sound is not what expected

oferr posted:

Adam; for your question, I have the system side-by-side... that is ndx/ndac/sn2

Side by side is OK.
More imporantly - what does it on?

bored with this thread

Simply stating the room is big enough and the other distances are right is not very helpful. If you don't have a tape measure perhaps you can estimate these dimensions? It would also help others to help you if you were able to answer some of the other questions posed. People are simply trying to be helpful. By the way, where are you located?

Hi Adam. Sorry again for the delay.  They are side by side on a wooden long table

oferr posted:

Hi Adam. Sorry again for the delay.  They are side by side on a wooden long table

As suspected from your description I recognised the symptoms you've described.
You really, really need to place this level of equipment on a proper support. 
However sometimes room aesthetics prevent a use of a proper rack.

I've had a lot of success with using toughened glass shelves placed under NAIM boxes. Shelves themselves are then placed on VibraPods for added isolation.

This is the cheapest upgrade I've seen / heard in years.

I will email you separately with the photos.

Adam

PS.Have you checked the phasing of speakers? It's easy to get them mixed up on Naim.

You still haven't answered:

"How were the controls on the equaliser set-up?"

Huge posted:

You still haven't answered:

"How were the controls on the equaliser set-up?"

Or the room size. 

oferr posted:

Thank you IB.

I had good amps, but they aged and started to fault.  An excellent bars equalizer 24 bands (still works properly). Good speakers.  It doesn't really matter " the made" .   The issue is that I enjoyed the eq control.  I really liked the power and the "listenability".  It was so full of "every instrument sounds perfect".  No dullness at all.   And, it was so much cheaper than Naim.   Do not know what to do right now.  I will start by talking with my dealer.

You mentioned about using my old gear and trying amps with else... The only thing that works is the equalizer....  But I understand your idea. Will try to do some combinations.

 

try to listen without the equalizer connected.  But i think the most important thing is to go to a naim dealer place and see if you like naim sound. , and specially with focal speakers.

For myself i prefer tube electronics with focal speakers. For me naim/ focal is not very refined sound and a little edgy.  But some find it not and like this combo.

The xps on ndx and sn2 will give also more fluency, better harmonics, open the soundstage and soften the top end.

Adam Zielinski posted:

oferr posted:

Hi Adam. Sorry again for the delay.  They are side by side on a wooden long table

As suspected from your description I recognised the symptoms you've described.
You really, really need to place this level of equipment on a proper support. 
However sometimes room aesthetics prevent a use of a proper rack.

I've had a lot of success with using toughened glass shelves placed under NAIM boxes. Shelves themselves are then placed on VibraPods for added isolation.

 

Adam, did you, by any chance, compare your VibraPods with Naim Fraim Ball Bearings & Cups?

Cheers!

Timo

Timo posted:

Adam Zielinski posted:

oferr posted:

Hi Adam. Sorry again for the delay.  They are side by side on a wooden long table

As suspected from your description I recognised the symptoms you've described.
You really, really need to place this level of equipment on a proper support. 
However sometimes room aesthetics prevent a use of a proper rack.

I've had a lot of success with using toughened glass shelves placed under NAIM boxes. Shelves themselves are then placed on VibraPods for added isolation.

 

Adam, did you, by any chance, compare your VibraPods with Naim Fraim Ball Bearings & Cups?

Cheers!

Timo

Timo

No - I haven't had a chance.  I felt that a bit of isolation from the furniture would be needed - hence a choice of VibraPods. But that's just my pre-conception - nothing scientific about it

Adam

oferr posted:

Hello everyone,

In the last 6 months I have purchased a combo which I expected to sound "good".

I have the SN2 into NDX on dac.    Results : I can hear the music, but it doesn't sound even close to what I expected.   I can resume that it sounds dull. flat, no finesse, like if the middle portion of an hypothetical equalizer (middles) is up and all the rest is on zeroes...  That is even though the system is wired, with focal 936.  cabling seems to be properly applied...    Pretty much dissapointed.     Is it that important to have a PS?  Or what???    

I don't know what naim sound means, but if it's what I hear now...  well... don"t know what to say.

Matbe it"s me???

Frankly it would have to be a pretty radical system mismatch to sound as bad as you describe...all mids, no treble or bass and sucked out, lifeless sound. On the other hand, an error with installation could sound exactly as you describe.

In the olden days, we used to have records and CDs that we could play to help check out a system installation. Such discs would check L and R channels, relative channel volume (balance), phasing (in or out of phase), Frequency response etc. I'm new to streaming and downloads so no idea if you can still get such things, but it shouldn't be too hard to get something suitably recorded onto a USB flash drive.  If you had a check-out file you could immediately see if your installation was done properly and working as intended.  

One thing's for sure. The problem you describe is not due to the lack of a outboard PS.  A PS upgrade should take what's already perfectly acceptable sound and make it better.  Buying upgrades to try and fix problems will only make you poor.....unless of course you're replacing a faulty or radically mismatched component.

Other than an installation or system fault, the only other thing I can think of is that your speaker cable is wildly mismatched to your SN2.  I believe the SN2 requires a minimum output stage load inductance of 3.5uH and less than that can cause some instability. I must admit I've absolutely no idea how that sounds, only that it can cause problems (maybe others can comment on the sonic impact).  Its also critical that both speaker cables are the same length, regardless of where the speakers are positioned. If your speaker cable is some no name stuff from B&Q or RadioShack, go buy 2 terminated minimum 3.5M lengths of Naim cable. Your SN2 will love you for it.

It may be nothing to do with system set-up at all, Oferr still hasn't told us what settings he had on the graphic equaliser, he may just be used to a system with excessive LF and HF boosts, so a realistic system sounds dull in comparison.  The must be some reason he just won't tell us what EQ settings he uses.

Oferr hasn't told us much about the rest of his system,  where does the music (streams) come from ??  He says its all wired correctly,  but does that include ethernet, what wifi hub is used , does it have a LAN switch & what NAS (or something else)  What's the full story with the graphic equalizer ??   Come'on Oferr,  spill the beans,   what you describe doesn't make sense,  something, some key, is missing, we need the whole page to be able to help.

offer us the whole story, Ofer. Please.

Hi everybody,

Sorry for the delay.

Thank you again for your help.

Now,  I will try to answer your questions :  the graphic eq was set  with mid-low bass section, low mid range, and mid-up treble section.

The dimensions od the room must be something like 3/4 mt

No NAS, no LAN switch,  wired to ethernet,  streaming tidal.

I'm intrigued as to why Oferr is so vague with all responses .... not even able to give the exact dimensions of the room.

Either someone who is really chilled and laid back about everything... or perhaps a rather strange posting with an ulterior motive.

Personally I suspect it's a complete wind up intended to waste time.

if you feel it's genuine ... feel free to continue

First - get the sound destroying graphic equaliser out.  Second - Tidal is not a good source of high quality sound,  using an NDX for just that & with no LAN (or similar)  is like having a Ferrari for a shopping car.

And yes it's not helpful with the vague communications;   I'll leave you guys to this one, over & out

I would just qualify, and say Tidal is not always a good source of high quality sound with current Naim streamers, with other platforms  this is not necessarily always the case, and the new Uniti products may sound more consistent with a Tidal due to how they are architected, looking forward to listening to check out... Tidal without a proxy media buffer does make your streamer generally work harder, and of course uses FLAC... so yes, as Mike says, using a NDX to directly stream Tidal right now won't show the NDX to its true potential.

What a saga this thread is - only wish we could fast forward to the part following the dealer visit/ possible visit to the dealer for compare and contrast and conclusions reached.  If it were my system and I didn't like what I was hearing I'd be down at the dealer's next day, not faffing about on this forum with woolly posts which ultimately aren't going to resolve the issue.

Best of luck to the OP.

Peter

Is it possible that the OP's first language is not English?

Of course English may not be the mother tongue and that is my assumption however, all humans have a certain level of logic which is not language driven and having stated earlier that he would have the dealer visit, I think this discussion will be completely circular until said visit has been undertaken, to enable OP to reach any conclusions.  Just my ha'penny's worth.

Peter

So, using the graphic equaliser you set a bass boost and a treble boost and then you got used to that unnatural artificially 'pumped up' sound.

Of course a natural sounding system will sound flat in comparison.  You may think you're hearing more detail with that distorted frequency response, but actually that's not really the case; in fact quite the reverse - you're hiding the midrange, the very area where the brain can discriminate most information from the sound.

No proper High Fidelity system would be designed to produce such an unnatural sound as that wouldn't show fidelity to the original signal.  The can be most easily demonstrated by listening to a classical orchestra live and then comparing that to the playback on the system.  The system you now have will sound very similar (allowing for differences between the orchestras playing and the live vs. the recording venues), but with the old system with the equaliser it would sound completely different.

The description you gave that the sound is not what is expected is right:  You were expecting something unnatural to match the artificial sound you created with the graphic equaliser.  Using the equaliser you produced a sound that's mostly bass and treble with very little in the midrange got used to that: Now you're getting a sound that has bass, midrange and treble in the correct balance, so by comparison there's a lot of midrange sound, just as there is in real life!

There is a very good cure for changing the perception and appreciation from pumped music to more realistic music: listening (a lot).

Huge posted:

So, using the graphic equaliser you set a bass boost and a treble boost and then you got used to that unnatural artificially 'pumped up' sound.

Of course a natural sounding system will sound flat in comparison.  You may think you're hearing more detail with that distorted frequency response, but actually that's not really the case; in fact quite the reverse - you're hiding the midrange, the very area where the brain can discriminate most information from the sound.

No proper High Fidelity system would be designed to produce such an unnatural sound as that wouldn't show fidelity to the original signal.  The can be most easily demonstrated by listening to a classical orchestra live and then comparing that to the playback on the system.  The system you now have will sound very similar (allowing for differences between the orchestras playing and the live vs. the recording venues), but with the old system with the equaliser it would sound completely different.

 

The description you gave that the sound is not what is expected is right:  You were expecting something unnatural to match the artificial sound you created with the graphic equaliser.  Using the equaliser you produced a sound that's mostly bass and treble with very little in the midrange got used to that: Now you're getting a sound that has bass, midrange and treble in the correct balance, so by comparison there's a lot of midrange sound, just as there is in real life!

And then he claimed, when reporting his dissatisfaction with the poor Supernait, he had very good hearing, as if Naim wasn't up to his exceptional hearing abilities... Pride comes before a fall, and the honour of the Supernait is restored. Happy ending!