Yet Another Two Channel System

[Sonnie Parker]

A birthday gift to myself today... shameless I am.

I've really been wanting this amp and I've wanted to try out these speakers, so I figured I'd set up a two-channel vinyl system in my theater room.

Music Direct has an open box McIntosh MA252 integrated amp, and an open box Music Hall Stealth (Ortofon 2M Blue cartridge) turntable at some pretty aggressive pricing. Plus the speakers are on sale and include free stands. On top of all the sale prices, John through in another 10% off the package. I could not resist the temptation.

 

[Sonnie Parker]

Got it installed... Pink Floyd is sounding fairly good without any tuning thus far.

 

[Grayson Dere]

Great new setup you have there, Sonnie!

 

[JStewart]

Are those the new Super Lintons?

Can you compare the tonality to the JTRs for us?

 

[Sonnie Parker]

Yes... Super Lintons.

It's not even close to a fair comparison. The Super Lintons are only playing vinyl, and it's a completely different sound altogether. The bass rolls off quickly, and while the soundstage and imaging are pretty good, it could be tuned. The problem is all I have is bass and treble controls. I'm not sure of a way to get Dirac for this setup. I guess I'd have to get a preamp that has Dirac and a good phono preamp. I'll measure it and see if I can do any good with toe-in and tone controls, but I suspect I'll leave it as it is. It sounds good... but not great. I like the sound for lower-volume listening... Art Pepper, Miles Davis, Gene Ammons, etc.

 

[Sonnie Parker]

The more I listen... the more I feel like something is too much off. Lower volumes are okay on jazz, but for rock and cranking it up a little more (not loud, but louder), it just doesn't sound right. I can especially notice it when going from my regular system to vinyl or vice versa. I finally decided it was time to measure from the listening position, which you see below. I couldn't do anything with the tone controls or toe-in, and I'm stuck with my location under the circumstances of sharing this setup with my main system. It definitely needs Dirac, so I'll have to break out the SHD and find a reasonably good phono preamp. Obviously, it missing the extreme low-end, but that low-end seems to be missing on a lot of the older vinyl rock anyway, but it could be shaped up in that lower end, especially bringing down that 125Hz peak, and vocal should improve bring up that 1kHz dip.

 

[ddude003]

You could always find an old-skool analogue parametric equalizer like Manley Massive Passive, George Massenburg Labs GML 8200 or even the Hendyamps Michelangelo to rock your signal chain... Err... I mean help with tone control... Lol...

P.S. And what ever you do, DONOT look at the Manley SteelHead...

 

[Sonnie Parker]

Manley Steelhead...

 

[ddude003]

Uncle Kevy has a special version of the Manly Steelhead he worked in collaboration with Manley Labs on...

 

[Sonnie Parker]

I'm sure he does.

I'd love to use the miniDSP ADept and feed it to the SHD via an optical cable, but the input capacitance only has options for 50pf, 100pf, and 500pf. The Ortofon 2M Blue cartridge recommends 150pf-300pf. Strange that there is no option from 100pf to 500pf on the ADept. Bummer!

 

[Sonnie Parker]

If I can find a 1 meter phono cable that has a capacitance of 100pf, that would get me to 200pf.