray and the Audioquest cables with Kimber 8TC. I don't have the experience with or the ability to audition the considered new gear but, what do you wise and insightful folks think???
pawlowski6132
newbee
4,093 posts
 
Personally, before reaching any conclusions about changing amps I'd want to address the bass boom you describe. Assuming you can't or wont find speakers that will work better in those dimensions, and the present locations of the speakers and listening position are the best you have been able to do, personally I'd invest in a good 1/3d octave or a parametric equalizer to get that done. If you follow that course you will need either seperate amp and pre-amp, an integrated with a tape monitor loop, or one that has a pre amp out/amp in feature of some type to accomodate the insertion of an equalizer. Much as I like the Primaluna stuff, its not going to help your bass problems disappear a whit and it doesn't have either a tape loop or a pre out/in. Can't speak for the Manley. Hope that helps a bit.
robm321
932 posts
 
Pawlowski6123,

I also had my VR4jr in a 10 x 12 or 10 x 10 or something close, and first of all I feel your pain. Be careful not to over dampen the room. but I know it is necessary to absorb more than a typical room otherwise the high frequencies will blow you out of your chair. It is a balancing act. If you have the ability a diagonal speaker placement will help a lot with the bass. Anyway, I'll let others chime in on the equipment question.

Rob
leftistelf
87 posts
 
Check out rives' equalizer. It's exactly what you need to kill the bass.
pawlowski6132 OP
572 posts
 
Newbee & Leftistelf, thanx for your thoughts. I considered your solutions but decided to go this route because 1) The worse case would be the bass problem still exists and I have a nicer sounding amp (I listen to mostly acoustic music e.g., jazz, classical, bluegrass. 2) I always heard that one "disadvantage" tubes have compared to solid state amps was that the bass was not as pronounced and 3) I thought about the equalizer but was hesitant to add something else to my signal path that might fix the bass problem but degrade the over all signal. Comments??
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