My system is a bit to bright to me can someone help? thanks

[Guest DrSK]

Personally I don't think speaker positioning relative to walls is going to change a lot between 200Hz and where the B&W house sound brightness occurs. Yes it will change low end base.

 

And yes room treatments can have some effect, but not on the direct sound.

 

The best test to see if you fundamentally like the speaker response, ignoring less than 200Hz in my opinion is to bring them out to about 1/3 room length about say 1.5m apart and sit about 1.5m away, assuming room is big enough to be well away from walls, and see if they still seem bright and play with toe a bit. At this distance direct sound from the speaker will override room effects, so you'll know if it's treatments you need. It's also a good position to evaluate imaging ability of a speaker.

 

Personally I'd be surprised if it's treatments. But I'm known to not be a B&W fan because of their brightness which is well established by measurements. I'm also open minded enough to give them a go with EQ in Roon etc. But be aware some B&W also had/have a spike in their response mid deep in the tweeter cross over region that can be problematic and flares the sound at particular instances in recordings. 

 

Also note that what is subjectively bright can to some extent relate to a person's age and natural amounts of hearing loss. 

Edited July 10, 2021 by DrSK

[Anthony1]

Richard in UK

Each reply above contains valuable advice. 
With your decent quality equipment, hopefully your on good terms with an audio shop or two. 
 

To really tackle just where the issue arises you need to get familiar with each component, (including each power cord and interconnect) and this involves swapping in a few borrowed items to get a handle on differences. 
 

Noise in the signal stream is the biggest issue to solve. To me this results in perceived sharpness and digititus. On the power front it’s recommended to try out a PS Audio regenerator P10,15,20 and nearly everyone is impressed at the absolute improvement in lowering the noise floor. = a more pleasurable listen. 
Also borrow some quality power cables as even one standard £5 cable can be a negative influence. 
 
You haven’t mentioned whether you have a separate mains line to your HiFi as at your level of equipment (monoblocks etc) its so important to be isolated from home appliances. 
 

The fab 802 speakers are not to blame for the upstream issue you are chasing.  Noise in noise out. With well matched sources we all know they can really sing and rock. 

Try and borrow a decent CD player/ DAC just to compare with your computer digital into McIntosh C53 DAC front end. Or a Streamer, but through a different DAC to the C53.

 

Finally in your quest to lower ‘noise’

ensure your cabling is neat and tidy as you don’t want sensitive signal cabling near unshielded power cords etc. 

 

Anthony 

[Wimbo]

In my opinion 802's are great speakers. Best of the 800 series but then I haven't heard them for 5 odd years.

Use to sound really good with better quality Krell Kit.

I rekon your problem is elsewhere. Room or front end.

[Richard]

thank you All for your valuable  comment, I think I found the problem, let me spend some more time with checking and I will let you know what I did to fix it... thank you again !

Edited July 10, 2021 by Richard

[ICUToo]

9 hours ago, Richard said:

let me spend some more time with checking and I will let you know what I did to fix it

Lots of people interested in the outcome, Richard!

[Robbiefest]

Get rid of the SILVER from everywhere in your system. Just reading about the firebirds. They are solid silver. I'd say that's the starting point. Get rid of every power cable that has silver or even rhodium .. Just use pure copper cables. However saying that not all copper cable sound the same. You have to experiment there too. 

Power cables will make a huge difference as well. Ice age audio power cables have been some of the better ones I've tried. Voodoo cables can be good too. I found Chord to be too bright in the in their power cables. Their high end copper speaker cables are good but can be a tad lean in the bass. If you have flabby bass these may actually be good for you.. The best speaker cable I've found is a Dunlavey cable. Nothing has come close to it but I doubt you'll find one on the market at the moment. Best power cable was bought from Pymble Hifi from Val, 10 years ago. He made a 1/2 meter all copper power cable and it's suprassed every other cable I've tried.. Pure copper of course. Be aware of cables that add dryness and focus to your system. this is not always good. I've gone for warmth , depth, organic, height, width. Anything that draws for a more focuses sound robs me of the recorded room dynamics. I like to hear the room, not just the placement of instruments and voices.. Good luck on your journey... 

[petetherock]

11 hours ago, Richard said:

thank you All for your valuable  comment, I think I found the problem, let me spend some more time with checking and I will let you know what I did to fix it... thank you again !

Remember my comment that I sold my 804?

This is because after all the adulteration of the sound, it felt unreal and I wasn't doing the speakers justice.

Ultimately I felt the sound wasn't what I wanted.

So I went back to the smooth sound I enjoyed. 

I played with B&W and MA speakers for years, but once I returned to Dynaudio (the first serious brand I used), the enjoyment I wanted was back.

No need to change anything else in my system, not the cables, it wasn't the curtains, flooring etc. 

Just one pain and the joy is back.

[buddyev]

7 minutes ago, petetherock said:

Remember my comment that I sold my 804?

This is because after all the adulteration of the sound, it felt unreal and I wasn't doing the speakers justice.

Ultimately I felt the sound wasn't what I wanted.

So I went back to the smooth sound I enjoyed. 

I played with B&W and MA speakers for years, but once I returned to Dynaudio (the first serious brand I used), the enjoyment I wanted was back.

No need to change anything else in my system, not the cables, it wasn't the curtains, flooring etc. 

Just one pain and the joy is back.

Yes, dead right. Finding speakers with the sound signature that you like is the principle thing. Cables, room treatment, etc are all very well but you’re  nibbling round the edges. Fine tuning is useful when you have the right starting point. 

[075Congo]

Might be worth contacting Geoff Maloney at Aurealis Audio re his various XLR productions and whether they can moderate things for you. Excellent quality construction and perform well above their price point. The XLR Copper at $339 would be my pick.

Cheers

[dennist]

I was going to suggest just trying  a 10w 1 to 1.5 ohm resistor on the tweeter, but it looks like the mid range is also connected to one of the 2 sets of speaker terminals, the other set is for the woofers ie a three way, but can only be biwired not triwired so any resistor is also going to tame the mids unfortunately

[Levitator]

I have a pair of B&W 800D3’s and there is no question they can sound bright with their diamond tweeter if not matched correctly. There have been lots of good suggestions here, and the ones I most relate to are removing silver from the chain, room placement / treatment and suitable matching of electronics. Tubes in the chain I found helpful or an amplifier with some degree of warmth can really help.

 

Not everyone likes the B&W sound but the 802D3’s IMHO are a good speaker if they are set up correctly. Good luck with it and it sounds like you might be close hopefully!

[Hytram]

Lots of great advice in here. 

 

I have the same issue in my lounge room and it's the room, the amount of gear and speakers tried has bought results, but nothing perfect, some gear combinations are less bright, but everything is still.... Bright 

 

The 2 things that helped the most without treating the room was some sort of eq, either in the source (jriver media player eq plugin) or now Dirac custom curves in my pre-amp. 

 

The other, toe the speakers up, this toned them down a fair bit (small block of wood under the front) but this did have a effect on imaging 

 

But at the end of the day, I will have to tackle the room, it's the last room to be touched in a full house Reno, so maybe in another 18 months 

Edited July 13, 2021 by Hytram

[Ed369]

Changing to a tube dac and copper cable,speaker position. Acoustics

I heard the speaker pair with 6000 integrated,definitely not too sharp

[sir sanders zingmore]

On 7/10/2021 at 11:48 PM, Richard said:

thank you All for your valuable  comment, I think I found the problem, let me spend some more time with checking and I will let you know what I did to fix it... thank you again !

C’mon @Richard, the suspense is killing us . What did you end up doing?

[Richard]

Hello to All !!

 

 

Onec again thank you for all comments... one of the problem is new ubs cable in my sustem from computer to dac, I have jumped form audioquest carbon to audioquest usb diamond (silver inside), it sound better but must make some frequencies that drive me mad and make my ears tired very quick, I am just wondering and never heard before how tube preamp will sound in my system, I am just wondering about mcintosh c2700, I need to find the way to get one and have a listen...

 

thank you again !

If I get any updatets on sound I will make a post to let you all know !!

[buddyev]

 

On 7/9/2021 at 8:30 AM, sir sanders zingmore said:

Your preamp has a built in equaliser.  Try dragging down that 10kHz peak a bit and see if that improves things. 

have you tried this?

[virgil]

I think you have been given some great advice so far. As far as giving the C2700 a go it might be worth it. I have an older C2300 and the output tubes can be rolled with the many options of both new and nos. New 12ax7s are inexpensive and they all sound different so you might find what you are after.

I don’t know what you have done to optimised your computer front end but this what I have done to tame brightness.

Installed SOTM USB card, power line filters for the SSD and fan,linear PS for the USB card. Audiophile Optimiser software, Free Fidelizer, and currently auditioning Jplay Femto play back software. They have all made a difference but the biggest surprise is the Jplay. It sounds much better than Foobar2000.

Add this to all of the other suggestions ...room treatments,cables etc you should find a solution.  
 

Good luck and have fun!

[akjono]

@Richard Lots of great suggestions before me, and I particularly deeply agree with No Silver, try some other speakers (to test the front end/silver/too bright a source/dac combo theory) and speaker placement. If you are in a town without lockdowns, see if you can borrow some power cords/xlrs/usb to experiment with also. Have fun with it too!

 

Also to bypass the source/front end issue out I have just simply plugged a mini plug to RCAs from my phone to a preamp to check that 'fidelity' out from a few tunes on my phone. On a few systems it sounded better to me than the fancy set up, revealing the unwanted aspects of glare or interference or sibilance?

[Anthony1]

On 7/15/2021 at 9:18 AM, Richard said:

I am just wondering and never heard before how tube preamp will sound in my system, I am just wondering about mcintosh c2700, I need to find the way to get one and have a listen...

I would think it’s bordering on an odd match with the Michi monoblocks.
Suggest research on what knowledge people worldwide use and would recommend to drive your quality BW802 D3’s, as there the cornerstone of your system. 

On 7/15/2021 at 9:18 AM, Richard said:

I am just wondering and never heard before how tube preamp will sound in my system, I am just wondering about mcintosh c2700, I need to find the way to get one and have a listen...

I would think it’s bordering on an odd match with the Michi monoblocks.
Suggest research on what knowledge people worldwide use and would recommend to drive your quality BW802 D3’s, as there the cornerstone of your system. 

[DanFi]

In order of priority of importance in fixing a system, whether it fixing brightness or just improvements 

 

1. power/room

2. cables 

3. isolation

4. Source

5.

6.

7.

8. 

9. Amp/speakers. 

first things. Fix your power. Cables. New circuit. Maybe filter board. 
 

It’s actually surprising how cheap it is to run a new circuit in a house. This is number one. It does depend on your home but look at this. 700 for me to get a new circuit. Biggest change ever. 
 

then power cables. All in an effort to reduce noise. Then work your way down. 

I also got rid of the remaining brightness in my system by isolating my speakers and amplifier with pucks. 
 

I know the advice above is hard to accept because you are not throwing large amounts of money at brand name amps and speakers but at some point you will understand it starts with power. 

 

 

Edited July 17, 2021 by DanFi

[buddyev]

What’s 5,6,7,8 ? 

[DanFi]

7 minutes ago, buddyev said:

What’s 5,6,7,8 ? 

Nothing. Haha. I was emphasising that amps and speakers are that much less important in getting your system working. 
 

particularly OPs system.  

[Yamaha_man]

You need one of these.

[rantan]

[POV]

1 hour ago, DanFi said:

Nothing. Haha. I was emphasising that amps and speakers are that much less important in getting your system working. 
 

particularly OPs system.  

 

I’m trying to follow along here.  Are you seriously proposing that house power and power cables have a bigger impact on sound than amplifiers and speakers?