Not happy with my Marantz 5004 + Pioneer BS22

zelda

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Recently , I bought a Marantz PM5004 and a pair of Pioneer BS22 bookshelf speakers. I am using my PC as the source. Using Monster Speaker cables to connect the amplifier to the speakers and a local made Stereo to RCA cable (5 meters) to connect my PC to the Amp.

I am not very satisfied with the sound quality of the setup. Initially i thought it might be due to new set of hardware and it might improve over time. But I am not so sure now. I have checked the polarity of the speaker cables and also tried playing some FLAC files but no luck.

Some help ...:sad:
 
Recently , I bought a Marantz PM5004 and a pair of Pioneer BS22 bookshelf speakers. I am using my PC as the source. Using Monster Speaker cables to connect the amplifier to the speakers and a local made Stereo to RCA cable (5 meters) to connect my PC to the Amp.

I am not very satisfied with the sound quality of the setup. Initially i thought it might be due to new set of hardware and it might improve over time. But I am not so sure now. I have checked the polarity of the speaker cables and also tried playing some FLAC files but no luck.

Some help ...:sad:

You did not mention whether you are using a sound card or an in-built sound from the PC.
 
In my case 50% of my music listening happens through my laptop connected through the EP jack directly to my Dared Tube amplifier. I mostly either play either from youtube, podcast and mp3 files through itunes. I am more than satisfied from the SQ. In my opinion even mp3 files sound quite good and more than acceptable if your speakers are good, else even if you use a high-end CD player it may still be unacceptable.
 
Bad in what respect ?
In a lot of cases Booksheleves are nearly incapable of producing bass.
If it is sealed cabinet, it will produce tighter bass at the cost of SPL.

Marantz PM 5004 - I dont know what is in it. I will try to find out. The way its built may determine what it can and can not do. And I may not know even after looking at its schematic and layout.

I have in general noticed that most setup's, even htib's benefit greatly from full sized good quality speakers. In fact, that's where they have cut the most corners.
Cool.
Srinath.
 
Bad in what respect ?
In a lot of cases Booksheleves are nearly incapable of producing bass.

Srinath.

Not enough low end bass which is understandable given that BS22 have 4'' drivers. But i don't feel enough sound stage and instrument separation. Not enough clarity in the music.

Marantz PM 5004 - I dont know what is in it. I will try to find out. The way its built may determine what it can and can not do. And I may not know even after looking at its schematic and layout.


Srinath.

That is much appreciated. Looking forward to it.
 
Sound stage is the hardest thing to create for any speaker.
I've seen speakers that are several $1000 fail horribly.
I've seen modest home made speakers do it quite well, even though they fail to produce the lower freq's.
The ones that succeed usually are as close to point source as you can get with the usual trick for that being to fit the tweeter in front of the woofer.

I am not sure what that speaker sounds like, you could try stuffing it a bit more in the cabinet. See if you can borrow bigger speakers and if that improves the stage. If so, you could work on trying out more speakers, and somehting will work as best as the situation allows.

Cool.
Srinath.
 
Some hard facts without beating around the bush :)

1. Check speaker positioning. Search online for tips. Form an equilateral triangle between the speakers and the listener positioning to start with then adjust.

2. use decent interconnects and speaker cables

3. Try using foobar or mediamonkey and install WASAPI plugin (etc depending on your windows version) or similar software to bypass the windows mixer if not doing so already

4. Borrow another source - CD player/DAC from a friend and test

5. Hard facts: the components may just be incapable to do justice to your expectations! Be bold to accept and decide accordingly! Are you comparing with some other higher end setup? So think on these lines as well. Borrow some amplifier from some friend and test. AFAIK the pioneers are nice speakers and should at least do some imaging right and so is the marantz amplifier which is sufficiently transparent and resolving.

Try some better grade interconnects.

just 2 cents..

happy listening!
cheers!
 
Some hard facts without beating around the bush :)

1. Check speaker positioning. Search online for tips. Form an equilateral triangle between the speakers and the listener positioning to start with then adjust.

2. use decent interconnects and speaker cables

3. Try using foobar or mediamonkey and install WASAPI plugin (etc depending on your windows version) or similar software to bypass the windows mixer if not doing so already

4. Borrow another source - CD player/DAC from a friend and test

5. Hard facts: the components may just be incapable to do justice to your expectations! Be bold to accept and decide accordingly! Are you comparing with some other higher end setup? So think on these lines as well. Borrow some amplifier from some friend and test. AFAIK the pioneers are nice speakers and should at least do some imaging right and so is the marantz amplifier which is sufficiently transparent and resolving.

Try some better grade interconnects.

just 2 cents..

happy listening!
cheers!

Thanks. I bought branded interconnects with the amp but it was not long enough. So I bought a local interconnect which is 5 m in length and is currently using it.
 
Recently i was able to play some songs from Youtube and some of them sounded surprisingly good with my setup. May be nothing is wrong with my setup... :rolleyes: . I am confused.
 
Thanks. I bought branded interconnects with the amp but it was not long enough. So I bought a local interconnect which is 5 m in length and is currently using it.

Not a good idea IMHO. Please try some decent ones.

Also 5m is way too long!! even 1.5 feet is considered long! Try to keep as short as possible.

This will definitely improve sound Im sure.

Please explore mogami or GAC interconnects.
 
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I am using inbuild sound card. But when I use my JBL headphone, the sound quality is decent.SO that may not be the problem.

You are comparing the setup with HEADPHONES???
Headphones will obviously trounce the speaker setup.

Bass.
Headphones, due to proximity to ear drum will generate better bass.

Soundstage.
Because the headphones send right channel to right ear ONLY, and left channel to left ear ONLY, it gives an impression of better, wider soundstage. But this is over enhanced and fake soundstage. In true life, headphones generate real soundstage only with binaural recordings. I am sure you are playing stereo recordings.

A true stereo recording is designed such that right channel sends sound to leaf ear ALSO, and left channel sends sound to right ear ALSO. So a fair comparison will be when you use headphone crossfeed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfeed) mode on your headphones.

Clarity, sharpness, responsiveness.
Earphones using smaller and lighter drivers will have lower inertia. Therefore a headphone will sound better than a large driver. This is more applicable to bass and midrange (woofer domain).
 
Crappy headphones sound much much much much better than crappy speakers.
Mediocre headphones sound a lot better than mediocre speakers.
Great headphones, sound slightly worse than great speakers.

The precceding observation is my own, and it does not account for differences in equipment. A tube powered headphone amp may make everything sound better and it cound trounce even a great speaker.
Headphones may be more forgiving than speakers at the high end. The headphone impedance match is important, but match that, and it isn't too particular about the other stuff.
Cool.
Srinath.
 
Hi There!
I suspect the cables/ interconnects.. please change it to the shorter branded ones that you bought and test again. Second, use WASSAPI bitstream from PC.

I own BS22 + FS-52 and C-22 from Pioneer Andrew Jones series. I started with BS-22; the sound quality was good and moving to FS-52 was a great improvement. I was quite happy with the sound stage of BS22 but i felt some clarity was missing in vocals - to - treble; so tried FS and those are great! the BS22 was acceptable with my entry level ONKYO HTR-390; so you should get better quality with Marantz 5004.

I use Bandridge 12 G cables for fronts and centre; and DAC-16 for BS 22
 
Purchase the Audiolab 6000A Integrated Amplifier at a special offer price.
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