Room characteristics are naturally variable, but that sort of service was never available when I got my SBLs almost 25 years ago - is that something that dealers have delivered in more recent times and I’m out of the loop? I’d imagine many dealer staff will never have seen a pair of SBLs in the flesh let alone set them up/configured them. That’s not intended to be critical of dealers just the reality that the speakers are no longer made.
It’s been mentioned that the pots should not be used as tone controls however I’d imagine there’d be a ‘baseline’ setting which could be tweaked.
I do have a vague recollection that the box my snaxo came in said “snaxo 362 dbl” on it. Of course at my age all recollections need to be fact checked where possible. It’ll involve a trip to the attic.
If every NAXO/SNAXO was built in a bespoke manner around individual speaker pairs I’d agree. I can’t quite see that was the case though maybe it was?
Just seems a bit of a shame that users are not offered a ‘default’ setting assuming the components are all within certain tolerances for the specific speaker range.
Sadly I’ve been waiting for a response for over a month regarding my Snaxo issue. My dealer is now persuing it directly. It seems that the old days of quick, quality responses to email queries are a thing of the past.
Unfortunately I think that the myriad complexities of individual networks and streaming has greatly increased both the volume of email and also the time it takes to analyse and then respond. Covid has of course exacerbated this. Having been on the other end replying to emails for my first few years at Naim, I don’t envy them these days. I would let your dealer get to the bottom of it.
If it boils down to the fact that Naim cannot test new SNAXOs as the relevant speakers are no longer available to them, it would be interesting to know how dealers or users should be setting up the SNAXOs - should they be calibrated by ear or with some measuring equipment as MrTibbs mentioned.
I have no idea of the ETA for the SNAXO and am not too concerned as I’m already active, but I’m hoping the current version will improve on the used NAXO I decided on when I got the SBLs. I still have no idea which speakers it may have been configured for (SBLs or possibly Linn Saras amongst others I believe from prior threads), so it’s entirely possible I’ve enjoyed SBLs for a few decades with a technically incorrect NAXO! I guess only Naim techs would be able to determine what the NAXO was configured for.
Naim would be able to electrically test SNAXOs as the crossover points are clearly defined - they would have to do this as a part of the production process. What may be more difficult is setting the levels optimally by ear and giving a listening test without having the relevant speakers to hand.
Out of interest were the factory marked pot levels a ‘baseline’ for ‘by ear’ adjustment in days gone by?
I assumed when I bought the SBLs that the active crossovers were pretty much ‘plug and play’. Were dealers expected to tweak the pot levels when they installed the speakers to match room characteristics?
Yes, the dots on the internal pots were a baseline and it was expected that the dealer or end user would tweak the pots to fine tune - usually best after a period of running in. They weren’t mean’t to be used though as “tone controls” to compensate for poor siting or room issues.
The dealer at the time never tried to tweak anything, though as the end-user I certainly did so maybe they told me about the pots and I’ve simply forgotten!
