Comparing amplifiers

[hifinutt]

just recently a tannoy owner was raving about his new xtz edge amps . how good they were . as has been said it depends on the amp . i can use class d beautifully on my tannoys but not on other speakers

the class D i have is most certainly not cold and sterile !! been using class D for about 15 years on and off

[Sansiiro]

I like the thorough feedback, Martin and Chris.

Of course, the Onkyo is A-9130, the 6130 indeed is a network player.

Fortunately(?) I can tell you that both of them alternative placements I have tried.
I started from where the TV is (see the pic). But what was the problem, the sound
was too intense. And I am not even speaking about hard-rock. It seemed too much
for my ears, it seemed too aggressive, listening to anything. Due to small space I could not
move backwards, and I did not want my head or the speakers against the wall.
I wanted to put the carpet on the wall behind me, but my wife became opposed to the idea.

Also I tried them "on the left" in front of window, but this setting felt very awkward for
both of us, it did not feel right, I could not even properly listen to them before I
started moving everything back. It was not about the sound. Yes, it had more bass.

In the current position the sound felt more open, more relaxed. Though it lost some focus.

What I have often thought of is moving the main system to bedroom, and perhaps
one day I will. Our bedroom is smaller, but it is still spacious enough.
I have been very excited there with them Elac debuts. Another idea is to substitute
these Debuts with Uni-Fi Reference (bookshelf) and do my main listening there.

For now I can also bring the the Denafrips Ares and preamp to bedroom,
so I will have a new experience upstairs soon.

But perhaps before the AB monoblocks it will be useful to look into some sound-calibration gear, indeed.

IMG_20201205_193912.jpgIMG_20210822_154200.jpg

[Pharos]

My instinct is that those speakers are not really up to the job of driving that room, and they will have to be turned up a lot to be good on rock.

The left picture gives what my instinct says is the right sort of speaker driving ability, to room size.

[AJSki2fly]

I like the thorough feedback, Martin and Chris.

Of course, the Onkyo is A-9130, the 6130 indeed is a network player.

Fortunately(?) I can tell you that both of them alternative placements I have tried.
I started from where the TV is (see the pic). But what was the problem, the sound
was too intense. And I am not even speaking about hard-rock. It seemed too much
for my ears, it seemed too aggressive, listening to anything. Due to small space I could not
move backwards, and I did not want my head or the speakers against the wall.
I wanted to put the carpet on the wall behind me, but my wife became opposed to the idea.

Also I tried them "on the left" in front of window, but this setting felt very awkward for
both of us, it did not feel right, I could not even properly listen to them before I
started moving everything back. It was not about the sound. Yes, it had more bass.

In the current position the sound felt more open, more relaxed. Though it lost some focus.

What I have often thought of is moving the main system to bedroom, and perhaps
one day I will. Our bedroom is smaller, but it is still spacious enough.
I have been very excited there with them Elac debuts. Another idea is to substitute
these Debuts with Uni-Fi Reference (bookshelf) and do my main listening there.

For now I can also bring the the Denafrips Ares and preamp to bedroom,
so I will have a new experience upstairs soon.

But perhaps before the AB monoblocks it will be useful to look into some sound-calibration gear, indeed.

IMG_20201205_193912.jpgIMG_20210822_154200.jpg

Two observation from your photos and room plan

When you had them by the wooden wall you are sitting very close to the wall behind you, assuming you do not move the sofa forward, in this position you will get all sorts of bass re-enforcement which is likely to sound odd.

In all your sitting positions as now and in the two pictures you are quite a long way back from the speakers. Because you have larger speakers it does not mean you will be able to sit 4m or more away from them and still get a great soundstage, definition and focus. A lot of people make this mistake and it took me a while to realise that often speakers work best around 2 to 2.5m apart (6-8 feet) and that the listening position should be if at all possible at the 3rd point of an equilateral triangle in relation to the speakers, you can try stretching the distance away from the speakers to about 1.5 times the width they are apart. As you move further away you will quickly hear a change in focus, definition and bass depth and detail.

Have a look at https://www.tnt-audio.com/casse/waspe.html it is very useful, I found it very helpful and helped me understand some of the issues with speaker placement.

[Opti-cal]

Okay Veiko,

I hear what you are saying, it sounds like a very problematic room and as Dennis suggests it could be that the speakers simply do not fill the space at all resulting in thin sound and 'over-driving' to get anywhere near a satisfactory level.

However I must reiterate that in all my experience moving the system to the left of the TV would result in a far more engaging sound simply due to the dimensions and physical makeup of the room. I know you said you tried it here and I am not questioning your results but did you set it up in this (quickly knocked up) edit of your image?



So speakers maybe 30-40cm away from the side walls and 60-70cm (different to the side walls) away from the rear wall (with the window/glass). The window/glass may also be messing up the sound quite a lot so if you could hang a rug or drapes/curtains where the green circle is, it would undoubtedly improve things. Listening area indicated by the red rectangle at the bottom of the image, just beyond an equilateral triangle from the speakers, but you can try it further away or closer too.

I could be completely wrong of course as rooms do behave differently but that area gives you the best chance of getting your hifi sounding at its best, again, only in my experience but it has successfully worked every time.

As you say you couldn't listen to the sound in this configuration I suspect you didn't move the speakers around trying different distances between the side walls and the rear wall? This would be 100% worth doing as there can be a fine line between things sounding awful and then suddenly everything snapping into place and focus, sometimes a couple of inches can make all the difference.


If all else fails EQing is certainly an option as Macca suggests. I use it myself to great effect but a word of warning, if you're not getting the frequencies you want in the sound (in this case low end and lower mid-range), boosting frequencies with EQ can be dangerous for the drivers of the speakers. I myself only use EQ to cut frequencies (room nodes which collect in the room) which allows other frequencies to come through more prominently and the speakers to 'breath' a bit more, I don't believe this is the problem in the space you are currently using them in though. Having said that it may become a problem if you move them to the smaller area in that room, but it's an easier problem to rectify (having too much boom/bass rather than too little).

It's much better to cut/trim frequencies that are problematic than boost them as the sound often becomes unnatural when you boost things.

Also if you can use a parametric EQ in the digital domain, it will always sound better than using an analogue EQ tool, it is far more accurate and can utilize all sorts of notch and shelf filters/tools to rectify problems. With an analogue EQ tool it's usually just a set frequency which you make higher or lower, it can do the job but can usually be improved upon if you can attenuate the signal before it is made into an analogue one.


Let us know your thoughts on the above and how you get on.

[Macca]

Yes, cut don't boost is the basic rule for EQ.

A small boost over a narrow frequency band is fine, but if you want more bass, cut the top end, and vice versa.

[Opti-cal]

Yes, cut don't boost is the basic rule for EQ.

A small boost over a narrow frequency band is fine, but if you want more bass, cut the top end, and vice versa.

Yup, sounds like there is just no low end going on here though (thin sound) so cutting the top end to compensate (so overall power and volume actually increasing) could have the desired effect, but in my opinion the room is having too much of an effect to be able to get to a satisfactory outcome. Could be wrong, but I think it's going to be a lot easier to get a handle on all frequencies if the system is only having to fill a smaller and more symmetrical area first.

[walpurgis]

The room does look as though it has the potential to be acoustically awkward. Some worthwhile opinions have been expressed though. I think Chris's speaker positioning suggestion could be worth trying.

[Sansiiro]

I agree with the ideas. It was not of coincidence that I used the expression "thousand mosquitos singing",
so the high frequencies might very well need some trimming to get more pleasant sound.

However while we place the main blame on the room, I can still confirm my initial experience, that I seem
to have somewhat better results with the Onkyo, as long as the sound of rock in concerned.
Perhaps it has less high frequency to begin with. It is said that with more expensive gear bigger risks can occur,
as they can move to extremes.

I made some videos with my phone:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ULLAu4zM4Ek88vjn6


Lets say the Onkyo might not deliver some heavenly bliss there, BUT it reminds me far less of them "mosquitos".
Not to take anything away from the XTZ, I like them so much, I bought two.
Listening to softer music and electronic music with them has been great.

As of the alternate setting under the window. That was pretty much how I had things lined up. But the
problem why we did not keep the setting got nothing to do with the sound. For some reason
we just did not like our furniture and room that way, and that became very obvious very fast,
so (while it is hard to believe) I did not even get one decent session to evaluate the sound like that.
So You could be right, it could be a missed opportunity, but we can't use our room like that.

In the near future I will test the XTZ poweramp in the bedroom to see its response there.
Anyways, it will be interesting.

Adrian - I moved the couch away from the wall and I was about 2 meters from the speakers,
but to my ears it felt too intense. I even tried the sound-panel behind my head, but I felt like
I would prefer everything to feel more relaxed and open. More of that festival-vibe, if I can say that.

Edit: I had the preamp around -10 db

[Macca]

you want more relaxed sound then you could look at swapping out the B&W speakers.

Harbeth, Spendor Classic series, QUAD, or something BBC-derived from the 1970s. Anything with a 'BBC dip' essentially.

First thing I would do though is buy an analogue EQ unit and have a play. You can pick up professional units like Klark Teknik pretty cheap. Balanced inputs and outputs.