Tell us about your stereo!

[LG]

They have performed very well Craig, they have a little faster Slew rate than the old Bryston did, and are a little warmer sounding if you know what I mean. They have been a good match for the IMF's.

I'll post the pre-amp tomorrow, I inherited it from my Mom who passed away 5 years ago now, but it is a perfect fit with the rest of the system.

 

[Craig in Indy]

Which tracks do you fellows use to audition speakers and other audio components?

I'll list my non-classical stuff for now. Generally speaking, I usually like female vocals, as I think they're more telling than other "instruments."

"Fixing a Hole" from Connie Evingson's Let It Be Jazz

"What You Wish For" and "Center of Attention" from Guster's Lost and Gone Forever

"Prelude, Op.28, No.20" from Warren Bernhardt's Hands On

"Let Your Voice Be Heard" and "Shenandoah" from Cantus's Let Your Voice Be Heard

"Delia's Gone" from Johnny Cash's American Recordings (American I)

"I Can See Clearly Now" from Holly Cole's Don't Smoke in Bed

"Roll Jordan Roll" from Fairfield Four's Standing in the Safety Zone

"I Close My Eyes" from Fallen Angels' Rain of Fire (the Mapleshade rock recording I referred to in another post)

"If I Had You" from Diana Krall's All for You

"Peel Me a Grape" and "Garden in the Rain" from Diana Krall's Love Scenes

"Hit the Road to Dreamland" from Jane Monheit's Come Dream with Me

"In the Evening (When the Sun Goes Down)" from Mel Tormé's The Duke Ellington and Count Basie Songbooks

"Tell It All" from Pat Metheny Group's First Circle

Those are the non-classical staples I come back to all the time, but there could be others depending on, well, all sorts of things.

 

[0000]

budabump...

have a question for some of you that know a bit more about stereos than I...

my new speakers are getting awful bass response, how can I improve this...oh, and I can't set my own eq's and the preset ones suck pretty bad.... even on cd's the bass response is pretty lame, the speakers are open back which I know kills some of the bass, I have them up against a wall, and a towel under the speakers and over the backs on the wall, I'm going to try setting the speakers further apart, I know that will help a bit, but the sound is really shrill, and there is no output for a sub woofer...aside from new gear what can I do for better bass?

 

[LG]

One of the oldest tricks in the book is to put your speakers in the corner of a room, this will improve the bass, it might color the overall sound a little too. You could also try putting them on a couple of empty boxes, that will resonate more air and help with the bass response.

There is only so much you can do EB, with the placement and there are always trade offs.

What kind of speakers are they? What is the frequency response,,,any more info would b helpful.

 

[0000]

hmm.. I don't have a way to put them totally in the corner, they're close to the corner, but that doesn't do anything lol

I was trying to use the towels under the speakers to accomplish the same thing as empty boxes, it worked to an extent
they're just stock memorex stereo speakers, the mids and treble they put out aren't like Ice picky, but they get no bass..... umm.... they're not really high quality or anything, sort of just enough to get the job done.... umm.. thats all the info I have

 

[Craig in Indy]

When you say they're "open back" do you men they're intended to radiate out the back as well as the front, as in dipole and bipole speakers, or are they simply box speakers without a back installed?

If the former, you're going to have some trouble successfully augmenting the bass by corner placement. I mean it might work for that issue, but it'll probably cause some other problems with the mids and highs. Speakers designed to radiate out the backside as well as the front usually require some space around them to get the best overall performance. Failing that, putting some absorptive material (like a heavy blanket) on the back wall will help avoid the immediate reflection problems, but it won't sound as good as having them stand out in the room 2 or 3 feet.

If they're simply box speakers without a back, putting them against a wall or in a corner shouldn't create any huge problems with the overall sound qaulity. You may not get all the bass you're after (and what you get may seem boomy and somewhat ill-defined), but it should improve the situation a bit.

 

[LG]

No specification sheet or model number?

There is nothing else you can do other than room placement EB. I have two Paradigm Titan's in the corners of my den hooked up to an old Marantz receiver and the bass is epic, for two small speakers.

If you could afford it a modest powered sub-woofer would do the trick. There are many really good ones on e-bay for a great price.

 

[Craig in Indy]

What size woofers do they have?

 

[0000]

When you say they're "open back" do you men they're intended to radiate out the back as well as the front, as in dipole and bipole speakers, or are they simply box speakers without a back installed?

If the former, you're going to have some trouble successfully augmenting the bass by corner placement. I mean it might work for that issue, but it'll probably cause some other problems with the mids and highs. Speakers designed to radiate out the backside as well as the front usually require some space around them to get the best overall performance. Failing that, putting some absorptive material (like a heavy blanket) on the back wall will help avoid the immediate reflection problems, but it won't sound as good as having them stand out in the room 2 or 3 feet.

If they're simply box speakers without a back, putting them against a wall or in a corner shouldn't create any huge problems with the overall sound qaulity. You may not get all the bass you're after (and what you get may seem boomy and somewhat ill-defined), but it should improve the situation a bit.

I don't even get boomy bass, I get none lol, they have a hole around the back of the speaker, but leave the rest of the back covered, I'd say the speaker is probably a 4 or 5 inch...somewhere around there they sounded horrible out in the room before I put them close to the wall, none of the sound was defined at all

No specification sheet or model number?

There is nothing else you can do other than room placement EB. I have two Paradigm Titan's in the corners of my den hooked up to an old Marantz receiver and the bass is epic, for two small speakers.

If you could afford it a modest powered sub-woofer would do the trick. There are many really good ones on e-bay for a great price.

I couldn't find it in the manual... I'll look up the serial number later
I don't have an output for a sub

 

[Craig in Indy]

The hole in the back of a box speaker is simply a port - a method of making an otherwise pure "acoustic suspension" speaker more efficient so it requires less power to drive, and to somewhat "tune" the enclosure for low-midrange and upper-bass response. That kind of thing shouldn't be affected much at all by placing close to walls or corners. With drivers your size though, you may simply not have the ability to put out much bass at all. I mean, there are very good speakers that probably aren't much bigger than that, but everyone understands that somewhat anemic bass is the cost when making speakers that size. Which is why they're very often paired with subwoofers.

I don't know if you have the budget for a subwoofer, but the lack of a sub-out jack on the stereo shouldn't be a limiting factor for you. Most subwoofers (at least those intended for audio-only systems) can be connected either to a dedicated sub-out jack, or put in line with your speakers (where the wires run from the stereo to the sub to the speakers), and you use the subwoofer's filters to control how much of the signal it tries to produce, and how much gets passed to the regular speakers.

One other option, though it means giving up on your current speakers completely, is to go with a complete sub/satellite system like Cambridge Soundworks sells. Their little ones are pretty reasonably priced, and while they won't rival a good audiophile setup by any means, they tend to sound a lot better than 90% of the all-in-one "shelf system" speakers I've ever heard.