Hi Steveo, I tried your settings on some music I am very familiar with. I am shocked this sounds better than Pure Direct. The sound stage disappears and the music shrinks. I think these settings are hiding the missing data in compressed music?? Your Yamaha is a good receiver and the T1's are stellar. I would recommend getting a better source. I am streaming FLAC files through the Yamaha's NET connection. The FLAC files are stored on a Buffalo NAS using WD Red drives. Let me know a few MP3's you are using and I will do a comparison with MP3's the way you are listening to them

I originally was using a low end Sony BD player as a CD source(HDMI) to the Yamaha. I used the internal amps to drive the T1's. It was a clear natural sound. So I know the Yamaha can sound really good with the T1s.

A few rudimentary questions;
What type of interconnects and speaker wire are you using?
At what volume level do you listen?
How are you sourcing your MP3's BT, USB, AirPlay Etc...

Anyone else have any ideas please chime in:)


For reference this is how I have things setup right now.
FLAC files on a NAS streaming directly to the Yamaha. I am listening in Pure Direct mode.
I am using the preamp outs from the Yamaha to Emotiva XPA-2s in mono mode.

regards,
DT

Let me be clear on my statement " I am shocked this sounds better than Pure Direct"

I should have written " I am shocked this sounds better than Pure Direct on your system"

Is it possible one or both of your speakers are out of phase?? To be sure run the auto YPAO it does a phase check and will tell if and which are out of phase. Just a thought.

DT

Hey DT, thanks for clarifying your first statement, I was confused.
But then again, I am easily confused.
ha ha
Great that you can respond to Steveo and be helpful like this.
I feel Steveo is gonna get this sorted out soon, it has been going on for too long.
And great speakers like his NEED a good source and associated equipment.
God Bless, Wayne

Hi Wayne, I also asked him if he could run the YPAO auto test to see if he may have accidentally hooked a speaker up out of phase?? What do you think about that as a possibility?

DT

Hey DT,
Yes, out of phase speakers could VERY well cause a hollow sounding play. BUT I have trouble believing tweaking the EQ would sort out the problem and make it sound good.
We have looked at this with Steveo for quite a time, and I would have hoped that would have been figured out a long time ago. But I am too lazy to look back through all the threads to see if that has been looked into.
Who knows, you might have just hit it? Hopefully Steveo can tell us.
It is great to have people here try to help.
God Bless,
Wayne

Hi DT and Wayne thanks for the replies

I am concerned now something is wrong. Just to recap I am currently running for music play

Apple TV playing mp3s to the rx 1040. My prepaid are connected to a emotiva xpa 5 and am of course running triton ones.

The concern I have is a while ago I tried pure direct on a cd running through home off my ps3 and it still sounded hollow.

We all know mp3 s are poor to run off good equipment but I have ran mp3s off top end sennheiser headphones amped through a good headphone amp and they sounded excellent. The fact that it didn't sound good either in a cd is worry some.

In regards to cables I don't think they are anything special as I bought them with my first system. I will attach a picture.
In regards to out of phase I did run Ypao originally and never came across a issue. I am currently connecting the red wires (with a black strip) to the red input and am connecting the silver wire to the white (or black) connector.

I will double check all the connections again in the next couple of days as I am not home much but I will try.

In regards to mp3s I listen to everything. I can give you a few examples like Eagles hotel California, to Michael Jackson bad album to beck sea change to pink floyds the wall

Everything sounds hollow and just not fun to listen to at all. I will have to take a video showing the differences.

I jisr want a solution and if I know now you are getting magic sounds our of pure direct on the same reciever power amp brand and speakers then it has to be a source or cable issue or even a reciever fault even?

Can cables make that much of a difference? It would take magic golden cables to make songs sound good on pure direct met me tell you. It's just not my ears everyone says the same thing. Put it this way if I was showing off my speakers to someone and showed them pure direct they could show me a speaker for $500 that would crush it even running mp3s. I even owned an old Sony that had better sound out if mp3s that I have now on pure direct. Now my eq settings are a different story and it sounds great

I don't think it's the speaker at all cause movies sound incredible and I am getting good sound just not out pure direct which by all accounts should be extremely good matched with t1s.

It has to be what you are suggesting. I will check my ypao check the connections again and run cos or flac and see if it makes a difference. What cables are you running DT and Wayne? Could that be the difference maybe? I always heard cables are the last thing you should upgrade and the improvement is nominal compared to changing the processor or the source for example.