2 x NAP500DR service+upgrade...

Congrats Ken! I envy your patience

Get them to begin running them in for you!  You may as well get a week of burn-in done for you.

Have fun!

DB.

Darke Bear posted:

Get them to begin running them in for you!  You may as well get a week of burn-in done for you.

Have fun!

DB.

good idea DB!  but honestly, i am not really that bothered about run/burn-in; it will happen when it will happen...

in any case, i want to be first to open the new box  strange isn't it?

enjoy...

ken

Moussa posted:

Congrats Ken! I envy your patience

Errhhhm ... thanks -- but really i am not that patient -- "spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" sort of situation...

enjoy

ken

Good idea waiting for the dealer, I nearly gave myself a hernia getting the 500 head unit onto the bottom Fraim shelf without dismantling the stack. We were due at a party that evening so I only had a hour, I thought I had a good plan. The glass bearing the temporary 250 lifted slightly at the back and slid out to rest on some books worked a treat. Remove 250 and replace with 500 no problem but sliding the glass back leaning round the left side with rather limited space I nearly got it above the rear ball when something went in my chest and the rear ball shot out as the glass landed  on the edge of it. Fortunately whatever it was trying to break through the muscle wall went back in again and after a short rest I got the ball back in place and the glass on top of it.

The intention is to rebuild the racks in a month or so when I can get my wife out of the way for long enough.

I notice one of the burndies now rests on the floor where it used to hang clear (I sent the cables off with the amp) so a reorder of the brawn stack might be a good idea.

Yeti .. sorry to hear you're having so much trouble with your balls; sounds like a really close call .. especially the rear one.

All's well that ends well.

... and the result?

frightening!!

enjoy...

ken

Looking forward to the first report Ken.

...wow - I am Psychic - you posted just as I did!

DB.

... and the result?

frightening!!

Hopefully the sound and not the bill, Ken?

Nice to see Andy doing his thing.

If you think it sounds good now ...............

Enjoy the ride. DB, I, and others will have prepared you for a few bumps in the road, but generally; it sounds like you're hearing the transformative DR upgrade effect right off the bat.

John.

That's one hell of an office / study system !

james n posted:

That's one hell of an office / study system !

thanks james.  its actually very good that the room cannot accomodate any more black boxes now !

enjoy...

ken

J.N. posted:

... and the result?

frightening!!

Hopefully the sound and not the bill, Ken?

Nice to see Andy doing his thing.

If you think it sounds good now ...............

Enjoy the ride. DB, I, and others will have prepared you for a few bumps in the road, but generally; it sounds like you're hearing the transformative DR upgrade effect right off the bat.

John. 

it was refreshing watching Andy at work. His experience shines through and he is very modest about it all!

My Fraims were in desperate  need of a reset!

Andy also re-torqued my SL2 bolts for me and checked that the speaker floor spikes were tight.

All this is adding up to a very promising start SQ-wise but i am looking fwd to more as the amps settle.

enjoy

ken

Darke Bear posted:

Looking forward to the first report Ken.

...wow - I am Psychic - you posted just as I did!

DB.

will do. Gary...

enjoy...

/ken

yeti42 posted:

 

The intention is to rebuild the racks in a month or so when I can get my wife out of the way for long enough.

...No, that's not what I meant Your Honour.

G

So that's where Andy was!  Good to see some ball polishing going on too. 

Fingers crossed that the power amp bed-in is not too tortuous so, as you say Ken, enjoy!

You know my story Ken - painful bumps indeed, but now I am one very happy customer. I think you get more 'warts and all' pain in Active systems, but after a few weeks it is a delightful revelation and a far superior amp to the old NAP500. It fleshes-out voices and instruments and conveys low-bass rhythms and acoustic information far better.

DB.

good to hear you are over all your run-in blues DB -- meaning that there is a lot i can look fwd to. i had an initial long session after installation yesterday just to gauge initial impressions. given what we know about bedding-in process, i will not have a serious listening session for a week or so -- then after that we'll see..

enjoy...

ken

Driven Active from new the set of DR 500 were hooligans with the music, then sulked a bit, then were into an good-bad- better-worse.... then after a few weeks cleared and just settled into delicate firm mastery of the musical performance. I only point it out as it helped me in run-in when others told me they take a little while. Running passive it does not appear that you get the extremes as much, but Active does take a little while - but you may be luckier than me. By end of November you should be very pleased and probably well before then.

DB.

Glad its only a "few (6?) weeks" DB.  I will avoid any critical listening before then. i have trodden this path before so the ups and downs should be somewhat familiar and not a cause for concern. i will let you know how i get on.

enjoy

ken

its now over 1 week ago since the DR upgraded 500s were installed. its early days yet for them to fully blossom but i though i would give a brief report on how its all evolving..

Initially straight after installation -- there was an obvious increase in detail -- lots of it -- but the presentation was quite "edgy" -- as if the musicians were not relaxed enough. Then mid last week -- the sound took on what i would describe as "thin and reedy". This week, the "reedy" bit is more or less gone -- the "edginess" is still there but much reduced. But the "thinness" is still very evident --  meaning that i am not getting the full tonality of instruments.  however, the cohesiveness is much improved now from day 1 -- when he extra detail seemed a bit 'scattered'.

My best attempt at describing what's happening -- hope it communicates something. Interesting run-in ride for me anyhow.

Lets see how this all develops during the next few weeks... 

enjoy...

ken

Well done Ken...o and enjoy 

ken c posted:

its now over 1 week ago since the DR upgraded 500s were installed. its early days yet for them to fully blossom but i though i would give a brief report on how its all evolving..

Initially straight after installation -- there was an obvious increase in detail -- lots of it -- but the presentation was quite "edgy" -- as if the musicians were not relaxed enough. Then mid last week -- the sound took on what i would describe as "thin and reedy". This week, the "reedy" bit is more or less gone -- the "edginess" is still there but much reduced. But the "thinness" is still very evident --  meaning that i am not getting the full tonality of instruments.  however, the cohesiveness is much improved now from day 1 -- when he extra detail seemed a bit 'scattered'.

My best attempt at describing what's happening -- hope it communicates something. Interesting run-in ride for me anyhow.

Lets see how this all develops during the next few weeks... 

enjoy...

ken

So basically you have a group of thin, unrelaxed musicians then? 

Hi Ken,

Some of us hear run-in and some don't - hang-in there as it does get a lot better after a few weeks. It took mine about 4 weeks to lose the annoying run-in stuff and have all the sumptuous new capabilities and some, like me, find it hard until it gets farther along to describe it all as immediately glowing-good!

Fortunately it is not my first experience with NAP500 run-in and it was nothing outside of what happened before - a rough-ride until it all settled-down and I never would have dreamed of returning to my old NAP300 set I used before. Now I would not return to the non-DR NAP500 and it is still improving.

From week 4 or 5 until week 12 I thought I was essentially 'there' and had a fairly stable performance that was excellent and much better than before, so I was happy. However a few days ago it began to sound weird and was 'frighteningly clear' but with a rather 'etched' emphasis in the high-frequencies. Not unpleasant to listen to, but not right either - I considered re-booting the system, as that can clear things like this, but the effect reminded me of the SL Cable run-in sound and after another day the 'etched' effect cleared and I now have an amazing open sound-space at both high and low frequency ends - it just opened-out even more.

I'm still getting used to the new presentation - it reminds me of what happened to the SL Pre after about 9 months but here with the DR 500 the same happened on week 12-13.

You know what you hear Ken - and I'm interested to hear if you think things are a lot better by week 3-4. Then there is more to arrive later!

DB.

This is being a bit pedantic but you don't hear run-in but you do experience the music just becoming more organic - best way to describe it for me.

Regards,

Lindsay

The DR 500 does present a more contiguous whole of a presentation with fewer 'fuzzy gaps' so 'organic', meaning 'one entity' to me is a reasonable descriptor.

The run-in depends on personal hearing past-experience, some hear things that other just don't and we all get a different experience. But this runs-up against the view that 'we all are the same' and the only answer from those of that view is either at best silence, or sometimes sarcasm and insulting those not the same. This is the world of forums unfortunately.

DB.