Aha I have found an area the 552 is worse than the 252!!

Seems a bit unfair to blame a preamp for the shortcomings of your room acoustics!

552 sounds broken - clearly you need to change over to a Statement!! (You may need to change even more furniture if you try that option...)

Peter

Just out of curiosity (apologies C., for this topic detour) I wonder how many of us still have an integrated and do not have a 552.

M.

I think it's just you and me, Max.

A,  It seems as though you should have paid attention to your strapline! 

B,  If you can afford a 552 than I'm sure you can afford to buy some new less resonant furniture (or some bass traps).

(Definitely counts as a 'first world problem'!...   Sympathy rating = 0 )

Me too:  I'm sticking with my much loved Supernait.  Next planned change will be with a house move when I will go ATC active on a 252 (or whatever any new same level pre will be called)       Interestingly I visited Naim a while back where I heard NDX-552-500 driving a pair of Focal Utopia Evo's,  amazing !!!   But after I returned home & fired up the old SN I was pleasantly surprised how satisfying it all was,  OK before I get locked up by avid forumites as terminally insane,  I'm not saying my home set up is as good as the rig at Naim,  I'm just saying it was reassuringly satisfying.   A top end Chateau Margaux is one thing,  but a pint of Brakspear's best is just as satisfying in its own way 

Mike-B posted:

...  OK before I get locked up by avid forumites as terminally insane, ...

I think most people not on forums like this would consider us all as terminally insane after a shocked response of "You paid HOW MUCH, just for a HiFi!"

You should be happy that you have found another imperfect thing. Now you can again plot for your next improvement. However this will be an ongoing journey as you always will discover new improvement opportunities. 

And if you are getting terminally insane you can always commit suicide by letting a statement drop on you......., the more technically advanced on the forum could advice about the right height to be sure...

But seriously. Your imperfect room acoustics should be fixable with a reasonable investment in room acoustics, just a fraction of the upgrade costs from 252 to 552.....

Gilbert Briggs (Wharfedale) circa late 1950's.

"The wider one opens the window, the more the muck flies in"

Plus ça change.

John.

J.N. posted:

Gilbert Briggs (Wharfedale) circa late 1950's.

"The wider one opens the window, the more the muck flies in"

Plus ça change.

John.

That pre-dates Gilbert Briggs, it's an old adage from radio engineering in the 1920s or 1930s.

Mike-B posted:

Me too:  I'm sticking with my much loved Supernait.  Next planned change will be with a house move when I will go ATC active on a 252 (or whatever any new same level pre will be called)       Interestingly I visited Naim a while back where I heard NDX-552-500 driving a pair of Focal Utopia Evo's,  amazing !!!   But after I returned home & fired up the old SN I was pleasantly surprised how satisfying it all was,  OK before I get locked up by avid forumites as terminally insane,  I'm not saying my home set up is as good as the rig at Naim,  I'm just saying it was reassuringly satisfying.   A top end Chateau Margaux is one thing,  but a pint of Brakspear's best is just as satisfying in its own way 

Brakespear’s Best isn’t what it was since they were taken over, Naim have got off lightly so far.

Max_B posted:

Just out of curiosity (apologies C., for this topic detour) I wonder how many of us still have an integrated and do not have a 552.

M.

 

Max,

The more interesting question is how many of us, integrated amps owners, are not interested at all in obtaining a 552.

I always thought that the real audio challenge was to put together a system, sensible in price and size, that works well enough in our home to makes us enjoy the music without reservations despite the knowledge that it is never going to be perfect. 

Haim Ronen posted:

I always thought that the real audio challenge was to put together a system, sensible in price and size, that works well enough in our home to makes us enjoy the music without reservations despite the knowledge that it is never going to be perfect. 

 

Agreed. Music reproduced through a hifi system will always be an approximation to the live music experience. It just depends how close an approximation you want. Some artists are now doing house concerts - a hifi system will never get that close! Unfortunately, many of the artists I like are no longer with us, so playing their music (in whatever format) is as close as it wil ever be possible to get to the live performance.

As for Consciousmess's problem, surely you just need to isolate the item of furniture and sit on it or change it's mass by some other means. Or find the loose element and screw it tighter or re-glue it or whatever.

It is not the fault of the 552!

I know I know, first world problems. An unexpected one at that - quite a nice way to spend a Sunday though, unless the problem can’t be remedied!

But what’s an ideal listening room? Mine is rectangular and I regard it as fairly large - why I (we) bought the house. Should the room have cushions thrown in? Speakers toed in? Powerlines removed???

A picture is a worth a thousand words 

OK, first get a stick.

Play something with problematic base.  Hold the stick to that the side of the stick at one end touches the bone behind your ear, then touch any furniture you think is a problem with the other end of the stick.  If something is resonating you'll be able to detect that.

Now, room modes...

The PL200s have a -6dB point at 35Hz, so we're talking of about 28Hz to get below -12dB.  To avoid the speaker overdriving the room resonance, the room needs to be at least 6m in both length and width.  In addition you'll almost certainly benefit from having a reasonable amount of LF damping in the room (carpets, curtains, cushions, sofas etc. just don't count as they are mostly MF and HF damping with relatively little at LF).  The best thing to do is get a calibrated microphone and measure the room response.

james n posted:

A picture is a worth a thousand words 

How about a picture of more than a thousand words?

james n posted:

A picture is a worth a thousand words 

To correct myself - 

A picture is worth a thousand words  

Damn that 15 minute edit time !

Most likely a bass resonance form either of the room corners behind the speakers.

Try stuffing some soft cushions or even a rolled up duvet / blanket in either of the room corners to check if this solves the issue. Of course it's a stop gap solution in a domestic environment. But at least you will know that it's the room not the speakers.

N.B. You'd be surprised what gets stuffed into a bass drum or behind bass speakers in a studio environment to dampen the unwanted and out of controll low frequency waves  

If you want a soft open material to absorb low frequencies when placed in a corner, you'll have to put it inside a sealed impermeable membrane (e.g. a bin bag).  At the room boundary, the room resonance wave is a pressure wave with very little movement, so a permeable absorber has relatively little effect.  Hence you need the membrane to turn pressure (potential energy) into movement (kinetic energy) which can then be turned into heat, so taking the energy out of the sound wave.

Great advice guys, I’ll roll the sleeves up tomorrow!!

Consciousmess - the extra bass that the 552 is allowing into your room may require some re-adjustment of your speakers.  I  have found this necessary with a number of upgrades e.g. putting a 555PS on my nDAC, replacing my 250.2 with a 300DR, and most recently the 552DR replacing my 282/SCDR. Fortunately my dealer is very expert at this and has adjusted my Electra 1028bes perfectly each time.

Haim Ronen posted:

I always thought that the real audio challenge was to put together a system, sensible in price and size, that works well enough in our home to makes us enjoy the music without reservations despite the knowledge that it is never going to be perfect. 

 

Haim,

challenges are for those who manufacture audio gear - this is, at least, what I believe. They have to conjure up how to satisfy those who want the good sound for little money and those who don't care about the sound because they can spend as much money as they want. In this perspective, satisfying the first customers is much more difficult and asks for the engineers' real skills much more than the second option. Building the first Toyota Yaris – a cheap masterpiece – was probably, and will always be, a greatest challenge than making a Rolls.

So, I don't think that we are forced to face challenges: they're not for us. We are only requested to have the sensibility and the wisdom to choose the Yaris instead of the Rolls, because the owner of the Rolls won't ever sleep as well as the owner of the Yaris..

(Our Yaris was traded in for another car when it had 213000 Km on its back and still was going sweetly. If I had a Rolls I would fear even taking it out of the garage, because a 2 mm scratch on it would cost the world to fix and would take a lot of its value away. So, no challenge for us: the commitment to build well, sell sensibly, service reliably, last long, gain trust, is not on our shoulders...)

Ciao, M.

And here, being a native New Yorker, I always thought a pitcher was worth a thousand words... (in the vernacular, "pitchah", so as to be indistinguishable from "picture", which is said the same way)

Done it!  It was a 4 square dresser which concealed the router and NAS, storing my toddlers toys. Visually now though, the view from the sweet spot is not symmetrical! I might not bother some, but my feng Sui is off kilter!! This has to be temporary and I’ve had to toe the speakers in a bit.

Theres a great panoramic to the sound - but here’s a variable I bet none of you may realise... tidiness of the room!! The illusion is so much more beautiful if all that’s ahead are two speakers and not a scattered Peppa Pig, Upsy Daisy, Mackapacka Ninkynong...