What a strange and humbling thing, this hi-fi hobby.
As you guys know, I had pretty much decided that I was not likely to find true happiness with my De Capos, at least with my ancillary gear, and had decided to sell them. Well, over the weekend a good friend brought over two things that ended up making an enormous difference in the sound of my system:
First, a piece of freeware called Speakerworks, which calculates, amongst other things, where to place your speakers. I plugged in the width of the back wall, and the software (using the Cardas method, I think) told me how far out, how far from the side walls, how far apart the speakers should be, and how far away I should sit. I ended up pulling the speakers
much further out into the room, which effectively put me in a near-field setup (speakers ended up 70" from the back wall and 43" from each side; I ended up sitting almost 70" away from them). This change immediately deepened the soundstage by about a mile and a half
, and spread the sound out so that it extended nearly corner to corner. Wow.
Second, he brought over his old McIntosh 2100 amp that we used in place of my Unico integrated (we used no preamp, as the amp has level controls for each channel). I have to say that my mouth
literally dropped open. The improvement in bass extension and weight was astonishing. I could actually feel the floor vibrating like there was a subwoofer in the room. Also, the sound was cleaner, clearer, and more detailed than I have ever heard it in this system. In fact, my friend commented that he could hardly imagine a better sounding system. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but I was pretty amazed at the improvement. I even pulled out my old Radio Shack phono pre and tried my NAD 533/ Ortofon Super OM 20 directly into the Mac amp. Again, it completely blew away the sound of the Unico--Stevie Ray Vaughn's Tin Pan Alley at about 95 dB was goosebump raising (I can only imagine what a "real" phono preamp will sound like).
At this point, it's a bit humbling because although I had a sense that changing parts of my system might help with my "speaker problem," I had no idea how huge the improvements would be. And I'm still using my less than stellar digital source and cabling. At this point, the plan is to sell the Unico, find a Mac 2100 or 2105, and then use the difference in cash to upgrade my digital source (thinking ACK! DAC) and cables (not sure). I'm still tempted to bring in a pair of Harbeth C7 SE speakers to hear how they compare, but I know that with just the amp switch my system is now so much more enjoyable to listen to (Let it Be--Naked never sounded so good).
