1. Home
  2. cables
  3. 1160146300

My system is bright? I need help. thanks

Hi. it is my first time here in this forum. i would appreciate input and help from all of you. No sacrasm or bad langauge please. I had bad experience with other forums in that aspect. music loving people and audiophiles should be an elite, high caliber and classy community. This is rare to find today. Ok Down to the point.

My system
Musical fidelity kw 500 sacd player. I use the tube output.
Musical fidelity kw 500 integrated amp.
speakers:eggleston andra (not andra 2)
speaker cable: satori acoustic zen
interconnects: Nordost baldur and nordost quatrofil RCA
USe a dedicated 20 amp line with regular power cords(came with the gear) and a panamax 20 amp surge protector and filter.

This is in my family room so there is little room for treatment and moving things around.

problem: bright. the highs are killing my ears, after 1-2 hours of listening my ears start to hurt,sometimes 3 minutes. I have to turn the volume down. I tried postioning, it got a little better. I will try acoustic zen silver ref II may be it will help. The sound is otherwise phenomenal, i could be happy with more bass, but overall it is very good. Depth, tranparency, acuity and soundstaging are great. As for mids, i can see the person infront of me,I can hear the articulation of the tongue in the mouth before the words and tunes comes out. no kidding, but not for long because of fatigue.

I would really appreciate your input.
Scientist73
scientist73
scientist73 OP
36 posts
 
The room has a thin kind of carpet,not thich and fluffy. the windows have paper like material blinds on them.
thanks
newbee
4,093 posts
 
Scientist73, Perhaps its just me, but I would suggest that, as you originally suggested, a diagram would be wonderful.
tvad
9,467 posts
 
I cannot determine from Scientist73's comments if nearfield listening was ever tried. He's basically there anyway, except that his speakers are too close together, IMO. As I wrote, the experiment to hear the effect of slightly wider speakers could have been easily tried by sliding the listening chair a foot closer to the speakers. Not much effort required to do that.
boa2's avatar
boa2
1,550 posts
 
Scientist73,
Why wouldn't you consider replacing the KW 500 amplifier with one that mates better with your speakers? You mentioned the MC402, which happens to be in the same price range as you could expect to get for your KW 500. You could then either stick with the same CDP and use a pair of attentuators, or get a CDP that has an internal volume control (RA Opus 21, Wadia, Audio Aero Capitole, etc...) at least until you possibly decided to try out some preamps. The brightness would be gone, and you wouldn't be out any additional money.

FWIW, I've heard the a pair of Von Schweikert VR4Sr's with three different amp/CDP combinations. Only with the MF combo that you have did it sound exactly as you have described.

Just something to think about as you tango with your Andras. :-)
mrtennis
3,295 posts
 
it might be worth a shot to try an equalizer to achieve a presentation that you are comfortable with. you might observe the adjustments you make to determine where the peaks are. this will not tell you the source of the problem but may be a way to eliminate the frequency imbalance.

you could instead use a good quality spectral analyzer, with the microphone at the listener positionto uncover frequency imbalnces and then decide how to get rid of them.
an equalizer is one of several solutions to your problem.
More to discover