Troubleshooting SQ - Are you ever tempted to go completely back to basics?

Or an LP12 and Nait 2…

2 Likes

He had so many boxes, it was difficult to identify

I haven’t seen a comment from him for a while…

The Nova would appear to be your only signal earth point, is the ground switch set to chassis or floating? (One position is rather confusingly labelled default on some boxes).

What sort of rack? lots of steel can lead to glare, it’s also preferable that the cables don’t touch the rack, particularly power cables. Also leave the interconnect cables as free as possible but preferably not touching each other, the wall or floor, two racks helps and allows separation of power supplies from the more sensitive boxes.

How have you got the system powered? Mains block? Linear, star earthed? Star everything? a wall socket for each box?
Is the Radikal mixed in with the Naim?
With a linear block some plug orders made the music less coherent, mirroring the signal earth path works quite well for me which puts the streamer first and power amp last but experiment with this.

I’ve never had active but it’s reputed to be more sensitive to setup. One thing that does come to mind is the importance of the Snaxo ps. Can you lay your hands on a Snaxo/superline Burndy to try the supercap on the Snaxo and a hicap on the pre? (if the superline is any guide a Snaic is no substitute for a Burndy with a supercap.)

On the subject of Radikalised Linns, my dealer, a long term LP12 addict, after singing the praises of what the Radikal brought to his deck (replacing an Armagedon) found his enjoyment lessened after a while and sold it all in favour of a Well Tempered Versalex and a top Dynavector.

2 Likes

I’d not picked up this point in the original post. I can only speak based on personal experience but for me the active set up was more challenging to listen to on certain CDs than the passive system though overall I’d not go back willingly. It did however exacerbate certain room acoustic issues. I’ve still not fully sorted that because of other constraints so some CDs remain unlistenable, others are sublime. Records are less variable but I only have a humble record player rather than an LP12.

I doubt the 282 is the issue. To an extent it’s probably not getting the best out of the SCDR without a Burndy based on thoughts elsewhere in this forum but my guess, based on personal experience is that the SBLs are revealing more and in some cases that’s good but sometimes not

1 Like

Your system should sound amazing- but active is very revealing of anything that is not quite right.

2 Likes

To answer the original question, No, absolutely not.

Why the heck would anyone even suggest thatI do such a silly thing?

The better the system the more albums fall off the acceptable quality threshold.

I like having multiple systems for this reason. The really well mastered stuff for the main system. The bit lesser stuff for the other system. The dodgy stuff for the ever more basic system.

If you just have one system and it is very good, invariable you end up like an audiophile cliche who listens only to jazz and rare BBC recordings since that tends to be the best recorded and are therefore listenable on that level of gear.

3 Likes

With the greatest respect, that is utter nonsense! I have what I regard as a pretty good system, and I have never listened to ‘jazz and rare BBC recordings’, let alone exclusively. I listen to good music of all genres.

4 Likes

No temptation to go backwards either but I certainly don’t have a lot of desire to go forward at this stage. Just about to upgrade my speakers and apart from the odd tweak (and winning lotto) that’ll just about do me. I’ve ended up with a far better system than I could ever have imagined.

3 Likes

It’s a good question from the OP and in my case I did find myself in this position a few years ago after a series of rapid upgrades to a 200/282 based set-up with CDX2 and LP12 feeding a pair of Dynaudio Contours which had largely been unmolested for over 15 years. In came PSU’s, this and that for the LP12, isolation platforms for the rack, cable and interconnect upgrades, a Vertere PS over the Stageline and a chrome bumper 250 for the 200. To me the presentation became harsh and unmusical but I felt I couldn’t go backwards having spent so much money. Then a house move last year meant a change of speakers and cables. The Dynaudios were sold for a pair of Spendor A7’s and the WH Phantom sold for 2 runs of Kudos KS-1 and that’s all it took for the magic to return - it’s now better than I can ever remember and my toes are tapping once more.

2 Likes

This is part of the problem plus the time and effort of rearranging/reconfiguring things.

1 Like

Retro was misleading, perhaps the whole thread title, and clearly if everything sounds lovely you’d not want to change unless you had to.

Interestingly I have introduced an old CD 3.5 into the setup recently and forgot about that switch, must check the setting.

As for racks etc they’re a mish mash and not high-end but never have been.

Cable dressing etc is not something I have great affinity for, more due to practical constraints of sockets and equipment positions. Again, nothing really new there.

I find the setup and cabling to not be an issue. Especially if you can manage on one rack and then just do it properly once and forget about it except for the occasional re-inserting of the connections.

It is more that simple systems are less fussy.

And it makes sense too. You cannot really make a component that is so ultra sensitive as to preserve and reveal every microdetail in the signal but magically be immune to everything else like RFI, microphonics, processor noise etc. Sensitive to one, sensitive to all. So it is easy to get very variable results depending on a large number of variables and how you set things up. The lower end stuff isn’t as revealing but isn’t as sensitive to everything else either so the performance is more consistent. No one’s Nova ever sounded totally wrong because they rearranged the speaker cables while vacuuming. The same cannot be said for higher end of the chain systems.

5 Likes

One of the drawbacks of improving your system is that it exposes the limitations of the recordings you listen to. Many pop and rock recordings in particular are not great recordings to begin with and my experience is that even if you love the music, if the recording is poor, improving your system will not always result in a better listening experience. The other issue is mastering. If you listen to highly compressed or brickwalled masterings, they will often sound worse as your system improves. Of course this is speculation, they may be other factors.

4 Likes

I think that’s completely true Olik because many upgrades focus on detail retrieval and if a recording is poor, upgrading components isn’t going to magically improve it but expose the recording’s failings further. I think this could partly explain one of the reasons folks get on the upgrade train in the first place only to find it’s a journey with no destination and the more cash is thrown at “improvements” the worse their system sounds. Conversely, well-mastered and recorded music should sound even better, well they do on my system. So maybe the answer is to either ignore the poorly recorded stuff altogether or simply accept “it is what it is” (awful phrase I know).

2 Likes

Sorry to hear that its not gelling. Do I see. 282/SC/ Olive 250s as the system?

Could it be the mix of Olive and DR? I find the CB amps, as much as I love them, just a bit thin and reedy with the classic pre. The other way round, olive or CB pre in to classic amps seem to work well.

1 Like

Just thought I’d take literally for fun!

1 Like

However, back to the main theme: Higher quality systems tend to be more revealing, and unfortunately that can mean that you hear how bad a recording is, unlike through lesser systems, which can make music that is badly recorded less enjoyable. That is the downside of better systems, however it balances against other music sounding better.

But a thought occurs to me: I wonder if it is simply that the bad recording stays sounding as it did through our first systems, while other music improved with the system, so not actually worse sounding but only worse by comparison with the quality our ears expect. I find that if I have poor recordings that don’t sound too great, they start to sound better as I play them (getting used to the sound) - maybe the best thing to do is identify poorer recordings and have a session with only them.

1 Like

You could buy some of those items for a second system and see how you get on…

The obvious advantage with Naim is that they service all the old amps. I’ve had about 4 Linn Kairns and they all sounded quite tired, even the one from around 2000. Exposure also service their old kit.

Maybe it’s too much to expect a main system to do it all and something has been lost along the way…

1 Like