SN3 Balance issue

No, I ain’t… :smile:
I’ve heard the Aethos a couple of times, it’s an excellent amplifier with smoothness, detail and an intimidating soundstage but I’ve been left with an impression of ‘too much-ness’, of the risk of being tired after a while. And it costs like a SN3…
I have long decided to stay in the three-figures price tags for audio, so only 2nd hand I fear… But I agree that the Aethos is special.
M.

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The Heed Lagrange integrated from Hungary is worth checking out. I thought it was better than the SN2 and the Rega.

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Here in Switzerland the Aethos is cheaper than the SN3 but I agree with you, Naim vs Rega …the sound is different for sure…I had to change my speakers to get the best out of the Rega.

As I was also moving house at the time, it was no a big issue, and today, with my smaller room, it’s perfect and so “analog”, if that makes sense.

All the best in your quest :wink:

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Have you heard the Kinki Studio EX-M1 or their pre and power amps? Just got one on demo now and it’s pretty impressive for half the price of the SN3. But as per your comment, as impressive as it is, it may also have too much too muchness.

Although having said that the Kinki is currently making Talking Heads sound absolutely superb!

@JamesBKK Hi James, have you found the balance issue is not consistent? I just reinstalled it today to replace a Nait 50 because my wife wanna have remote control. It seems to me I haven’t faced the issue so far. Hope yours is fixed soonest.

I had exactly the same issue from new. It was almost as if the balance would change from one day to the next and sometimes as quickly as one track to the next. I was spending more time playing with the balance control than actually enjoying music. The most irritating thing I found was with the balance so far to the right the bass impact in the room was significantly reduced. I swapped speaker cable outputs around and shifted the imbalance over to the other speaker and then swapped inputs to rule those out. It was definitely a balance issue with the amp. My dealer agreed to take the amp over a long weekend to listen and said there wasn’t anything wrong with it which had me double thinking myself. It was all quite disconcerting.

Got it back home and things were strangely better!? I was using speaker cable at the time that was shorter than had been recommended by some on here, although I understood that wasn’t as problematic with the SN3 as it has been on older amps, I decided to swap out for longer lengths of a Witch Hat variant which seemed to help further. The problem has pretty much vanished now although the balance knob itself still sits very slightly to the right for me to perceive the output as even and central.

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Very similar here but with the added issue of crackle. 90% of the time the balance is all over the place.

@Bandit it will be going in for repair very soon to the sole authorised dealer… and yes, inconsistent but for the majority of time the balance knob needs to be positioned as per above photo.

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Thank you James. I heard the same issue from another local owner too. :sweat: