Should I upGrade

offtheroad

Don't know if I'm in the correct area. I have a B&W Reference 200.2 S2 Power amp and a B&K Reference 5 S2 Preamp and a ROTEL RCD 971 CD player. Paradigm 100 speakers biwired. The kickis just not there.I have the speakers 8 inches from wall and 10 feet apart. There is a loudness button on preamp but makes everything mushey. There is also a tune up and tune down buttons on pre amp but can't hear them doing anything. I have a lot of hrd areas in my living room with hardwood floors (ugh) with as many carpets I can fit in but still about 15% floor area not covered.

tonyb

Welcome to the club. Before looking to upgrade, a better avenue is to tweek what you have. The ref 5 has infinite amount of tweeking available, and those tune up and down buttons I assume are for the tuner, radio stations. It would help some if we knew all your gear, cables used, how the pre is set up, if a subwoofer is involved. If you bi-wired, did you remove the jumpers on the back of the speakers ?

inspiredsports

Welcome to Club Polk.

"Should I Upgrade?" . . . if you hang with this hobby for more a few months or so, it's pretty much a done deal that you will start tweaking and upgrading things whether you need to or not

offtheroad

tonyb wrote: »

Welcome to the club. Before looking to upgrade, a better avenue is to tweek what you have. The ref 5 has infinite amount of tweeking available, and those tune up and down buttons I assume are for the tuner, radio stations. It would help some if we knew all your gear, cables used, how the pre is set up, if a subwoofer is involved. If you bi-wired, did you remove the jumpers on the back of the speakers ?

No tuner is involved, there was no jumper on back of spkers as I remember this was 6 years ago but if there was a jumper it's off now, I have directionl Musical Inc. interface cables going from pre amp to amp and also from CD player. The interface cables out of pre are comeing from the "Full range" out puts. The spk biwire cables are bound insied a woven blue weave don't remember the name of the biwire cables but very heavy with banana gold connectors on both ends. No subwoofwer mt Paradigm 100's are ported at bottom. I would love to know what you mean by "ref 5 has infinite amount of tweeking available". Thanks for the speedy reply.

tonyb

Did you read the manual for the Ref 5 pre ? Did you set the speakers to large, did you setup the cd input or any other input ? Are you using any freq controls, notch filters, what listening modes are you using ?

offtheroad

tonyb wrote: »

Did you read the manual for the Ref 5 pre ? Did you set the speakers to large, did you setup the cd input or any other input ? Are you using any freq controls, notch filters, what listening modes are you using ?

Yes I read the manual. There is no setting for large speakers,yes I set the CD, there are no freq controls, notch filters or listening mode that i can see in the front. Like I said the only real adjustment besides vol. control is a Loudnesss button the destroys all the mid's and high's. I listen at around a -30db any higher and the highs are not smooth. Thanks for the help so far.

tonyb

OOPS....just noticed it was the Ref 5, not 50, big difference.

I would still check the wire, make sure none of the plastic coating is caught in any of the binding posts. Maybe try some different speaker/interconnect cables too. Is it possible a tweet maybe went south ? Try a different pre ? Maybe the ref5 is in need of some refurb ?

Smooth sound is natural to B&K gear, has to be something else in the signal path or the speakers. Barring of coarse the pre and amp aren't in need of any refurb.

offtheroad

tonyb wrote: »

OOPS....just noticed it was the Ref 5, not 50, big difference.

I would still check the wire, make sure none of the plastic coating is caught in any of the binding posts. Maybe try some different speaker/interconnect cables too. Is it possible a tweet maybe went south ? Try a different pre ? Maybe the ref5 is in need of some refurb ?

Smooth sound is natural to B&K gear, has to be something else in the signal path or the speakers. Barring of coarse the pre and amp aren't in need of any refurb.

Albuquerque, New Mexico is a small place where I live so no place to take the pre for a checkup, Suggestions to how I would know if my pre is going bad? Also interconnects are expensive I payed about 150.00 for those in town.

offtheroad

offtheroad wrote: »

Albuquerque, New Mexico is a small place where I live so no place to take the pre for a checkup, Suggestions to how I would know if my pre is going bad? Also interconnects are expensive I payed about 150.00 for those in town.

Albuquerque, New Mexico is a small place where I live so no place to take the pre for a checkup, Suggestions to how I would know if my pre is going bad? Also interconnects are expensive I payed about 150.00 for those in town.

Tour2ma

Welcome to the Club...

May I suggest some Polk speakers...:cheesygrin:

Don't know your Paradigms, but wonder what your room size/ volume is and where your listening position is...

Actually you're in good hands with tb... Just remember that as in the case of your Ref 5, he tends to multiply all figures by 10... so when he tells you that you need to move to a 5000 wpc amp, he really means 500 wpc...

ShadesPG

fwiw, ive always found that upgrading gear not only excites me to use it but almost always renews my appreciation of atleast something else in my rig too...ie new amp makes the speakers sing, new speakers make the recording sound amazing, new turntable makes me enjoy the amp more...stuff like that.

tonyb

The easiest way to see if your cables may be shot/defective in some way is to try another cable. I'm not suggesting you run out and spend a couple hundies but maybe go down to your local Home Depot or such and grab a roll of 14 ga wire and some cheap interconnects just to see.

Do you have other speakers around the house you can put in place of the Paradigms ? Just to make sure the pre and amp are working good ? If so, that brings us back to the Paradigms themselves.



Oh, nice shot Bruce:cheesygrin: