As I’ve mentioned in another thread, I’m very happy with the new Fritz Carraras.
These “tiny tots” are mighty fine... I now have a more holographic presentation and it’s more fun to listen to. I’m getting very good sound nowadays using the ICE stereo power amp 1200as2 along with the Border Patrol SE nos dac and the somewhat quirky, but excellent sounding Audio Hungary APR 204 preamp. That beryllium tweeter retrieves detail beautifully and without harshness. It’s especially and surprisingly nice on older and somewhat poorly recorded material.
There are two issues, though, that I’d like to improve. One is some remaining harshness on vocals and some instruments that I think might be the ICE amp and the other is some boominess in the bass that is room related. Maybe they’re both room related. I’ve never, ever used room treatments, but I’m trying to learn as much as I can. I’ve previously mentioned here that I sent Dave...Mr Uber
and Greg Rael who does the PI Audio room treatments, some pics of my room. They both expressed their sadness as to my room parameters and choice of speaker placement 😢 Doug s also has looked at the room pics and offered a suggestion.
So there are a few ways to proceed. One is to try another amp, or even an integrated, and see if I can get rid of that bit of harshness. Very likely it would be tube or at least a solid state that has a reputation for a tubelike presentation. As I live alone nowadays, I could dramatically change speaker placement so they would fire into the horizontal or short side of the room layout rather than the long side of the room. By changing to the short side/horizontal placement, both Fritzes would not have a close boundary wall on either side. So altering the placement is doable, but not preferable.
Based on some research on my part and some helpful suggestions from members here, there are a few companies that quite interest me as to amps, preamps and integrateds. Those would be Audio Hungary, Microzotl, Don Sachs and NAT. I’ve also had a couple of offers to send me amps for evaluation which I very much appreciate.
So I’m open to suggestions on equipment and any other thoughts you may have.
By the way, room dimensions are about
17’W x 26’L x 11’H open floor plan room