Could you be a little more detailed on where the speakers are located in relation to where you are sitting? How far apart from each other and how far from each to your sitting position? I'm trying to visualize the triangle that you and your speakers form. Can you see all the drivers of the  speakers while sitting or does the desk block them?

Even good speakers need an opportunity to show their stuff. Driver integration and coherency need more distance in floor standing speakers. Rarely do you get the spatial cues needed for good imaging when the listening position is closer to the speakers than the speakers are apart from one another.

Budget gear can sound like first class if enough attention is given to the details of achieving good sound. Before upgrading, give some thought to proper speaker placement if you have any flexibility to your room. The Cardas site has a really good section on speaker placement, though the "golden ratio" is not always possible or practical. That's going to dictate which components need upgrading.

If your room situation makes this impossible, then monitor speakers would be a better choice for near-field listening. That's not a bad thing and often times enhances the sound quality by a mile. Near-field listening has the advantage of being far less prone to room interatctions due to how the brain processes the time delay of the signals reaching the ear. If this delay is short enough, as it usually is with near-field listeing, the brain simply doesn't hear them unless the amplitude is higher. Monitors almost always image like crazy.

Your tube amp puts out 13 watts into 8 ohms. That's plenty for near-field listening with monitors...not so great with 4 ohm floorstanders like yours if needed to be placed further from the listening position. Plus, monitors on stands and in the near-field would tolerate the desk problem better. The obvious trade off is low frequency extension. But, if the low frequency extension that you are currently getting with your set-up is so lacking in proper pitch definition, the trade-off for better quality low-mids and upper-lows is worth it.

Visit the Cardas site or google proper speaker placement and do a little reading on the topic. That will help you decide what you can and can't do with your situation and THEN consider what to change.

My experience with NHT speakers is that they are very good speakers.

On the other hand, i don't see how you can get a balanced sound out of those large speakers at such a short distance. The drivers seem to be too far apart and those speakers should be at least 8 feet from the listener IMO.

I would recommend that you consider a pair of Focal 706V speakers. These are excellent speakers and I think they will suit your situation much better. Check Music Direct for details.

I think the sibilance and other sonic problems you are talking about are coming from the turntable. That was a very cheap direct-drive turntable to start with, and they are not known for sounding very good. You definitely want to replace it with  a better one. Direct-drive turntables can be good, but the less expensive ones usually are not very good. 

IMO the best reasonably-priced turntable is the Music Hall MMF-2.2. It will run you about $500 with cartridge.It should make a BIG improvement in your sound.

Siblance can be associated to a number of variables that would be hard to pin down. It occurs naturally when speaking and can vary from recording to recording depending on the technique used in the mixing. If you do decide to try different speakers, read Stereophile's reviews of them and pay attention to their description of tonal balance. Descriptive terms like "forward sounding, slight emphasis in the upper mids or lower treble, tilted up" or anything like that should toss up red flags if you are trying to reduce that situation already. Things like "laid back, naturally rendered, non fatiguing" and that sort of thing should make your short list.

If your amp is using the stock Chinese tubes, they can sound brittle and hard. Improper turntable set-up can add to the problem. Interconnects and speaker cables can fall into the adding or subtracting from the problem catagory, though that's more of a fine tuning thing than a discovery thing.

You mentioned the Arro speaker earlier. That is an audiophile speaker if ever there was one. It acts more like a monitor or stand-mount speaker and should be considered as such. It does a lot of things remarkably well, especially given it's tiny footprint, but it's not going to be forgiving of poor recordings and if there is siblance anywhere in the chain, you're going to hear it loud and clear (and crazy wide!) from the Arros. I wouldn't call them ruthlessly revealing, but they certainly aren't on the warm side of neutral.

The hardest part about upgrading a system is discovering the sonic signature and contribution each component is having on the sound at your ears, not to mention the room contribution. That's going to take experiments on your part to find out. The frustrating part is discovering that it often involves trade-offs. The better your recordings are, the more revealing your components can be. Poor recordings only get more revealing of how poor they are. I think it was Robert Harley who likened the situation to a large window overlooking a dump ground. Really clean windows aren't going to improve the view, but if you have a nice view, each layer of muck on the glass that you can remove improves your view.

Hi tee

I can't see your room (you can send me a pic if you want) but I think your upper corners are loading, that's one thing. You don't want to dull (dampen) them out but I think you might want to control them. You said your on the veiled side so I would be careful not to go too far before getting your space in balance. Going slow is a good idea. Maybe we could do a soundstage test before you start buying things. This way you will know what you want to look for sound wise. The 2.3's are choking for sure but I would be careful not to get back in the same boat. Fatigue, veiled, bright and mushy are good descriptions and I would take a look at why these components are doing this before moving on to other products that might do the same thing or a little different but still not what you want. A lot of times (like you said) we buy things then in time start to see the faults. My recommendation would be to study what you want your space to be like and then find help to deal with the room/speaker/amp/source issues.

It sounds like your sitting at your desk listening. Do you listen mainly there or all over the room? Did you say the room opens into another space where a bedroom is or is the 10 x 10 the whole space?

If you want to do a soundstage test I have a quicky for you. Do you like the Beatles? On Beatles Abbey Road song ten is a great system room tester. They did some simple paning on this track that will tell you where your setup is. If you want to play it you will hear the crickets and frogs start then move. Make note of their movement, then try this. Put your 2.3's up on phone books, hopefully raising them about 3". If you don't have phone books see if you can find other books. Once you raise them play it again and tell me what you hear different.

There's some things we can do before spending a dime to see how your setup is doing and if you want to I'll walk through it with you.

michael green

MGA/RoomTune

Take the time to read this brief article on near-field listening. It's perhaps the most concise and relevant to achieving good sound in your particular circumstances that I could possibly imagine. Plus, it has simple, easy to understand illustrations. The author's selection of illustrations and brief reasoning for his advice is spot-on. It will save you research, time and money and give you better sound than most people have ever heard...even with modestly priced gear.

http://2channelaudio.blogspot.com/2013/06/hifi-near-field-listening.html

If I tried to suggest you spend that kind of money on vintage tubes in your particular rig. lol But, spending $30 on a new pair isn't stupid money.

Take a look at Brent Jesse's page on these tubes. Here's the link. http://www.audiotubes.com/6dj8.htm

Make sure that the 6N1 swap is ok in your amp. If the dealer said it was, then I'm not going to discourage it. I think the  6n1p-ev tubes would be more appropriate given their cost, but just a little more money would get you into the Holland made tubes. With vintage tubes, the brand is virtually meaningless as they were all subject to rebranding. The codes and construction indicate WHERE the  tube was made and in what plant. That's the important part. I've seen all sorts of labels on tubes that don't correspond with the manufacturer.

If you click on Brent Jesse's page regarding the 12AX7 tubes, you can scroll down and read how he characterizes the sound coming out of each  plant. That's a pretty good over-all view of tubes in general. Yes, I know that's not your tube, but it will quickly familiarize you with the nature of messing around with tube rolling vintage stuff. It's quite involved, expensive and full of caveats and disclaimers.

As for the room treatments, that's minimized in the nearfield, but an ideal situation should be understood as to the why for a better understanding of what you are trying to accomplish by changing out stuff. Your priorities become more clear when you know what kind of compromises already exist and what you can and cannot change about them. And, equally important, what you are willing to change and the compromises you are willing to make. As the author pointed out in the piece, he's not trying to write a piece on room treatments, but explaining what near-field listening  is and what does and does not work well and why. That's the value in the article I linked.

I rarely notice any changes in the sound of tubes after about 8 hours. That's fast compared to any component or cable changes that I've ever made. I've had speakers and cables that took 200 hours to fully settle. That's on the long end of the spectrum and not all cables and speakers take that long.

Those are milspec tubes, hence the ev designation. While not the warmest sounding tubes, they are better constructed than the Chinese stuff and should help with the problems that a lot of Chinese tubes exhibit. When you swap them out, with the amp having been powerd down for half an hour or so, slowly and gently rock the tube back and forth slightly while pulling up. Make sure the new tubes don't have a layer of gunk on the pins from having been stored for a long time. They will only fit in the socket one way, as will become obvious when looking at the flat section of the base. The label on the tube will not be useful in the relationship to where the pins are aligned so don't make that assumption and force the tube into the socket. It should slide in with very little pressure if the pins on the tube are even remotely unbent. You don't want to press down on the tube socket too hard as you are installing the tube. You could damage the circuit board or socket. You should be able to feel the tube bottom out in the socket without a lot of pressure.

Hi Teekoh

Now we're talken. Ok there's a few things going on. One is with speakers, sound doesn't really travel in straight lines like some of these diagrams show. Why people publish this stuff is beyond me. Sound coming out of your speakers is spherical. It travels through the air and along your walls floor and ceiling then causes pressure, that's what you hear. Everything in your room is contributing to that pressure and becomes a part of the sound, so when placing the speakers where you are you need to get the most out of the room, meaning make the room help the speaker, the two become one.

I gave you that test so I could hear how reactive your room is and how much it's going to work with you.  My advice is don't go buy anything yet. If you were my client the next thing I would have you do is move the speakers and desk, even though you are not going to keep them there, and we make the soundstage as big as it can get. Then, we look at how to make the system do that with your desk back in place. Now if that is not something you want to do, lets at least raise the speakers to a place where the waves can form better. Right now your making the speaker do something it wasn't meant to. From what I see if you raise them  about 8" or so higher than what they are now you are going to better energize the room.

While we're doing this though thinking about your next system, if your going to have your desk there your going to want to go satilite/sub combo. Your not going to have to buy a high end audio system to blow away the sound you have now BTW, in fact if the speakers are going to end up in that position or close, the last thing you want to do is go to something even more complicated. It would be a step backward.

So want to raise the speakers a little more till you find that spot or move your stuff around a little and see what the system/room can do? I'm with you either way, just want to know what direction you want to go in.

Also your bed is an absorber. What you need acoustically is not an absorber or a diffusor, yuk! Both of them can mess up your sound. You want is a barricade acoustical setup. This will get rid of the bad and preserve the good. I can't go much further on that or I'm advertising.

michael green

MGA/RoomTune

teekoh wrote:

I went on the safe side and picked up a pair of matched NOS Russian 6N1P-EV from the Voskhod factory. $20 shipped not bad! Looking forward to see what the difference would be like. Is their a burn in time for these  NOS tubes?

I would caution you that those other tube types you mentioned are NOT NOT NOT interchangeable with the 6N1 tubes.

Putting those in in place of the standard tubes could cause circuit damage, and would certainly not work properly. Never use a tube other than the original type unless the manufacturer specifies that it may be used as a substitute.

The 6922 or 6DJ8 has the same pin assignments as the 6N1, but the tube is a totally different design which should NEVER be substituted! The 6N1 is typically run at around 8 mA of plate current,while the 6922 is much lower-impedance device which is more typically run at 20 to 80 mA! A circuit designed for one is not going to work properly with the other. The 6N1 also has a totally different heater curent, which makes a substution dangerous and stupid.

Many people who say that some other type is "compatible" don't know what the hell they are talking about. As someone who designed and built many amplifiers using tubes in the 1960s, I know what each tube's specifications are, and there are relatively few instances where a sustitution of another type is possible or advisable. 

I saw one place where some moron was claiming that you could interchange a 12AX7 with a 12AU7! That is idiotic. The 12AX7 operates at a far lower current level and has 10 times the gain. A circuit designed for one is totally wrong for the other. Many dual-triode tubes have the same pin assignments, but that does not make them interchangeable or compatible. Using the wrong tube will usually cause distortion and short tube life.

There is no "burn-in" time for those tubes. Large power tubes may take 20 or 30 minutes to stabilize their bias point after turn-on, but smaller tubes have no such issue.

This is the sort of thing that makes the internet so damn useful. Most likely, the Dealer was right and had already had the issue come up and checked it out with Dared. Otherwise, he might as well have said, "Sure, give it a try and I'll pay for it if it doesn't work out."

There are a lot of new tube audio companies sprouting up and it seems just about all of them are Chinese companies using some sort of autobias circuitry and designing into their amps the ability to run numerous types of tubes. It's usually the output tubes as the topic of discussion. In this instance, though, you have to wonder why Dared chose to use that particular tube type.

Like I said earlier about disclaimers and caveats and all that, http://www.audiotubes.com/chinese.htm it's certainly possible the tube substitution, despite it not being the electrical equivalent, could be substituted without any issues. I'd bet money that someone over at the TubeAsylum has already tried it and the OP could find out how well it works or how poorly at the expense of someone else.

The link discusses the issue a little bit.

After reading the above I would be careful about running out and investing a ton of money into new gear. The truth is that people often think new gear will be a magic fix and the truth of the matter is that the biggest limiting factor is a lot of setups isn't the gear but the room and the way its set up. 

Judging from the results you saw just from moving the speakers up a bit it sounds to me like it is a setup / room correction issues at the heart of it. What that means is, if you put more expensive gear in, you may see a difference but it's not solving the issue. 

I'm a big fan of acoustic treatment and I find absorption does improve sound. From your post regarding the fatiguing nature of the sound, that could be due to the reflection of high frequency sound, which can certainly be fatiguing on the ears. 

I would recommend you send a diagram over to a company called arualex and see what they recommend. They will draw up a recommended room treatment package for you, for free, so you have nothing to lose.

You can consider buying the foam products they sell, look for other pre-made panels, consider making some your self. A lot of places will sell acoustic treatments so you can always try it and see if it helps.

I have a number of friends with home mixing studios and room treatment has made a significant difference in everyone one of their set-ups.

My daughter's room is 12x12. Thinking about fitting large floorstanding speakers in a bedroom that has to accomodate not only the bed, but also a desk and still leave room to be functional AND get good sound is really a pickle. Even so, it would be a great situation where a Murphy bed would make total sense and probably the best use of money to get better sound. Even one of those chairs that can have the fold away bed would make for better sound.

Ironic, huh. The best money spent for better sound has nothing to do with audio?

Hopefully, he'll get rid of the glare that the Chinese tubes are almost certainly exhibiting and at least help with the fatigue factor.

I took a look at your pictures and as you probably already know it’s a very challenging setup. Would be good to get peoples opinions on this, but if I was in your position I would look at getting a bookshelf speaker or a monitor. This seems to be one of the setups that you can take a lot of cues from the pro audio world. In fact, it might not be a bad idea to run down to some pro audio shops and look as studio monitors as they are designed for this. It’s at least a good benchmark and you can see a few configurations. Would also look at your traditional audiophile speakers but just realize I’m not sure how they perform in a near-field setting so would definitely demo them this way. 

For setup I would try to:

1. Look for a good bookshelf speaker or studio monitor you like

2. Buy some adjustable studio monitor stands and set them up behind your desk (just google home studio setup or home mixing studio and you will see a tone of pictures and articles).

3. From here look into treatment for some of the early reflection points.

I think you will be much happier with this was as you will always be struggling with floor standing speakers in that configuration as they need some space to work. In any case I would take some time to listen to a few monitors/bookshelf speakers in your spare time and see if they sound better to you. Also if you ever feel bass is lacking you can look into getting a sub and there are a number of ways to pair it well with a bookshelf or monitor. Seems counter intuitive but some of the best value for money systems are great bookshelf speakers and a good sub.