I’ve been keeping my tuner on lately because I’m burning in a power conditioner.
Last night, I disconnected my cd player from my Nait 2 amp, leaving the interconnects attached to the amp.
For some reason, I could hear the tuner on all function selections, (phono, cd, aux) through my electrostat speakers even though they were switched off.
Once I hooked the cd player back up, the speakers were dead quiet again, on and off, in all of the above functions.
Can you clarify whether you head “radio” or your tuner?
With unfavourable speaker cable positioning, it is not uncommon to pick up radio passively via the speaker cable as long is it still forms a complete circuit back to the preamp. I’ve certainly had that before.
So it would be important to confirm whether you are hearing faint AM radio or whether you are actually hearing what the tuner is tuned into.
FWIW, the output of many sources is powerful enough to drive very sensitive loudspeakers. So if a full circuit is made on the tuner input, that could well be what you are hearing.
Another thought. Only one device on your amp should be grounded. The Naim CD player is usually grounded by default, and others are (if available) set to floating. You haven’t said what all your components are (which might help) but it might just be a grounding issue,
ok - so is it your tuner you are hearing… ie you can change station and hear it ‘leak’ into your amp?
If so you may want to consider having the amp checked or serviced by Naim, there be some capacitive coupling on the inputs, perhaps a component has moved out of tolerance, and and the tuner is leaking in when the other inputs are left at high input impedance and non grounded - ie not connected.
However if the bleed through stops whenever an another input is connected - it might not be seen as an issue. Either way a discussion with Naim is what I would suggest.
However even on my 552 I did find very low levels of capacitive coupled bleed through - but it was pretty much in the noise floor … yours sounds more substantive
Thank you for your insights, Simon. It is the tuner I was hearing. By changing the station, I would hear the new station.
I had my Nait completely overhauled by AV Options a year and a half ago. As I mentioned, the bleed through stopped when I connected my cd player back into the amp.
Thanks for your reply feeling_zen. I’m hearing my actual fm tuner. As for speaker cable positioning, I have a set of NACA5s coming from the back of my Nait, along the floor into my speakers, if that’s helpful.
As I mentioned, I was hearing the tuner while the function selection was on phono, cd and aux, if that means anything.
I think this might be some crosstalk feeding thru.
A PCB track (the tuner track) is inducing it’s signal to an adjacent track.
I also suspect the open ended CD cable allows this, whereas when it’s connected to the CDP the -ve side is grounded & this shunts any crosstalk to gnd.
I had crosstalk on a MF Nu vista pre amp after I had used contact cleaner to clean the input selector.
The cleaner was solvent in the cleaner was acting as a conductor. Once dry it cleared.
However it should me how easy it was to get and hear cross talk.
In your case it sounds like there is an issue somewhere with grounding. Shown by when you add your cdp, the problem goes. So somewhere between the pre and the tuner, the grounding has a fault. Perhaps a broken track or dry joint?
I think Mike and Simon have provided valid explanations of what could be occurring here. Remember that the Nait 2 has the input selector switch at the front. The PCB tracks carrying the input signals run close together for a reasonable distance from the input sockets to the selector switch. Later amps and preamps moved the input selection switching closer to the input sockets - early incarnations via the mechanically coupled selector mechanism and later via relays so greatly reducing any coupling from adjacent inputs.