End of my tether

Zen and the art etc covers exactly this kind of scenario, This taken from the wikipedia page on the book.
“In the book, the narrator describes the “romantic” approach to life of his friend, John Sutherland, who chooses not to learn how to maintain his expensive new motorcycle. John simply hopes for the best with his bike, and when problems do occur he often becomes frustrated and is forced to rely on professional mechanics to repair it. In contrast, the “classical” narrator has an older motorcycle which he is usually able to diagnose and repair himself through the use of rational [problem-solving]“(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem-solving) skills.

Well at least you’ve ruled that out. If there’s no physical damage to your Hiline and the rings move smoothly and it’s hanging free, backed off very slightly from plugged in fully to the end, you can possibly rule that out, too.

Leaving the strong possibility your CDP needs a service.

After 17 years that’s almost a certainty.

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Yeti, interesting that you reference that, as here, I would posit that the gumption trap applies.

That was my first thought but you’d need to have read it to understand the reference, it seemed unlikely the OP had. He might profit from doing so if his eyesight is up to it.

Op has said tops are great, but mids and bottom has issues. In my experience when naim audio boxes need servicing tops are ear cracking bad. Depending on what’s wrong of course. But just old aged components its easier to ID.
Can’t remember if the sky sound is affected thought. If so I’d be looking at the 200 amp myself. Think Mike said it had crapped its self in the past, a post more than 300 posts ago…
I have a cds2 from 2002 and it’s still just great, naim told me if it’s still working don’t worry about servicing. A few reasons, they end up getting damaged in the post and the cost outweighs the gains.

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Mike,

Have a lot of empathy for you as I’ve had similar experiences, on multiple occasions!

Been living in this relatively remote rural location for almost 30 years. For the first 20 my system was trouble free. Then it started to sound bad. Just didn’t engage. Vocals in particular sounded like they were being played on a separate speaker, located in the next room. Overall the sound was unpleasant. Did all the usual trials as recommended by others. Borrowed kit known to be working fine elsewhere to swap out with my own boxes. Everything, cartridges, arms, phono stages, power supplies, cables and speakers. Everything tried multiple times. At one point could hardly move in here with 3 LP12s and multiple black boxes. Got nowhere. Was at the end of my tether, talking of selling it all and taking up golf!

Then one day we had a postcard from Northern Ireland Electricity. There was to be a planned outage on a Thursday. That fixed it!

Didn’t last. Within 12 months it was as bad as ever. Just assumed the NIE thing was some weird coincidence and resumed my testing process, with similarly unfulfilling results. Again got to the point of giving up when we had a postcard from NIE. Another planned outage (why always Thursdays). This one was at very short notice so I called them to complain as Mrs Willy had to cancel a class she had scheduled for that day. NIE person explained they needed to urgently replace a failing voltage regulator (that would explain the micro power outages). The failing regulator was a refurbished unit that had been used to replace the one before that that was on the way out about a year previously.

Sorted. From the Friday on we had several years of delightful music.

Of late (past ~6 months) we’ve found ourselves drifting downwards in performance. Also had a return of the micro power outages (Something trips the mains but their hardware automatically reconnects within a second or two). Every time this happens I log it with them and complain and they tell me to continue to log them.

Few weeks back I had a postcard from NIE​:blush: for a planned outage (yes a Thursday). My son powered everything down Wednesday evening (I was working in Germany) and I powered it up again when I returned on Thursday night. Listening on Friday it was simply magical. Had several days of active DBL magic. The following week returned from Germany on the Thursday night to discover there’d been another micro outage. The system was once again sounding crap. :frowning:

Called NIE and discovered that what they’d done the previous Thursday was simply pruning trees in an effort to address the micro outages. Mmmmm. I knew that powering my system off for 24 hours wouldn’t give me several days of music so postulated that something on their system is at fault and that allowing it to cool of for an 8 hr period had caused it to function properly for a few days.

Ordered an Airlink Balanced Mains Transformer (3000va). The cost in the overall context of my system was trivial. It arrived whilst I was away. Had warned Mrs Willy of its imminent arrival but not its weight. Got told off.

So, the install. Initially plugged into the ring main as I didn’t have the correct cables for my (15amp) wall socket. Immediately noticeable was a massive reduction in the hum from my brawn stack. Hadn’t really expected that as I though that required a DC blocker. Fired up the Nat02 initially and immediately could hear an improvement. Moved on to LP12 and yes this is much better. Been running a couple of weeks now and whilst not yet at the peak of where I’ve heard the system it does seem to be improving. Indeed, the effect is reminiscent of burn-in after a recap of a black box. About a week ago before heading off for another business trip it had entered a “fingernails on blackboard” phase, may have been burn-in, may have been the effect of a Virus that floored me for several days or may be that this isn’t a full cure. For now that has passed and it all appears to be heading in the right direction. We have the detail, we have the scale, most of the dynamics but not yet the delicate subtlety that I know the system to be capable of. Get hints of it at times though.

Had another power cut after the BMT was in place for about a week. Clearly their topiary has been to no avail. Called NIE to report it on the following Monday. Spoke to a real engineer this time. They are aware of all the outages as their systems log them but they can’t attribute it to any particular cause. If they get to a frequency of a couple of times a week then they’ll be more proactive in identifying the problem and fixing it properly. Explained all the issues and the fact I could hear lunchtime and dinnertime. His response was along the line of “Let’s have a look and see if we can do anything about that” then after some muttering “your transformer is quite heavily loaded. Not a lot we can do”. Guess I have to wait for something to fully break.

Mike, hopefully you, or any others who ever find themselves in such a situation, may find some use in my experience and it may be worthwhile for you to try a balanced mains transformer in your system.

Usual caveat, correlation of symptoms isn’t necessarily indicative of common causation.

Regards,

Willy.

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From my reading of the OP he is widely read and I would tend to have thought that he would have done. No doubt he can answer for himself in due course…

Perhaps someone living near him could help ?

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Can’t be long now before the Naim Pre-amps Manual is found alongside Middlemarch , The Rights of Man , Jude The Obscure and The Illiad in Waterstone’s :-)))

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I suggested that about 300 posts ago…

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And nobody lives near Mike or could help him? Only virtual solidarity ?

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The forum does not disclose people’s locations - we know he lives somewhere with in reasonable travelling distance to Manchester. Someone living in that general area might volunteer, but of course it would be up to Mike to accept the offer if one was made - and maybe no-one reading this thread lives in the vicinity or is in a position to offer help.

It may be a possibility but it’s patently not an option. No Naim dealer would recommend a repair or even the transportation of a 17 year old CDP. I’ve also spoken to an ex neighbour and friend of 25 years who built CDPs and now DACs.

They’re not in a position to assist but they did point out that the likelihood of anything going wrong with a CDP so that mids were lost would be unique. They’d not come across it once since they started back in 1987.

Yeah yeah. Read all of that and… so what?

There’s a certain amount of arrogance involved in suggesting that there is somehow an obligation on an owner to have a certain level of knowledge and a certain amount of perhaps wilful ignorance involved as it’s already been made plain that these are, for the most part, things I am not incapable of.

You could perhaps infer that from the phrase “END of my tether”. I have been down this road many times before and tried many of the suggested options many times. I am beyond bored and to some extent downright angry that I find myself in this place once again.

Although I think a number of the suggestions on this thread make no sense at all; wholly ignore (by accident in some but not all cases) the past history and my current thoughts and position on that, I have really appreciated the effort and all the contributions, especially those from people with whom I have strongly disagreed on other threads. It’s a salutary reminder that the small number of forums upon which I spend my time really are wonderful in many ways.

I have no control over it but now it seems those people have finally been joined by those who, having disagreed with me elsewhere, see this as an opportunity to dig and troll. I don’t welcome that but it does at least show that those people aren’t quite capable of holding the moral high ground they think they do.

By all means carry on but I’ll focus on those who have fully appreciated where I am on this and contributed accordingly.

Which suggests you’ve gone and we’ve gone as far as this thread can go. New topic anyone?

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Not really. I’m going to take a couple of initial steps and will then report back.

I think Naim would certainly service your CDX2 without question. It’s not end of life at all.

But I also agree with your friend that the loss of mids is not an easy to understand fault with a CDP player. So I also think the issue will be elsewhere.

I don’t think any of us will solve it by a flash of brilliant insight here. When a local (non-Naim) friend of mine had a problem of not being happy with what he was hearing, I went to listen with him and together we gradually got the three different problems sorted out. It took some weeks and I lent him something to tide him over until the repaired amplifier came back (which sorted two of the three problems). Then we identified the third issue which was a loudspeaker problem (affecting just one of the two).

Probably the main point was that we had each other to bounce things off as we worked through it. It was very confusing. I think Mike that it would assist you a lot to find someone local to help work it out with you, not necessarily right now but when you want. I hope you find such a person.

Best

David

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From a price/performance perspective, the Qb is easily Naim’s best product (imho).

I suggest you speak to Audio-T now that you have made contact - they’re normally very good. Naim can and do service older players and AFAIK still have mechanisms for the CDX2, should one be needed. Assuming you have your transit bolts, getting it sent to and from Naim is no more likely to kill it than when new. If the capacitors are on their way out never mind past their prime, the player very definitely won’t be sounding its best in the very sensitive midrange. It’s not just a matter of trebles tailing off.

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They only have mechs for the later CDX2 and, having heard that, I wouldn’t bother as it lost something in comparison to the original. My dealer made it very clear that whilst Naim may well do such a fix and indeed any other repairs they would not risk sending a 17 year old player to Naim as the mech would likely not survive the trip. They would only contemplate me driving it down from GM to Salisbury. I don’t drive and Mrs. H. does enough travelling as it is so it’s off the agenda.

Again though, I cannot think there’s a hood in hell this is the CDP.

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