audio47r

I wish I had a little more time but I can only make a few brief comments. OP, you may not realize it, but you made a great choice to ask about a preamp, as opposed to just getting a cheap one. Most new people, over look the preamp and make more exciting purchaces like an amp or speakers. It is at least as important as any piece in the system and if you ask any good designer, it is the most difficult kind of piece to design. Not only that, it is costly to make a good one. The main, overall, reason for this is that the lower the voltage that you are working with, the more sensitive the signal is to change. For example, another post made a comment about using a stepped ladder of resistors, as opposed to just buying an off the shelf variable resistor. Typically, audio components have a retail price of about 4 to 5 time the cost of the parts. If you have a volume that goes from 0-99, you need about 100 single resistors. From a really good company (Vishay is a popular choice for this type of thing), each resistor may be something like $5 per unit. $500 turns into about $2000 at the retail level just for the cost of some of the parts to make the volume control. Of course all this now has to be assembles by hand. I can go on with more examples but just understand that you are not getting a good preamp cheap. For the most part, I very strongly agree with the other posters that recommend a passive unit. (Either by itself or as part of an integrated amp) It is very sound advice and it wil eliminate a ton of potential problems. Where I do differ, is that, at least for me, there is a cutoff point in price, where well designed active units outperform passives. Right around $3000 retail is where I start to look at active over passive. One last thing. (I think someone else mentioned this too), NEVER do something foolish and buy a preamp to "fix" something else in the system. It is very common to buy a tube preamp to "soften" up an amp or speakers. Never works. If you mess up an buy a bad amp, sell it and get another one. If you try to fix it with a preamp (and cables), it will be an expensive failure. If I am not clear about anything, please post and I will clarify when I have a little more time.

crisnee, I was reading through some of the comments that you made regarding the Magnapan's that you heard and liked very much. Since I had the 1.7 for over 6 months and did some very thorough testing, I may be able to give you some useful info. You said that you can't do them justice with your system. I don't see why not. Many people think that they are hard to drive. I did not have that experiance. You wouldn't want to use a single ended triod, but the Parasound that you have listed should be ok at normal volumes in an average sized room. I can remember trying at least 5 different amps and one was a Cambridge 640 integrated. It had no problems at normal volumes. Also, I used to be a Parasound dealer and can tell you that from a sonic standpoint, it would be a good match. The HF on the amp is fairly laid back and not aggressive and the tweeter on the 1.7 is on the bright/forward side. Worst case on power would be to get another one of the Parasound amps and bridge it. Also, you mentioned that placement might be difficult. I had no problems with that either. Like any speaker, you have to take some time to get everything just right but experianced nothing out of the ordinary. (I think that when most people have placement issues it stems from a really bad room or improper component matching and they are just not picking up on it.) One last, but interresting, issue. You said that you most like the lifelike size or realistic scale of the images the Mag produced. This is a benefit of that type of design. You have a several foot long strip of aluminum that is used as a speaker driver. By design, it forces a large image size. This used to be a popular way to do things. If you remember back to some of the older designs of the 70's & 80's, Magnepan was not the only one to do something like this. There were a lot of really big speakers with a whole bunch of drivers in them (Dynamic or Planer). (Polk, Mcintosh, Mirage, Sound Lab, ML, Acoustat are just a few that come to mind.) The reason that I bring this up is that, with some modern equipment and some careful component matching, you can get that same kind of image scale with a more "regular" pair of speakers. For example, I could easilly take the PSB speakers that the OP bought and match equipment to them sound just as big, if not more so, than the Mag. It's just another option to consider if put a big speaker like that in your house. Anyway, I hope someone finds this info useful and I appologize for my bad typing because I am doing this really fast because I need to be somewhere. If you are not clear on something I said, just post and I will try to fix it.

If you are still trying to fix this problem, I can tell you exactly how to do it in 2 steps. 1. Don't listen to anyone. 2. Figure out what your problem is and then fix it. I know that dosen't exactly sound like very positive advice, but that is how you need to handle it. Eventually, this thread will keep filling up with more and more suggestions and by the time its done, there will recommendations for every possible thing that you could do to an audio system. Someone is bound to tell you to just bulldoze the house down and start over using audiophile building materials. The reason for this is a lack of experiance. One person fixed their system with cables so that's what your problem is. Same thing for the room, speakers, source, ect... I have been in this business for a very long time and have set up hundreds of systems and fixed as many problems with them. What do I think is your problem? I have absolutely no idea. As a matter of fact, I can't even have an opinion because I've never heard your system. You may say the system is bright and I could listen to it and think it sounds rolled off. I think you see where I am going with this. I can, however, give you some advice on how to approach the problem so that you may find the problem a little easier. 1. Don't spend any money on new equipment until you know what the problem is. No exceptions. I can't tell you how many times, when I was learning, I took the best piece of equipment I had off my rack and left the problem still sitting on the shelf. 2. You said certain recordings do not soung good. There may be nothing wrong with your system. Lots of modern recordings are not good at all. The more I think about it, that might be it. You say everything else sounds good except rock. If that's the case, you can easily make the system worse if you start fooliing with it. It might be worth it pick up a cheap eq and send it to a different input on your preamp and use it just for problem recordings. (I have a behringer that costs about $40 and it dosen't sound all that bad and I use it all the time to help me dial in systems.) Other than that; 3. Don't ever try to fix problems with tubes and cables. It never works and you will fail. Its like buying an eq with 1 setting that you don't know what it is untill you actually try it. 4. A lot of people mentioned that it may be the room and that you should try some fixes in that regard. Instead of going that route, it might be cheaper and faster to pick the system up and put in another room and listen to it. If the highs sound exactly the same, its probably not the room. 5. Look at the components that no one else is looking at. It could be something like the preamp. At least for me, in situations like this, with a bright treble, the preamp is usually part if not all of the problem. And just because it is tube does not mean it can't be bright. That's all I can think of for now. Good luck and if you find the problem, post it.

Since you have already bought new equipment, I will hold back on recommendations. I know that you are new at this and if I hit you with more equipment to consider, it could very well mess you up and make you second guess your purchases. Besides, for a first system, the NAD and API products are pretty solid choices. That said, after reading the above posts, I can give you some info that might help you out. Also, be aware that when I make recommentdations, other posters usually get mad and offended if I don't like the same stuff they do. In the end, its your system and you should make the choices that are right for you regardless of what I or anyone else says. I have 3 things for you. 1. Magnapan. That is a speaker that I would recommend you do a very long and through evaluatuion before committing to them. I believe that they just might be the most overated speakers I ever heard. I am not saying they are bad. They sound OK but they have huge colorations and, in my opinion, are not state of the art in their respective price points like most people think they are. Understand, I don't just throw these opinions out after hearing them in a store or in a friends system. I had a pair of 1.7 for about 6 months. They were put next to speakers that I already own, and I have a pretty good selection of electronics at my disposal. To make a long story short, my opinion is that they are just OK. Not bad but not great. The speakers you just bought are not my personal favorites in that price range, but I would definately keep them over the Magnepan. 2. This may seem like an odd thing to do but it won't cost you anything and there is a good chance your system will sound a lot better. If I remember correctly, NAD integrateds jump the amp and the preamp sections in the back with rca connectors. That is a very good feature. Once your equipment breaks in take the jumpers out and plug your dac directly into the amp section and bypass your line stage. Also, your dac may let you bypass its volume control. Try that too and use the volume control on your computer. Try it the other way as well. Use the dac volume control instead of the computer. Basically, just play around with it and see what sounds best. 3. You mentioned software for your pc. This is free also. Go to the web site distrowatch.com. This site lists all the top linux distros. Scroll down and on the right you will see a list of the top 100 linux distros. Find one that says Mint and click on it. Find the download for Mint 12 KDE 32bit iso and download it. Go back to the 100 list and find AV linux and download the 32bit iso file as well. Burn both iso files to dvd and boot them from your dvd drive. Both of these Operating Systems will run off the dvd "live", which means you are not installing anything to your hard drive. Pull the dvd out, reboot, and you will go right back to windows. You can install them to your hd if you want to at some point. You will not believe the stuff that you can get for free. (and its all legal) Overall, I think the linux option is better than windows. Good luck and enjoy your new system.

I just thought of something else that it could be. You may be keeping the minutes under 80 but still go over on total size. Having artwork and info tags may be pushing you over the max that the cd can handle. You may have to remove all that to get the size down.

Are you converting to red book when you are burning your cds or just leaving them as mp3? Also, how much gets cut off. If its a small amount, try using different burning software. I have no idea why this is but I had the same problem and that was the fix. Also, another option you can try if you are cutting it very close, is to chop off the end of the music with an editing program. This is good if there is a lot of silence at the end of the music.

Origional Post. I see that it has been over a week since the last comment. Have you done anything yet? If not, I can probably give you some decent advice.

*** Just to note, I had a problem with my origional account (r1g) so I had to make a new account. *** ccclapp To answer your question about should people not learn to listen, I can only give the universal answer to any audio question - it depends. I'm no one to tell you or anyone else what to do. The real issue here is not if you should learn new things, or not, but what to do with the info once you learn it. I do have quite a bit of experiance in the audio industry and have set up or assisted in hundreds of systems. I find that there are 2 areas that really stand out as to where the typical audiophile usually goes wrong. First; their education/experiance is not complete. They may be very knowlege about some things, but not others. There is no better place to find some examples of what I am talking about than the Audiogon forums. Lets say that someone posts a thread asking for help with a bright system and lists his equipment and room specs. Most, if not all, replies will be very specific and direct. (its the metal tweeter, its the amp, the room, the cables, the wood the house is made out of, did't use audiophile cement.--You get the idea.) By the time you are done, you have a well meaning list of fixes which are pretty much every possible thing that you can to an audiosystem. Who has the right answer? I have no idea. Not I or anyone else can tell you how to evaluate something you need to listen to first. The reason everyone is saying something different is, in their own experiance, that is what fixed their own systems as they were setting them up. When someone has a similiar problem that they had, they can only recommend what they know. The 2nd major area where people go wrong is just plain common sense. Buying a $1000 pair of IC for a $300 Cd player, spending a lot of money on components without listening to them, not being realistic about their real taste in music or equipment. I think you get the idea, we've all been there at one time or another. wgb113 "You can't be more wrong." You might be right on that one. It wouldn't be the first time. Unless you say otherwise, I take it that you mean that Harman would not be teaching people listening skills for commercial purposes. Wrong I may be, but I do stand by my origional post. Look at it from another perspective, if Harman didn't make high end consumor electronics, would they still go through this whole listening skill process? tomneister86 I was looking at your post and the link to the graph. Honestly, I think is a very interesting study and worth reading but I am not convinced that the given results will still hold in the real would outside a controlled testing enviornment. I see 2 things that don't quite add up (at least for me). 1. "The evidence so far indicates that in controlled listening tests, an accurate loudspeaker will tend to be preferred over a less accurate version - regardless of the training of the listener." -On what basis does someone judge a loudspeaker to be more accurate over another? Since Harman is controlling the test, we have to assume Revel represents the most accurate. I don't know about you, but I have heard revel speakers and even though I prefer other brands, I think they are very good. I don't think that they are the most accurate speaker. Actually, I don't think that there is such a thing; to me its a pesonal choice. 2. "What we found is that the untrained listeners prefer the same loudspeakers as the trained listening panel, in terms of the rank ordering of the loudspeakers. The untrained listeners simply rate all the loudspeakers higher, and are less discriminating and reliable." -This is an easy one. According to their findings, listeners, trained or not, prefer the same speakers. Again, assuming that we are talking about Revel, people would choose them over other brands because they are the most accurate. If we look for examples in the real world, most revel dealers sell a variety of speakers. Given the results of the controlled tests, you would expect Revel to sell almost 100% of the time. We all know that is not true since no speaker has that type of domination in the real world. (Keep in mind that I am saying this in context of price. It wouldn't be fair to say that someone that bought a $300 speaker chose them over a pair of Salons.) Anyway, that's all I can think of on this one. Also, I am typing this all very fast an am sorry about any errors that I didn't catch.