Lack of depth problem

Thanks all again. Let me talk about my room first, then to my electronics, and then speaker placement.

I think my room is damped just about right. The clap test shows just a tiny bit of echo. I have invited two high-end audio store owners to my house in the past. Both of them liked my room. They didn't like my TV being in the center though.

I also think my amp and preamp have sufficient power supplies. The amp has a 400VA Plitron transformer, which should be sufficient for a 100WX2 amp. Note that this Counterpoint NP100 amp is all brand new. The old one is called SA100. Basically, I sent my SA100 to Mike Elliott and he replaced everything inside. The preamp has the Superpak upgrade which doubled the capacitors.

This NP100 has 6SN7 tubes. I use a pair of Sylvania VT-231s. I do have a tube power amp, a pair of KT88 monoblocks. They are for my bedroom. Will tube power amps increase depth?

I like wide sound stage though. So it is not a good trade to me. But I moved them forward about 8" and toe in towards my ears. I would say 30 degrees toe-in. This seems improves the depth somewhat. However, I do hear vocal moved to the back and drummer to the front as Shardone pointed out. Good catch!

I also hear a hump in the upper bass. I used a Rives Test CD to do a low freq sweep and found a hump around 100Hz. The height of the room is 9', which explains it. Hanging some bass traps on the ceiling may help. But it will look real ugly!

What else is in the room? It has two 15" subwoofers and other electronics for the home theater.

Did I miss anything?

Hello Vett93: I've used the VT-231(IF it's the bottom getter tube from the 40's), and it is an excellent tube with regard to clarity, imaging, dynamics, etc. Actually I'm saving them for back-ups now. I did find more depth of stage with the Sylvania 6SN7W(tall bottle), but the champ for depth is the TungSol JAN CTL/6SN7GT(round plate). The back wall seems to receed about 4-5ft further with that than the VT231(in my modded Carys). All three of those tubes possess the same clarity/slam/imaging/extension/definition/lack of any grain or colorations. If the MOS-FETs of your amp were replaced with bi-polars, that could also affect your depth negatively, as they don't seem to pass ambience info as well(and much less than tubed outputs do). How long ago was the amp modded, and with what caps? Is it completely "burned in"(some caps, ie: V-Caps, take much longer to adjust themselves than others)? Any chance of borrowing a tubed output amp for a sound stage experiment? I would also say(from a distance) that your room is fine, all except for the TV between the speakers. I would, however, be certain to set up the speakers in such a way as to place your listening position a distance equal to(or just slightly greater than) the distance of the speakers, one to another. Then aim the tweeters just outboard of directly at you ears.

Better make those "your" ears!

However, I do hear vocal moved to the back and drummer to the front as Shardone pointed out. Good catch!

Then you can do several things.

1. Speakers closer together and away from side walls.
2. Sit much closer to the speakers (or bring the speakers closer to you)
3. Toe them in as you have done (this reduces reflections and increases primary signal)
4) Use a PEQ or tone control to cut or roll off slightly from 5K upwards (this will place percussion further back)
5) Heavy room treatments to absorb more high frequencies.
6) If none of this is suitable then you may need to change the speakers (although JMLabs are exceptional - so this is not an easy task) - but basically it is possible that these speakers do not suit your room/listening/far-field placement. Look for speakers with a very even horizontal dispersion right across the entire frequency range (no dip in the upper midrange) - these will most likely give you more of the depth that is actually intended on the recording. You can see this on the speaker dispersion plots. I suggest a three way with one or two small 3 inch midrange woofers would work best for your far-field listening setup.

FYI: All large 6 inch woofers are simply not suitable for far-field listening as they all roll off around 1 Khz - well before a dome tweeter can take over. Some manufacturers use a phase plug to help improve dispersion. ATC get round this problem by grafting a midrange dome onto a 6" woofer for their two ways. Others will crossover the tweeter very low but this usually results in compression at high output levels needed for farfield. Others go to a horn design on the tweeter to get more output (which tends to narrow dispersion also).

they all roll off around 1 Khz - well before a dome tweeter can take over

What I meant to say is that the horizontal dispersion rolls off. (this is caused by beaming)

Another way round this is to use cones that flex allowing the centre part of the cone to decouple from the outer edge - this is called controlled breakup and you can see it on some woofers with "rings" although you do not have to have rings to exploit cone flexure - it has drawbacks in temrms of added distortion and an uneven frequency response.