Well, I was hoping to hold out longer but I couldnt resist when a local acquaintence offered the 1068 to me to replace my HK230 serving as pre/pro. Unit is absolute mint. I hooked it up the past weekend and have an issue with the sound quality.
The good: Upon substituting the 1068, the clarity went up a bit, detail went up a bit and its hard to explain but the background noise is reduced so that the notes seem to stand out more. Also, I like all the flexibility and options on this thing. Those were the positives...that and the good looks.
The bad: However, to put it bluntly, the unit is extremely bright sounding on my gear which is:Polk LSi15, Rotel 1080 and Music Hall MMF-25 CD player. The brightness was also noted with a Yamaha 2300 universal as well although to a lesser degree, and also using a digital feed to the 1068. None of these components are known to be bright sounding. In fact, speakers are described as laidback, 1080 as neutral/warm and CD as airy...
With my HK serving as pre/pro, the sound was warm, full and "organic", but also airy and detailed, granted may be a little less than the 1068. In contrast, the 1068 sounds synthetic and bright. I was listening for about 1 hr and my ears started to hurt....listening fatique. About 20 minutes later, out of the blue, my wife says "my ears hurt. Its the high notes...they are hurting my ears." I was not imagining the brightness as I did not mention anything to her except that the 1068 sounds different. I replaced the interconnects and speaker cables with copper ones (I had silver coated between the pre and the amp and speaker wires were silver coated). This helped a bit, but not to the extent desired. The sound is not "integrated" as much as I would like and its still too bright.
Does anyone have any other ideas as to what is going on and what I can do?
I did turn down the HF settings for all speakers and that has helped as well but has not addressed the lack of full and organic sound.
I really want to keep this 1068 but I am not enjoying the results. Thanks for any insights that you can share with me.
The good: Upon substituting the 1068, the clarity went up a bit, detail went up a bit and its hard to explain but the background noise is reduced so that the notes seem to stand out more. Also, I like all the flexibility and options on this thing. Those were the positives...that and the good looks.
The bad: However, to put it bluntly, the unit is extremely bright sounding on my gear which is:Polk LSi15, Rotel 1080 and Music Hall MMF-25 CD player. The brightness was also noted with a Yamaha 2300 universal as well although to a lesser degree, and also using a digital feed to the 1068. None of these components are known to be bright sounding. In fact, speakers are described as laidback, 1080 as neutral/warm and CD as airy...
With my HK serving as pre/pro, the sound was warm, full and "organic", but also airy and detailed, granted may be a little less than the 1068. In contrast, the 1068 sounds synthetic and bright. I was listening for about 1 hr and my ears started to hurt....listening fatique. About 20 minutes later, out of the blue, my wife says "my ears hurt. Its the high notes...they are hurting my ears." I was not imagining the brightness as I did not mention anything to her except that the 1068 sounds different. I replaced the interconnects and speaker cables with copper ones (I had silver coated between the pre and the amp and speaker wires were silver coated). This helped a bit, but not to the extent desired. The sound is not "integrated" as much as I would like and its still too bright.
Does anyone have any other ideas as to what is going on and what I can do?
I did turn down the HF settings for all speakers and that has helped as well but has not addressed the lack of full and organic sound.
I really want to keep this 1068 but I am not enjoying the results. Thanks for any insights that you can share with me.
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