250 vs 300

I don’t think it would. I had a 552/300 - one step away - and it performed fantastically in my standard room. Room treatment can be put into the same category as cascaded switches and fancy wires - nice to haves but not essential.

Hi HH,

I have a significantly different experience regarding room treatment.

In fact, for me, the uplift in sound quality is even bigger than changing my speakers to a pair of Magico S3 MkII with SPODs.

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Have to agree to disagree there, for me now, it is the one thing I would love to do, envy those that can do but I know I won’t get to do!

I would bet an acoustically treated room setup with a very humble modest system would bring much greater musicality and listening experience than any high level system in a general living room.

Guessing but having heard what I have just recently heard.

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This is so very true… :nerd_face:

But not a lot would admit that, especially those with rather expensive systems.

Whether it is by lack of information/knowledge or simply denial :smile:

I have no problem admitting you’ll get more out of a pair of top high end headphones and very good DAC/heaphones_amp than out of my system, including the treatment.

In fact, there is nothing to admit here, it is very mesurable…

Nota : one exception nearfield listening!

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A big no HH, it is a complete game changer!
Also do not forget that you are/ have been using a boundary dependent Naim speaker design firing across the room, which in acoustical terms is making life a lot easier. Rubbishing something you haven’t actually ever heard A to B is in my view an inappropriate statement! Peter

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Don’t forget that Thomas and PeterR , you have both big speakers, 500 series system, and big windows which are very problematic.
Some rooms are much less problematic, and specially if you have choosed the right speakers to fit them.
Today I have absolutely not a single of acoustic room problems.
I tried 3 different kind of panels, bass traps, corner bass traps, diffuser, in every side and corner of my room. I wanted to see if I could still improve the sound I have, not because I was disappointed by the sound.
I tested all possibilities during 10 days: it improved some areas, but decreased some liveliness, openness and airiness that was not what I am searching for.
So globally, I kept only one acoustic panel ( not full range) which improved bass clarity a little bit.
The biggest improvement, for my ears, was done when I put ceramic isolation devices under my speakers. It was a game changer.

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2 SBLs a day keeps the room treatment away.

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God, I am glad the recording studios that make the music you listen too, don’t have the same outlook as some of you! :thinking:

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As the professional acoustics people in our office would happily tell you, “I can’t believe you hifi boys spend so much tinkering with cables and a like when the acoustic properties of most rooms make a much bigger difference and you do nothing about that.”

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Glad I am not alone…:smiley:

Technology is a complex thing and the science behind it even more.

It takes time (years) and energy (a lot) only to scratch the surface. And the more we learn the more we understand that there is much more behind the surface. It never ends…

Curiosity and the process of learning can be disruptive and difficult to live through.

Popular beliefs and misconceptions, or simply confining ourselves at seeing only the shell of things is not necessarily a bad thing. It can be comfortable…

But enough of this.

Back to usual stuff, it’s much more fun! :laughing:

what is a split rail power supply?

A good question, but one I’m hardly qualified to answer with any authority, so unless one of our resident electronics experts chimes in it’s probably best just google it and go from there.

If the recording studios would make good qualitty recordings I would be happy with my normal less treated room.

I find small adjustments to the ear auricle does the trick. :sweat_smile:

After all I’ve read on the forum, especially with regard to the low volume performance, I’ve decided to try a 300 after half a lifetime of living very happily with a chrome bumper 250 (currently 52/SC/250/SBL). In my view its got a tough act to follow as the 250 has never felt like a bottleneck as the rest of the system has grown. First though, in order to accommodate the extra box I’m close to taking delivery of a mix of fraim/fraim lite to replace my long serving 5 tier Target rack. Assuming I can exercise enough self control, to give my 250 a fair crack, I intend to replace just the rack and enjoy what I hope will be a nice improvement for about a 3-4 weeks. Then I will install the newly dr’d 300 that’s boxed upstairs and give it at least a couple of months run. From all the valuable feedback I’ve gleamed from many on the forum, and thank you for that, I’m hoping for a great result. If not, then I’ll just put it down to experience and reinstate my trusty 250 and move the 300 on - no worries!

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You Sir have more patience than I. In a box upstairs!

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I take a look now and again!

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A split rail supply in this context means it has both positive and negative rails. Hicap and its friends have only +24v outputs so the preamp circuits they supply have their inputs and outputs biased to around +12v. Capacitors are necessary to couple these inputs and outputs as conventional audio signals swing either side of 0v. So an input from say a CD player swinging from -1v to +1v on one side of the capacitor becomes a swing from +11v to +13v suitable for the preamp internal circuitry on the other side.

All this works fine, but means you must have a lot of capacitors in the signal path. Capacitors can influence the sound of the signal passing through them so a better solution is to get rid of them and instead power the preamp from say +12v & -12v. The signal from the CD player can now be connected directly, with no capacitor, as the preamp internal circuits sit at 0v.

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Please keep us posted!