My R300s sound like they are missing treble.
dillyboo
Posts: 13
Hi. I'm new to this forum and hi fi. I recently decided to upgrade my old stereo while keeping on a tight budget. So my modest system consists of a Sherwood 2.1 channel receiver (no sub yet), a Panasonic BDT220 blu ray player, and I picked up a used pair of R300s. I'm also using some very old speaker cable (18ga or 16ga at 7 feet per channel) which should be adequate.
I heard a lot of great things about the Polks and when I found a used pair for sale, I decided to give them a try. The former owner cranked up the R300s (with a Nad receiver) and I thought they sounded pretty good. The price was right and so I took them.
So I hooked everything up carefully, making sure all connections were right, turned it on and it sounded pretty good. However, I soon noticed that the sound was missing some brightness. Actually it's missing a lot of brightness. The bass is good for a 6.5" driver, the mids are solid, but no highs. So to get anywhere near the level of highs I'm after, I have to crank up the treble on the receiver to max level. So it sounds good, but not great. For instance, I can hear the cymbals in my jazz cds, but it's very faint. I can also hear the high notes from the keyboards in Rush music, but again, very faint.
The source also doesn't make any difference. Whether I'm playing a cd, streaming music from my PC, or listening to music on my cable receiver, it just sounds like it's missing the highs. However, the sound is very rich and I'm otherwise impressed with these speakers.
So I'm wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions as to what could cause the lack of treble. I think my biggest worry is that my tweeters are damaged and are no longer capable of producing the high notes. Then again it could be a crossover issue. I've also looked into the possibility of too much capacitance in the speaker cable, thus introducing a low pass filter along the way to the speaker, but this doesn't seem likely with only 7ft of wire.
Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated.
I heard a lot of great things about the Polks and when I found a used pair for sale, I decided to give them a try. The former owner cranked up the R300s (with a Nad receiver) and I thought they sounded pretty good. The price was right and so I took them.
So I hooked everything up carefully, making sure all connections were right, turned it on and it sounded pretty good. However, I soon noticed that the sound was missing some brightness. Actually it's missing a lot of brightness. The bass is good for a 6.5" driver, the mids are solid, but no highs. So to get anywhere near the level of highs I'm after, I have to crank up the treble on the receiver to max level. So it sounds good, but not great. For instance, I can hear the cymbals in my jazz cds, but it's very faint. I can also hear the high notes from the keyboards in Rush music, but again, very faint.
The source also doesn't make any difference. Whether I'm playing a cd, streaming music from my PC, or listening to music on my cable receiver, it just sounds like it's missing the highs. However, the sound is very rich and I'm otherwise impressed with these speakers.
So I'm wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions as to what could cause the lack of treble. I think my biggest worry is that my tweeters are damaged and are no longer capable of producing the high notes. Then again it could be a crossover issue. I've also looked into the possibility of too much capacitance in the speaker cable, thus introducing a low pass filter along the way to the speaker, but this doesn't seem likely with only 7ft of wire.
Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated.
Post edited by dillyboo on
Comments
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If you put your ear near the tweeter do you hear any sound coming directly from it?2 Channel - Polk SDA-2BTL, Carver TFM-35, Peachtree iDAC, Qobuz streamed via Episode Lynk using bubble UPnP server
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ambiophonics wrote: »If you put your ear near the tweeter do you hear any sound coming directly from it?
With the receiver on and no music, I just hear a little bit of hiss with my ear right up to the tweeter. With music, I can definitely hear a difference between putting my ear next to the woofer as opposed to the tweeter. There is definitely sound coming out of the tweeter, and it doesn't sound bad at all. It just isn't brilliant. -
Hmm - and the Sherwood receiver is new? Do the tweeters and woofers in the polks look original? Any other speakers you could test your setup with to try and pin down and issue with the source, receiver, cables, or speakers?2 Channel - Polk SDA-2BTL, Carver TFM-35, Peachtree iDAC, Qobuz streamed via Episode Lynk using bubble UPnP server
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The receiver is new and it's pretty basic. The tweeter says Polk on it so I'm sure it's original. I've been going back and forth about getting new speaker cables. I seriously doubt that will make a difference but I might just do that to rule it out. I think the first thing I will do is borrow a good speaker (Klipsch) from my brother's set up and see what difference it makes. That may pin point the problem. At this point I'm just assuming it's the tweeter but I'm also hoping it isn't that. I will try the different speaker this coming Sunday and report back. Thank you for the suggestions.
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No problem, keep us posted.2 Channel - Polk SDA-2BTL, Carver TFM-35, Peachtree iDAC, Qobuz streamed via Episode Lynk using bubble UPnP server
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Well it APPEARS I have resoved the issue. I feel a little bit like I know nothing about home stereo technology (this is a major upgrade from my old system), but I guess there is a learning curve to deal with. Anyway, I took a closer look at my receiver, and I found a few buttons that control the channel levels. These levels range from -15 to +15. I have NO idea what channel levels are but having played with them for a bit, I found that +5 is the sweet spot where I get a good balance between R-L balance and sound quality. In other words, the brightness finally came out. The speakers are just fine. I can finally hear the high notes.
Now having said that, I also have to add that Sherwood fails to explain in the manual and on the website what channel levels are and what they do. Remember I'm still quite new to this. Maybe someone could explain what they do? All that is said in the manual is that I should shoot for the 0 level, but it doesn't say why.
The bottom line is I feel a little embarassed and the speakers sound just fine. In fact, I'll be really testing them out over the next few weeks and I'm going to post a review on them. I haven't had the opportunity to listen to the RTi series or better, so I know I'm not listening to truly amazing speakers. But not everyone can afford them. So I'm doing the review for anyone out there who needs some good budget friendly speakers. And my musical tastes are very ecclectic, so it'll be a full review.
Thank you Ambiophonics for your help. Again, I would still like to know what channel levels are/do, just so I know what I'm doing.
