Acoustic treatment? Have you tried sitting on the floor?

I just got some Dali Zensors today and have been playing around with positioning. Directly on a shelf they sounded boxy and boomy so i tried placing them on some auralex mopads and they sound much more better. I have a couple of pieces of knauf RS60 behind them to help absorb the low end and even at decent volume they still sound controlled so don't overlook some kinda treatment. At least the first reflections will help with the clarity. Imho upgrading the gear without addressing potential room issues is a false economy as they'll always be there and affect the quality of the sound your hearing. My 2c.

Acoustic treatment or how your room sounds, is one of the most important things to consider when butting together a Hifi system.

The very reason why this is important now, is that Hifi manufactuters are making systems  more & more accurate sounding.

This the very reason why all music recording studios have the room treated. The same reason so many buy A hifi product then get home & it sounds horrible. All the stuff about music sounding  neutral from a system is almost impossible unless the room is treatment.

`It seems to me that when its comes to HIFI we are far from the truth, when we listen at home.

I got a recording studio at home, but my music listening room colours the sound, & thats how i like my music. Very very few systems can reproduce mid range sounds. Get this right & almost everything will fall into place.

If the the midrange of a system sounds thin or clinical i would get out that room faster than usain bolt.

Simple test:

1 Got a bass player to play bass through Studio active monitors Sounded like a bass Guitar.

2 Played same bass through HIfi system in same treated room, in this case several amps. All the amps sounded dry & lifeless.

The combination of different components is just hard to judge & also the room acoustic been taken into account.

Less always sounds better.

I think most systems these day are very clinical sounding.

If people only took the time out to listen to a pair of active monitors & hear what they are missing. Not only that, it also cures the problem of room acoustics.

I just wish most people will not be folowers but doers. SIMPLES!!

I have a small home studio too and bass guitar sounds great through my ESI nEar 05 active monitors. Never really considered using these for hifi instead of the Lektors. My Rotel amp has pre-outs so might give them a go.

Yeap, u got nothing to loose Danrv

Don't plug your monitors directly into the outs if that's what you mean.

Aren't the pre-outs for connection to a power amplifier?

Seems odd that you can't feed an active speaker with a pre amp, I thought that was how it was done?

teejuk wrote:

danrv wrote:

Aren't the pre-outs for connection to a power amplifier?

I double checked and connecting an active signal to an active speaker could fry it. You could put a mixer inbetween.

eh?  using a pre amp with active speakers could fry it? you sure about that?

Yes i'm wrong. So i called RS and they said it is fine, the pre-out is line level. I think the info i'm getting is based on an active preamp. Sorry for any confusion, I didn't want you to do damage to your monitors. 

If ur pre amp has got volume control then its safe to use with your active speakers.

You're still confusing me (it's not difficult), what's an active preamp?

Yep, connected up one monitor and no explosions. 

Thanks Ben:)

An amp that's sending voltage or power to the connected device like a guitar amp. I guess it would be akin to connecting the monitor to the hifi amps main outputs. The pre-out is line level so it's all good, the only issue might be gain as hifi is -10db, i had to turn my monitors all the way up to get a decent level which also introduced a lot of noise...