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Lovin my MMG's, except.....

76.237.239.86

.....drums just aren't as real sounding as all the other instruments. Being a drummer I'm very sensitive to this. Piano, horns, hand percussion, vocals, not too heavily distorted guitar, bass, etc. all have better realism than I've ever experienced from any other loudspeaker before. But when it comes to drums, well, there are some things missing.

One, they just don't sound balanced in the mix. All the other instruments can really come forward with authoritative presentation when the performance dictates. The drums more often than not just seem a little throttled back compared to what I'm used to hearing from my speakers that do drums really well (ADS 1290/2, EV Interface C) and compared to the recording levels of the other instruments in the song.

Two, the tone of the drum is there but the "snap" or attack of the stick
striking the head isn't. That backbeat "pop" or "crack" from a rimshot just doesn't hit very hard. I think this is contributing to the problem I'm having with the imbalance between the drums and the rest of the instruments in the recording. I'm used to feeling some sonic energy from the drums (and do with the ADS's and EV's)
but with the MMG's it's just sound.

Now I will say this. When I first got them and hadn't yet done any tweaks they were more balanced but that's only because the other instruments weren't as sonically present as they are now. It's like all my tweaks up to this point have addressed every instrument.....except the drums. Gotta get this one figured out or I'll have big problems with the MMG's.

My tweaks are as follows...
- Framed and braced and lifted off the ground one foot with about 15 degrees tilt back from vertical. Frame assembly is spiked on concrete.
- Fuses and attenuators bypassed

Room is 14 wide, 20 deep, with 8 foot ceilings and speakers 4.5 feet from front wall and 2.5 feet from side walls with about seven feet between them and I sit about eight feet away. Room has several acoustic treatments including diffusion panels 30 inches behind speakers, corner broadband absorbers, first reflection absorbers on ceiling and side walls, and absorption behind listening position and against front wall behind diffusion panels.

Gear is a Yamaha CDC-835 cdp feeding a Grant Fidelity Tube DAC-09, Emotive USP-1 pre and XPA-1 amp with Audioquest cables and interconnects.

Haven't done any mods to the xovers but I guess that's where I need to go next. I've seen Gunn's, but doesn't his require the panel to be reversed? I listened to my MMGs once with the backside facing forward and didn't like the loss of midbass so I'm not sure I'm interested in following the Gunn recipe. Any other x-over mod recipes out there that tend to get very good testimonials from those who have done them? Or, even better, that might help me out with my weak drums problem? I'd like to be able to biamp or biwire and the one MMG xover mod in the "tweaks" section looks appealing. Anyone ever heard what that particual mod can do?

Thanks,
Michael


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Topic - Lovin my MMG's, except..... - tinnitusintx 21:20:01 02/15/12 (54)

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