Rebuilt the Fraim following putting up new TT shelf…got up nice and early to tidy up, put on Bruckner then Emmylou for company, then B.A.D. and it all seems a bit bright and basslight. Gulp.
Surely the SVT shelf can’t be that bad?
Tried a couple songs that I know will give me a fair rattle in the chest and…
I remembered someone posted the same problem after setting up their 252: check the Burndy and relax it.
I did, gave it a nice gentle shake or six, rearranged the coiling SNAIC and…bass is back solid and seismic (!hyperbole alert!) and treble is good and sparkly and not like an assegai in my ears.
So remember kids, treat your Burndy well. It will reward you!
Thanks for the tip, Forum!
Well done Stevie. At this performance level every little thing matters and getting set-up and cable dressing just right makes a big difference (the difference between so-so and wow wow) - outside as well as within the boxes!
Agree, if having to treat cables like that makes such a difference suggests poor design. Designs need to be near on idiot proof and protect us from ourselves.
Having to manoeuvre a hormonal cable to just work detracts from enjoying the music. How do you ever know that what you are doing is not harming the sound?
Reminds me of the 1980s trying to start most of my father’s UK built cars into life.
Today you get in and stuff works.
Understand the point but isn’t this a great example of what makes Naim different from the rest? It’s not extreme but it certainly is a tweaker’s brand and if you don’t like the idiosyncratic nature of some of the set up routines then you’re probably better off going with other brands that don’t have that as part of their DNA.
Agreed. How do I know if I’ve jiggled it enough? Or too much? The two from the PS to my streamer arrived with a shape that they’d settled into in their previous home and no amount of inadvertent smacking myself in the face & goolies with them has changed that shape, but it all sounds ok. Is there a chart that shows the scale of flexiness a Burndy should have to sound right?
I have my 500 system mostly in/on a large modified record cabinet. The TT and CD player are both on wall shelves.
One of the major benefits of the Naim Fraim my dealer confirms is the ability to destress the varios cables including the Burndy’s. A route I am likely to take.
I read it on here and it must be true from what people have experienced, but I still can not understand what is being affected by cable shaking. Is it merely the correct separation of the individual cable runs in the burndy to negate electro magnetic effects? Is there anything else it can be?
If the former then surely an instruction from Naim to align the cables correctly should be simple enough?
I can only see it being something to ensure there is no stress on either of the cable connections. I.e. if these are stressed then that would be transferred to the devices motherboards. Quite as to why that would matter ( from an electrical perspective) I’m not sure. Mechanical yes though.
I guess it’s similar to the rather long and arduous process Roy et al. would go through determining what and how many cable ties go where - all done through listening. I recall the findings with the early prototype NAC552. All the cabling that ran to the Burndy connector was gathered by a cable tie and it made sense and looked neat but the difference it made to the sound was really interesting - removing that tie just freed up the sound remarkably. Same for cable routing; Roy could easily demonstrate the difference of changing the path of a single wire inside the kit. I was not that long with Naim when I first witnessed this, but it had a fundamental effect on me and my respect for what goes into the Naim box. I learned never to take any such things for granted after that.
For the actual shaking, there is this interesting bit about interconnects (tl;dr: they don’t know why but it works):
For the wiggling at home, I believe the idea is to let it gently find its own position that relieves mechanical stress from the plugs and sockets. With cables straight out of the box, I found that their plugs wanted to be in position that did not align to the sockets. The only way to get them in would have been to twist them, which makes them stiff in a way that is easily noticeable. But by straightening them out and letting them rest on the floor for a while, and then following the procedure as described in the old forum link, the plugs could, after a while, be oriented in the required position without having to twist the cable. (Same for snaics and interconnects)
This stuff is weird. Reminds me of a recent judge on the Great British Menu TV programme who was a materials scientist. She said that cutlery of different materials brings a different taste profile to the food.
It sounds like when halogen lamps came out, lots of flexibility, better light but very hot. We just need someone to develop the Led lamp equivalent where it just works much better, and they will have a big market share immediately
