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Listening Fatigue & Speakers in Small Room

The main components of my system are B&W N804s, a MF A300cr power amp (225 wpc), a BAT VK-3i, and a MF Nu Vista CD. All cabling is Cardas Golden Reference. I had this set up in my old, 20x24 condo dining room/living room with no problems. Now, I have a house with a dedicated listening room of approximately 10x10x8, and am experiencing listening fatigue. After a little while, the outside of my ears start to hurt. Recently, I have treated the room with GIK bass traps and spot panels which have made the quality of the sound much, much better, but my ears continue to hurt. I'm thinking that maybe the B&Ws are just too big for the room, and that I may need to go to monitors with a sub. Am I on the right track, or could another component may be the culprit? Thanks for your help.
rlb61
truemaineiac's avatar
truemaineiac
249 posts
 
It could be a lot of things since you are in an all new place, power quality, room acoustics, hooked up differently, etc. Personally, this is how B&W sounds to me each time I have heard them so I was not surprised to see would try to audition some different speakers in the same room.
daverz
477 posts
 
I'm not familiar with the 6H23 (I use EH 6922s, which are what my 3iX came with, but I don't think they are the thing if you have "hot" tweeters). You might want to talk to Kevin Deal about mellower tubes in the 6922 family. The Genelex Gold Lions were actually a bit too stuffy in my system, but otherwise had a very nice tone and dimensionality.

Also you simply may need to damp the room even more.
ebm
5,165 posts
 
Get MAGICO S!.
jedinite24's avatar
jedinite24
1,502 posts
 
I think the 6h23 type tube may be the cause of the listener fatigue. I had a budget tube preamp where it incorporated 4 rocket logo 6h23P preamp tubes and 4 6922 preamp tubes and I swear no matter the 6922 tubes I put there was too much emphasis on the mid range and treble. Practically no bass at all. I couldn't get the preamp to work in my system which is in a small room similar in dimension to Rlb61's room.
newbee
4,093 posts
 
If changing tube to warm up the tone is your goal, I have had a lot of success using JJ ECC88s. The are low noise tubes and I've used them in a BAT VK D5 successfully (as well as a Woo headphone amp. And they are cheap too.

But if you are contemplating a speaker change I would wait - what works now might not work then.

Re small speakers, Spendors, Harbeths, or on the cheap (or not so cheap) Silverlines come to mind.

Did you try crossing the axis of your speakers in front of you? How did that work?
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