Sonic climate warming in my living room requested

[henne_j]

First post.....

Hello,

I have been an audio enthusiast for a couple of years, going through several configurations but always paired with B&W speakers. I recently bought a set of CM9s paired with a musical fidelity M6i integrated amp, Stello DA100 dac connected through coax to a sonos connect source (these last two were inherited from my previous set up), kimber 8tc speaker wire, profigold interconnects between dac and M6i (to be changed to xlr, just for the fun of having balanced sockets on dac and amp ). Overall I am pleased with the performance of my system but I am always on the lookout for better.

Acoustically this system is not setup in the most perfect of rooms. It is an open plan space (in total 72m2 (5*14)), sort of rectangular at decent height (2m50) but full of glass on two sides and with a hard bamboo wooden floor. The speakers are not placed in the length axis of the room, they are placed at the edge of the open plan space on a surface of about 26m2 (if you were to put a wall around the listening lounge) facing the glass wall (and the couch in front of it of course ). There is enough space around the CM9s to breathe, I certainly don't have any boomy bass issues. We installed pretty thick curtains and when they are closed the room performs quite well acoustically. Thing is, with the curtains open I have the feeling that my speakers start to fatigue quickly, high trebled tones are dominating the image and it just makes me turn the volume knob down. That's all ok, but it also eats away much loved bass.

Next to the acoustic issues I think something can be explained by the stello, it has been reviewed as being forward, and if I switch to the sonos connect built in dac I do have the impression that the image is flatter but also less fatiguing and a tad warmer. I am not overly convinced with the level of detail coming from the sonos dac though. So, I would consider changing the dac, but I am not sure whether this would give me the biggest bang for the buck. I have been looking into equalizers as well, but they don't seem to make them anymore these days. Room perfection devices tend to only focus on the lower frequencies. Perhaps I need to look more for devices like the X10 by musical fidelity, which I would think would make the sound a bit more rounded without becoming muddy?

Another thing what I would really like to have clarified is the effect of gain and electronic current being sent to the speakers. Currently I only need to open up my M6i for a quarter to have a rather immense wall of sound coming from the CM9's. Given that these speakers are power hungry, I would expect that with lower gain but higher volume setting the acoustic pressure would be the same but I would be able to profit more from the dynamic capabilities of the M6i and the slam the CM9s are capable to give. I really have the impression that the stello's output gain is too high, if I use the USB input to the amp I need to give it far more throttle (10-15%) to get to the same level of volume. Is that a problem?

Any thoughts?

Many thanks in advance,

HJ

 

[bigboss]

Have you considered moving to a better house without the "open plan" which is obviously screwing up your Hi Fi experience?

 

[ID.]

IIRC, using XLR often means a higher output voltage (e.g. 4 volts rather than 2), so if the voltage output by your DAC is one of the issues, this may exacerbate it.

I second the vote for moving to a house better suited to your hifi. One must have one's priorities in order

 

[CnoEvil]

Try a change of speakers to Harbeth, Spendor Classic or Sonus Faber.

 

[BigH]

Glass is a problem, bass goes through it and high notes are reflected around. I have read laminated glass is better than ordinary glass. I would try some other speakers like Harbeth if you can in your room.