Whats my weak link?

B limo,

I second Al's headphone suggestion. A few year's back, I decided to build a system I could retire with. I had (and still do) a pair of Sennheiser HD 600 cans, and Musical Fidelity X-2 can amp.

The cans were sounding much better that the system at that time. Now, that isn't the case at all. Cans give you a good baseline to measure your progress with.

That said, I believe you still don't have your speakers situated to give their best performance. It looks to me as if you have them located on the long wall, where they can't get any help from the corners of your room for good bass response.

Do you have the manual that came with your speakers? See what KEF reccommends for placement.

If that doesn't help, there were lot of good suggestions made previously here. Room treatment can tame many problems, but lack of bass response isn't usually one of them.

Good luck, keep trying, you'll get there.

Dan

03-06-13: B_limo
Ps, again, Jmcgrogan, what pre amp would you recommend? I can probably try my buddies to see if that's partly responsible. I've read reviews stating that the classe ssp 25 isn't that great for a 2 ch. pre.

B, I went through that HT phase about 15 years ago, trying fancy SSP's from Classe, Proceed, Krell, etc, none of them was very good for 2 channel audio. I still remember inserting a Classe CP-60 into my system in place of one of these SSP's (I recall I was running a CA-200 amp at that time), the difference was amazing. At that point I realized that no SSP would work in a 2 channel system.

Since then I've had about 20 different preamps in my system. I try to make sure they have a HT throughput, picked up a cheap Denon AVR to handle the other speakers for HT, and let a stereo preamp handle stereo.

I would recommend that you try your friends stereo preamp and see if that makes a difference. If it does, as I suspect it will, you now know where to start. I won't bother with any recommendations, since I find that the preamp is such a personal choice. For me, it's the heart of the system and difficult to find just the right sound and features. That's probably why I've been through over 20 preamps, more than double the amount of amps, CDPs, speakers, turntables, or any other piece of gear.

Cheers,
John

You all rock!! Thank you to everyone trying to help me out here. I suspect it's a combination of things: pre amp, room treatments and power cords. I think pre amp because the difference in sound is noticeable even at very low volumes. I played with speaker placement /listening seat placement snd overcame the bass issue but there are still many things off. I'm assuming pre amp and room treatments are going to get me 90% there.

I must say that I really, really appreciate all the help everyone has givin me, and so quickly, today and yesterday. Thank you, thank you thank you :-)

Do you guys think a peachtree decco would be a big upgrade over the ssp25 in terms of a pre amp?

Gotta ask, but what about the Vandys didn't float your boat? Saw you'd picked them up, and was looking forward to hear what you thought. Seemed, in the abstract and not having any personal exposure, like a great idea. Between the KEF and the Vandys, do you have a preference? I know that conventional wisdom (stuff I've myself parroted) can be that surround-sound processors pulling double-duty as two-channel preamps can be less than super -- thus look to thy Classe SSP. Honestly, that might be a great place to start, but what do I know. You're running very nice and well thought out gear either way, so it's really down to personal preference at this level, a far as I'm concerned. Put differently, if you were to estimate that you were looking for more "X" in your sound, what would X be? For whatever value of X you value, I suspect there's lots of ways to get from here to there. Maybe a little focus on that would help? I just hesitate to put too much faith in purportedly objective suggestions without unpacking motives -- especially when your motive is the only one that's worth a damn under the circumstances.... Not to say that I think any of the suggestions are not great suggestions, all make perfect sense to me in the abstract, just posing the question of weather it'd be beneficial to get less abstract...?