SL2 tweeter occillation

Naim didn't stop making speakers because of fiddly designs, the Ovator is nothing like previous models. They stopped making them for business  reasons. Focal are part of the group so that's their job. I feel it's a great shame.

The point made about the complexity of earlier designs are totally understandable in my opinion. It wouldn't have put me off buying SL2s etc etc but there are many people out there who can't even plug in an amp without  help from their dealer.

Christopher_M posted:

Robiwan posted:

Christopher_M posted:

Your posts seems odd, Robin. Are you actually happy with your Naim set? You've had more record players, cartridges and phonostages than most of us have had hot dinners.

C.

yes i'm happy but there are Naim oddities which are annoying.  

I just call them idoosyncracies and consider them a price worth paying for good music at home.

C.

Even my Credos need a bit of TLC every now and then, boy is it worth it when done right, other makes of speakers go straight out of the window for me.

joerand posted:

Jonn posted:

Naim designed the SL2 for optimum sound. I'm sure they wouldn't have bothered with the design quirks if that wasn't the case as one of the reasons for the demise of the SL2 was because some dealers found them difficult to set up

So what then? Other speakers are designed for less than optimum sound?

The dealers themselves had difficulty setting up the SL2s. So what's to be expected from the home user?

Jonn posted:

I was amused by reference to "anal retentive dicking with to play at its best" as according to your profile you saw fit to dick around with your Isoblue with glass,nuts and balls. (To name but a few body parts )

 Speakers not one of the system parts I expect to need to dick with. A rack on the other hand, sure, I'll dick with a rack.

Other speaker designers take different approaches as they see fit. Naim designed the SL2 because they thought it sounded best. Some people including myself like the sound compared to other speakers with a more conventional design, simple as that.

Dealer difficulties were probably more to do with moving the speakers around when doing demos with other speakers. Set-up at home is fairly straight forward and once done can be left with occasional checks as previously noted.

Whether it's racks, speakers, turntables, cables etc. some people just want plug and play, others are prepared to make adjustments to achieve optimum sound. Some people call the latter "dicking around" others call it tweaking, amounts to the same thing really.

It would be interesting to know how many speakers of the various designs Naim sold, including Ovators.  Given the number of SBLs around I wouldn't be surprised if they were the best sellers although they are probably one of the most time consuming to set up initially with the gaskets and sealant.

Jonn posted:

I was checking the torque on the mid/bass driver today and noticed that the tweeter on one speaker was not occillating back on forth as it should. On further investigation it turned out to be the mid/bass driver speaker cable was touching the frame that holds the tweeter. Pulling the mid/bass speaker plugs out slightly freed the frame and normal service was restored.

Worth a look if your an SL2 owner.

well done John! I have owned a pair of SL2s now for more than 10 years and really love the transparent design.

a few months ago, i had the opportunity to do a complete fettle as i needed to equalize the toe-in slightly and also needed to clean up the listening room a bit  -- you will not believe the amount of dusty dead moths i found all over the place behind the speakers etc!!!

other than correct torquing of the various bolts, i also find that "free" oscillation of the tweeter is quite critical to its performance. and i really like that i have full control over this -- all i need is to dress the speaker cables behind the speaker and its done. not hard at all. and this rewards hugely in musical terms (i was about to say this pays huge sonic dividends, but i don't like this expression :-) )

but of course, i fully understand that SL2s are not to everyone's taste. but for me, they are my last speaker -- hopefully they will outlive me... 

i suggested an SL2 club sometime ago, if only to try to progress the issue of the degrading grills -- but also just to share the "feel good factor" about belonging to such an elite group... 

enjoy...

ken

Ken, it's an honour to be part of your group. 

Another  point not really covered yet is that like many other forum members, I had (have) plans to go active one day and the SL2's fit the bill with a NAIM active crossover readily available. A further plus for me was their preference to be sited as close to the rear wall as possible.

As far as "tweaking" goes, you don't have to do it but you can hear the differences afterwards. A 911 is a wonderful car and and can run for months with no attention other than fuel but it's performance will deteriorate and need "tweaking" back to A1 running condition - does that make it a poor car?

Ken - I will join your club!

forgot to mention that my SL2 fettle was not uneventful. as i needed to strip the speakers right down to 'basics' -- i needed to disconnect the tweeter suspension assembly, i also needed to replace the Audiotek bolts that i was using as floor spiked with the Naim ones -- which are a bit longer.

However, on one of the speakers -- one of the bolts securing the TSA  just refused to come off . it turned out that the hex corners were rounded off and the hex key just didn't grip. in fact i recall having a problem the very first time i installed this speaker -- but i somehow managed to tighten it then. and in any case, at the time, i didnt really fully understand the design to worry about this specifically. i had other issues to worry about -- for example levelling the speakers on a rather uneven floor.

a quick email to Naim Audio and Phil Harris kindly came to the rescue -- suggesting a 'bolt/screw remover'. The next day, managed to get this from Screwfix (!). attached to my drill, put in reverse -- and then drilled the bolt out. it did put up an argument -- there was quite a bit of smoke while i was drilling-- worryingly -- but it came off -- and the speaker survived the ordeal.  replaced the defective bolt and all was well...

enjoy

ken

Lets all think about the possibility of this SL2 club -- if we want to take this fwd seriously. if we can all help to source replacement speaker grills, that would be enough of an achievement. i have been hearing some encouraging news from James@TomTom Audio -- so perhaps this issue may be solved soon.

Cross fingers!

enjoy

ken

Ron Brinsdon posted:

Another  point not really covered yet is that like many other forum members, I had (have) plans to go active one day and the SL2's fit the bill with a NAIM active crossover readily available.

 

I owned my pair of SL2s for roughly ten years before going active, and I'm glad I did (although the setup took several months to truly come "on song").  But I wouldn't be too complacent about the SNAXO being "readily available."  It could be discontinued with little warning, just like the ARO, and the SL2 itself.

I would certainly be up for joining an SL2 club. I've run my active pair for six years now (upgraded from SBLs) and they're an absolute joy. So utterly musical. 

Mike Kent posted:

I would certainly be up for joining an SL2 club. I've run my active pair for six years now (upgraded from SBLs) and they're an absolute joy. So utterly musical. 

i also upgraded from SBLs Mike, after owning them for more than 10 years also. I really enjoyed my time with the SBLs, but now i have SL2s, there is no looking back! They are fundamentally better -- and somewhat easier to setup too, now that i have done that a few times.

enjoy

ken

Jonn posted:

Whether it's racks, speakers, turntables, cables etc. some people just want plug and play, others are prepared to make adjustments to achieve optimum sound. Some people call the latter "dicking around" others call it tweaking, amounts to the same thing really.

Point taken. Some folks like to tweak and/or dick, some don't. I don't. I bought a Rega TT because I wanted to minimize tweaking or maintenance. Speakers? I never considered tweaking speakers beyond maybe something as simple as a jumper.

As far as Naim speakers, I'm a fan of those I've heard. A friend has Credos in a XS system that I think sound fantastic. I've also heard the S-400s and S-600s and thought they were excellent. As for SL2s, I'd never consider them simply for the maintenance potentials cited in this post. I have enough other things to maintain in my life - don't need my hi-fi to be unnecessarily one of those.

AHT

interested to hear your experience of the active setup taking months to come on song.  I recently went active with my SL2s and wasn't blown away like I expected to be.

ed

ekfc63 posted:

AHT

interested to hear your experience of the active setup taking months to come on song.  I recently went active with my SL2s and wasn't blown away like I expected to be.

ed

i am also running my SL2s active and my experience of this mode is that it is very substantially better than passive, especially in highly enhanced musical engagement.  i could of course claim that "something is wrong" but it could simply be that you dont like what active SL2s do? or...?

enjoy

ken

In my case, in addition to a new SNAXO, I was running in a new pair of 250s.  However, I had used both amps for a while individually with other speakers, and they were sounding great from the start.  I've always felt it was the SNAXO that took a while to run in.  Eventually i switched from HCDR to SCDR to power the SNAXO, and from 250 to 250DR, and both were additional significant improvements.

Just a suggestion to make your active system fly-and probably others too. A Super Lumina Snaic cable to the SNAXO is a superb value addition. Really 'throws open the windows' or some such analogy. Much the same as maximising the PS on the SNAXO is important.

Bruce

For those that have gone active, is it a big pfaff in terms setting up and get a reliably good sound? I have heard active set-ups can be temperamental. Currently running my SL2s passive through 135s /52 and wouldn't swap them but would consider getting the best from them. Reckon I could go active with Olive 135s/ HiCap and SNAXO for around £3k used - worth the investment? (Sources LP12 / NDX)

I never found my systems 'temperamental' in that the sound did not seem to be fickle or changeable. I do think that you need to be pretty consistent in terms of quality throughout chain though and get everything right. This is manifest by the way that every single update throughout the system seemed to open up a huge amount more performance. Power supplies, cables, powerlines etc all seem to do more than I expected suggesting untapped potential with more basic active systems.

I have never run my SL2s passive so hard for me to tell you if it is 'worth it' for you to make this leap and demoing a system such as you suggest is a bit tricky. I would however definitely suggest a minimum of Scap on the SNAXO if I was going active.

I have never regretted going active. Have run this way with Credos/SBL/SL2 over many years but once I made the change I did not do passive vs active comparisons so I find it hard to really tell you what active has done for me. Love my system though, and I enjoyed my simple active systems too.

Bruce Woodhouse posted:

Just a suggestion to make your active system fly-and probably others too. A Super Lumina Snaic cable to the SNAXO is a superb value addition. Really 'throws open the windows' or some such analogy. Much the same as maximising the PS on the SNAXO is important.

Bruce

Bruce, you're absolutely right.  I neglected to mention that last October I bought an SL SNAXO DIN4.  That also took some time to run it, but it was worth the wait.

ken c posted:

ekfc63 posted:

AHT

interested to hear your experience of the active setup taking months to come on song.  I recently went active with my SL2s and wasn't blown away like I expected to be.

ed

i am also running my SL2s active and my experience of this mode is that it is very substantially better than passive, especially in highly enhanced musical engagement.  i could of course claim that "something is wrong" but it could simply be that you dont like what active SL2s do? or...?

enjoy

ken

What I need to do is revert to my passive setup to see what is lost by going back. I subsequently added a non-Naim PSU to the Snaxo and didn't hear any improvement either.  Go figure.

ekfc63 posted:

ken c posted:

ekfc63 posted:

AHT

interested to hear your experience of the active setup taking months to come on song.  I recently went active with my SL2s and wasn't blown away like I expected to be.

ed

i am also running my SL2s active and my experience of this mode is that it is very substantially better than passive, especially in highly enhanced musical engagement.  i could of course claim that "something is wrong" but it could simply be that you dont like what active SL2s do? or...?

enjoy

ken

What I need to do is revert to my passive setup to see what is lost by going back. I subsequently added a non-Naim PSU to the Snaxo and didn't hear any improvement either.  Go figure.

we all hear differently i guess. good luck with your tests and hope you will uncover a setup you like.

enjoy

ken