No not at all! That’s a myth…when I added a DD10+ it adds a whole new dimension more depth…you don’t even know where the sub is …it sounds like your speakers have gained 12inch bass drivers…except the sub is faster and better than the speakers at bass… of course you can go nuts and bring your ceiling down if you want!!!
I understand that Steve Sells uses an SN3 with a sub at home… there is an endorsement…
I would sell the house and buy a new one to accommodate properly the new speakers. It’s the only way to go.
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Rather than making the thread messier, I’ll try and respond here to everyone.
Here’s a couple of pictures for ref with positioning. We’ve done very little since moving in, hence the temporary furnishings, but that’s only place the TV can go, and the speakers are also used as main front L/R channels on the AV atmos setup. We’ve also cut speakers into the ceiling, so moving the main front speakers and TV isn’t an option.
Room is about 9m x 5m.
Prior to these Kanta 3 we had a pair of Ruark Prologue floorstanders and matching centre channel, which you can still see in the picture above.
I’m with @Richieroo with regard to having the subs as support. I did this with the Ruarks and had decent results, especially when you consider that the Ruarks are £1200 speakers from 20yrs ago.
I’ve already had a go with partnering the subs to the kanta’s. Yes, they gave it more weight but I still wasn’t getting the impact I wanted from tracks like the beginning to “Another brick in the wall” (part 1) where the sound is meant come out and bite you.
As mentioned above by @gthack, I also had thought that the pre-amp might have been dormant until I had a plugged a proper source in, instead of it just being an AV pass through. Sound improvements have been coming and going, but generally getting better (or am I getting used to it? Haha!)
The old Ruarks needed loads of toe in for imaging, whereas the kanta’s seem to get very harsh if you go overboard.
With ref to room accoustics mentioned by @Innocent_Bystander and @Mark84, I’ve already dipped a toe into this area and will try to source a decent second microphone, as suggested.
On a brighter note! The biggest improvement came earlier today when we powered the SN3 and ndx2 from a plug nearest the main fuse box.
There’s a marked improvement in the stuff that was lacking before but we’re still not there yet. The bass that we’ve gained seems to bloom.
Being so busy with year end at the moment means that I’ve only got so much patience each day for this, and I’ve had enough for today!
I’ll update the thread, for the sake of the search function, when there’s more to share.
Thanks everyone (even the grumpy bloke @Skeptikal 
)
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They seem awfully close to the wall to me. What’s that, 60 cm from front baffle to wall? Might your lack of upper bass be an excess of low bass? Even if you can’t keep them further out, I would try pulling them out to see if it improves things. If yes, maybe the speakers are not a good match
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This. You’re probably sitting in a null mode for that frequency.
Your speakers are too close to the wall.
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Yes: the speakers are indeed very close to the wall. As was suggested, try moving them out if you can. Like I said, I moved my Kanta 2s around a lot before I got a relatively smooth bass response.
Also, the speakers likely need more time to burn in - especially the tweeters; I found they really did need 200 hours or so. The bass will change too. Until then, I probably wouldn’t worry too much about the sound or positioning. You could well find toeing them in to be more acceptable at that point as well.
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Plus 1 on the speakers sitting too close to the wall.
You mention a big improvement from changing to a different power socket. That is clear proof there’s a lot of room for improvement in your mains. A dedicated spur seems like a good thing to do. It always is, also without obvious issues.
If things don’t improve (enough) from giving them more time and move them around, I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes down to a speaker/room/amp mismatch. The impedance of the Kanta 3 (and 2) dips to a tad below 3 Ohm around 100 Hz. That is dang in the middle of the bass spectrum. The SN3 might not be too happy about that.
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From first hand experience, I would clearly not recommend, under any circumstances whatsoever, associating McIntosh and Focal. It just doesn’t function. This combination would be guaranteed to exponentially increase the OP’s original grievances. Believe me, I know…
Brgds.
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The room size difference is very important. In the bigger room, speakers have to do more to give you the same SPL and that will require more juice from the amp
It sounds like you tried that combination. There are many on here with McIntosh and it gets good reviews and can work with Naim. Why did it not work with Focal for you? Many thanks.
Did you try the Focal /McIntosh combination?
McIntosh MA352 and Focal Sopra 1 together simply does not work. This hybrid McIntosh is “voiced” with highly exaggerated upper frequencies and this is obviously not a good idea with the beryllium tweeter. Naim amplification has been much much better than the McIntosh with these speakers. For those have have complained about or classified Focal speakers as being overly bright…put a McIntosh on a pair and get ready for some severe ear-bleeding. Unbelievably bright, metallic, cold, steely, lifeless, confused and grating…Some marriages just don’t work. This is an excellent example. Conversely, although I didn’t realize how good it actually was, the Naim and Focal combination was quite synergistic. As always, YMMV.
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Thanks for explaining. The McIntosh looks well built, is well reviewed and highly specced. If it doesn’t work with Focals then that’s good to know.
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It is primarily listening distance that matters here - and that is not necessarily proportional to the room ( in my present room I sit only 3m from the speakers, necessary due to otherwise adverse room effects, whereas in previous house with a smaller room I sat about 4m from speakers. That means that in my present room the sound level would be about 5dB higher for the same amp power, in other words it requires only about 1/3rd of the amp power for the same loudness at my ears.
Obviously in a ‘lively’ room with lots of reflections there wall be added sound from the reflections, so if the room where someone sits further away is significantly more reflective than one where they sit closer, the relative difference in level will be a bit less (and vice versa).
Appreciate your scientifically accurate explanation. In an anechoeic chamber your argument would be 100% true. In the rooms that we live in there is more at play such as boundry reinforcement and reflections. Also keep in mind that low frequencies are omnidirectional so don’t just travel from woofer to ear drum. Lastly, let us not forget that rooms need to pressurize to reach desired SPLs especially with bass frequencies.
In all fairness, your suggestion of sitting closer to the speakers is something that I have tried in my large 10 x 16 m open plan space with my small speakers. When I moved to near field listening (speakers about 1.8 m from my ears) the tonal balance was much more favorable and the mids and bass had more weight and substance to them.
If you read my post again you’ll see I did acknowledge that - and unless the room is so reflective as to seriously degrade the sound quality making the system unpleasant to listen to they will not compensate for reducing sound level with distance from speakers.
That is a fallacy. Whether the speaker is radiating into free air, or on the floor, or back to a wall, or in a corner, will affect the respose increasingly as frequency drops, and rooms have standing waves at certain frequencies which are directly related to the dimensions (and surface reflectivity). The room would olnly be pressurised (alternating positive and negative) with a sealed speaker and with the room sealed from the outside air.
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little update
The selling dealer came out this week. We spent an hour working through things (they really have been awesome)
I’m not going to bore you with the whole story. Here’s the short and sweet version.
Without altering anything else, swapping the interconnect made a miniscule improvement in bass but did make the music better.
The standard grey interconnect was plugged back in and then we swapped the speaker cable.
As a total sceptic, I wasn’t prepared for how much the sound changed. Every aspect was better. Much better. Mind blown.
Anyway, as we were about to switch everything off, he put his hand under one of the subs and suggested that I did the same with the other. The drivers were moving around so much, I had to check to see if they were switched on!
He suggested that I move the subs out of the room and give things another go.
Still can’t get my head around this. When the drivers on the subs are moving, are they acting as bass dampers or are they actually producing unwanted noise?
I managed to find the time to man handle them out of the room late last night.
Wow. Just wow.
It’s clear that the speakers still have a long way to go with regard to running in, but I’ve got to admit that I liked what I heard.
Everything had more impact.
Today, I’ve tried moving the subs back in the room and using them to support the speakers. Basically, I was thinking that if the subs were playing music with the speakers, rather than being played by the speakers when they were switched off, the uncontrolled bass would be fettled. After a bit of fiddling with gain and phase, it did sort the problem out but it still doesn’t sound as good as when the subs were out of the room.
Moving the speakers away from the wall behind them made zero difference. I remember reading something in the literature for these speakers that mentioned how they’d made them, so that they could be very close to the wall behind.
Reading between the lines, I think that the subs aren’t giving the speakers enough space to the sides. A bit like putting the speakers in the corners, which in turn is making the bass overpower the music.
Back to the drawing board this weekend, as I really don’t want to lose the subs. I’m going to try moving them to the back of the room next.
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Well if they are out of phase and/or poorly calibrated for the room. I never noticed that those black cubes next to the Kantas were subs 
That’s not something that is entirely up to the speaker. It’s possible to influence how well they work close to a wall, but a large part of it is room acoustics emphasizing low frequencies.
Glad it worked out for you without major changes!
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