An update on my gain/volume situation...
Ok, first, this is really hard to admit, especially since I did the samething three times in a row when swapping speakers: I got an instant nearly 6 db gain simply by connecting the speakers in phase ;-). How I did that, especially with these speaker cables (which are so obviously different on positive and negative sides) is a complete mystery, but that alone made a nice difference. Another mistake I made wa to not play the amps or speakers long enough for them to wake up and for the nickel core demagnetization to happen. So all that together got me about another full 99 db or thereabouts, which is a full step on the coarse volume control.
I could not locate the vcap CuTFs, so I just put the cd player on repeat and let the system play while I finished organizing my toolbox and moved almost of the remaining junk out of my listeninr room and set the area rug in place, and sure enough after an hour or so things really started to come into focus, gain some far more substantial weight and far better top to bottom balance, clarity and tonality. I also have to remember that a substantial part of this system is brand new, including all but one set of interconnects and the CD player.
So, as things got better and better over the course of a few hours, it became pretty clear that I'm going to stick with these amps, but also probably keep the Orcas in the listening room. That will mean chopping the stand height down somewhat as they were sized for another room and a much higher couch. Oh, and all this was sans subs again. I'm still kicking myself how I could have connected the left speaker out of phase originally, and then two more times when switching in orcas and then back to nagas, and only caught it today when I put the Orcas back in -- I guess I was just on autopilot and did the same thing everytime and today as I was pluggin the cables in something clicked and I thought, this is not right.
Other than that and a somewhat flakey 6j5 on the left side of he preamp, all seems to be coming along nicely now, and I've got a NOS pair of RCA 6j5s in my mailbox right now which I'll go fetch tomorrow. Then if I can't find the cutf caps, I just got an unused, unwanted pair of .1 uF Mundorf SGOs for half price, so I may throw those in too.
Despite all this, the listening after the first couple of hours was really nice. Computer and dac and room treatments are next.
-- Jim
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