The History Kid

Worst thread ever

That's simply not true. The RF-7's peak is 1000 Watts, not 400. Not a single spec sheet anywhere even makes a mention of the number 400.

The RF-82 is a far superior speaker to the R-51M in every single dimension. It is a predecessor of the RP-8000F, back when Reference actually meant Reference - not the rebadged budget brand the current lineup is. You would be getting far more clarity, low end extension, and quality sound than anything the R series speakers could get close to.

It's not really cost effective to tackle that with the amount of work needed in any of these rooms, a pre is a simpler and more direct approach to the issue.

Well this is disappointing. Parasound won't even *attempt* to offer support on their own products anymore. Seems like after whatever buyout a couple years back, the company has really gone down the tubes (no pun intended). What a shame. Does anyone have some good suggestions of something I could put between the DAC and Amp to allow for some modest tone control adjustments?

We have a winner. So it appears that the Preamp is modulating and causing some hiccups in the tones as well. As mentioned, I had bypassed the pre, but that meant the system wasn't EQ'd at all. Putting the 200 into the mix added the tone control back, and that's where we sit. Now its a matter of figuring out what on earth is so different in the innards of the ZPre vs the 200.

I had bypassed the pre already. But I will try putting the NC 200 back into the mix just to see if that could help. The Pre is in the mix mostly because of the tone controls. Will report back.

Yeah, again - nothing in the room has changed other than the stack.

Yes. The old stuff was placed in their boxes to prep for moving. The speakers don't have their boxes, so they're still where they have been. I wanted a chance to test the new gear too before anything else. Basically I transitioned these speakers from a Parasound NC 200 PRE & 2125 to the rig mentioned in the OP.

I'm actually testing them in the same place. I haven't set the office up yet - so the electronics are setup here, and the speakers haven't moved yet.

The amplifier is switched to stereo, yes. When I say that I reserved polarity, I tried this in every different connection scenario possible with 2-conductor cabling. I also attempted to run the system in mono, and the same results were produced.

I posited this question on reddit - which was a huge mistake - but got no real good answers or resolution. Some of you may have seen my other thread talking about breaking up parts of my old big system and using it in an office space. To do that, I took the RB-5's that I have and matched them to a set of Parasound Z series gear (DAC v2, Pre3, and Amp v3). The problem is that whenever using the RB-5's, the sound is super processed sounding and lacks virtually any low end. Headphones do not produce this issue. I'm trying to figure out if this is a matter of some sort of configuration or a design flaw that I missed with these units when I bought them. Things I've tried so far: Reversing polarity on the RB-5's produced the same results. Running audio bypassing the DAC did not change the result. Running audio bypassing the Pre did not change the result. Putting the NC 2125 from the old system back into the fray did not produce any changes. Using my RF-3's instead of the RB-5's didn't really change much other than the sound was a bit more extended due to the nature of the RF-3's. I ensured that sound enhancements were turned off in Windows. Tone controls will extend the bass to a certain extent and treble increases the high to a point where they're too thin. I know how these RB-5's are supposed to sound. This ain't it. I also know how the rest of my Parasound gear has sounded. This ain't it either. Any other thoughts?

You kind of answered your own question with the AVR. Those speakers are pretty entry level, and most Klipsch speakers won't really need all that much power. Plenty of amp in the 3800 for what you'd need.

If you've run through all the same troubleshooting, they're the next cheapest thing to look at. Most diaphragms at this point would treat you a bit better as it were anyway, so its not a money-sink.