Got my 'y' 's crossed going active

Salutations,
I haven't posted in ages-making up for it by the length of this post though.

System
lp12/aro/troika/geddon/prefix..CDi
72/hi/naxo2-4/hi
160/250
sbl
Going active was the best 800 I ever spent
Naxo(£250) 160(£250) Hicap(£300)

As you can see the system is unusual in the fact that the power amps are unbalanced(lile the author).
After discussions with Naim it appears quite a few run this way--and a general recommedation is for special 'y' leads to split the signal from:
vertical (1 amp to each speaker)--the way Naim normally does it
to horizontal (1amp treble and 1 amp the 160 bass)
I actually just swapped the leads over inside.

I'm not sure where the recommendation comes from? It was just Naim's observation not recommendation--they probably haven't spent much type on the problem-not terribly commercially rewarding.

Well dandy-active sounded very good-(I was disappointed with passive SBL's in my room anyway)I ran like this for ?6months but was having increasing Rf interference (I live on the 12th floor).In an attempt to help this problem I swapped the active amps back with some black snaics to vertical setup.
Eureka--didn't help the RF at all!
---but huge improvement in every way for my ears-even with cold turn on.
Now it should be --thats why Naim use a vertical setup. With either channel having a whole amp to its self-negates any crosstalk degradation,means more xs current available--the 160 doing the 2xbass now has a less demanding 1xbass 1x treble.It also means that the Naim star earthing can work --i.e channel 1 bass and channel 1 treble earthed at the same point not in seperate amps--a lead way.

But you say---? 1 sbl with the 250(2yrs old) should sound much better than the other driven by the old 160.I thought this would be so.-unbalanced sound.

BUT all I can hear is a much,much better system-the balance control sits plum in the middle( all Naim amps have the same gain(loudness) for a given signal strength until the run out of steam(very loud))
If I listen in mono on a good mono recording--perhaps the 160's bass is a little slower---but its hard as listening to just 1 speaker sounds awful and lo-fi anyway(no soundstage). The 160(recently serviced) is a pretty good amp and not far from my 250 when driving the sbls in 1 amp passive mode anyway.

Conclusions:
If you're one of those using unbalanced amps and a 'y' lead setup--beg borrow and steal some normal snaics and give it a go.Huge gains for me--snaps2 to hicap type huge--musically huge-and detail in favorite tracks I've never noticed before.

Unless you're using 140/250 I can't see why many support the 'y' lead horizontal setup.which led me into 6 months of less music.Though maybe my 160 had huge crosstalk which explains the improvement???

Logically it would seem that unbalanced power amps=unbalanced sound--well I can't hear that. Shouldn't the faster bass of the 250 be slowed by the 'slower 160'--all I can say is with both firing vertically the bass is faster and more defined than in the 'y' lead setup.A while back I got to try put an a 1992 250(serviced) and it sounded very different to my newer one(latest power supply) -it had a much warmer,fuller sound.No-one would think it strange to use 2x250's of different vintages in an active setup.

If you have SBL's and don't own a merchant bank ??go active on the cheap--with a lesser amp than a 250.
? the 180- a great amp. The price of Naxo's(even new look) have been dropping in the loot now the Snaxo's are coming up second hand.The difference is so phenomenal than even accounting for the wide element of taste (some like 72 over 102 or 3.5 over Cdx--not me I add) I feel confident enough to say you WILL definatly be happy with the change.--my record/cd collection has been reborn.
Hopefully the future with an 82 will bring similar rewards.

I actually ran active through a snaps2 (if u want very cheap) for a while--still far far better than passive -though using a hicap is of course much better(though less marked difference than snaps2-hicap on a 72)

Regards Richard

[This message was edited by Richard Paget on SATURDAY 07 July 2001 at 01:22.]