300 serviced and DR - now the midrange sounds so cold / hard

HungryHalibut is correct

Remove the Sarum interlinks between the Supercap and 300 DR and try with the standard Naim DIN/XLR.

the DR amps have a much lower noise floor (20 times lower than the non-dr ones) and will reveal any previously masked and unaudible issues.

Naim voice their amplifiers with their own cables, so anyone who uses Non-Naim cables might experience unexpected results.

oh and this also includes speaker cables.

Which speaker cable are you using?

Some good advice and thinking about it I have recently gone back to all standard I/C cables from fancy (not as fancy as yours) Chord cables and found that they are really excellent I/C made for the job.

Bob the Builder posted:

Some good advice and thinking about it I have recently gone back to all standard I/C cables from fancy (not as fancy as yours) Chord cables and found that they are really excellent I/C made for the job.

+1

Standard Naim cables, a tried and tested formula over decades.

Not unexpected comments about reverting to the stock Naim cables, but if the system was improved when you added the Chord cables in the first place, it’s unlikely that they will have made it worse since having your 300 upgraded.

Having done both, I found that when I upgraded my 300 to DR, it was quite a bit more revealing and, as a result, set up became rather more important. Going back to the stock cables reduces the need to some extent as the system then becomes a lot less revealing.

Six months in and the amp should be singing, waiting longer isn’t going to resolve the issue, so I’d have a word with the excellent folk at Cymbiosis and in particular seek their advice about set up.

the chord cables have a nice, soft and fluid presentation, vs the stock naim cables which can sometimes sound a little bit edgy.  And as said Dave j, if the system improved to the ears of the op with the chord cables, there is no reason to be worse now with the dr upgrade.

Something must be wrong with the dr service or with a connection....Perhaps unplug and plug all cables ?

Hi Olivier,

of your components the Guarnieris are the only ones I know firsthand. But I am confident in saying that they should by no means sound like you describe them.

Regarding possible causes, two things come to my mind. The first is a wrong polarity on one speaker, the other unsuitable jumpers between the two binding posts on the Guarnieris. The latter shouldn’t be that obvious, unless the DR has increased the overall resolution a lot.

French Rooster posted:

the chord cables have a nice, soft and fluid presentation, vs the stock naim cables which can sometimes sound a little bit edgy.  And as said Dave j, if the system improved to the ears of the op with the chord cables, there is no reason to be worse now with the dr upgrade.

Something must be wrong with the dr service or with a connection....Perhaps unplug and plug all cables ?

Urm I thought the Naim cables more organic.  

The Strat (Fender) posted:

French Rooster posted:

the chord cables have a nice, soft and fluid presentation, vs the stock naim cables which can sometimes sound a little bit edgy.  And as said Dave j, if the system improved to the ears of the op with the chord cables, there is no reason to be worse now with the dr upgrade.

Something must be wrong with the dr service or with a connection....Perhaps unplug and plug all cables ?

Urm I thought the Naim cables more organic.  

Perfect example of how differently we hear things, and basically why you should trust your own ears and never rely on others so called expert opinions or biased beliefs. Which is seen here much too often.

I'm always amazed at how certain members opinions, and, they truly are OPINIONS, are taken as facts, pretty sad really.

badlands posted:

The Strat (Fender) posted:

French Rooster posted:

the chord cables have a nice, soft and fluid presentation, vs the stock naim cables which can sometimes sound a little bit edgy.  And as said Dave j, if the system improved to the ears of the op with the chord cables, there is no reason to be worse now with the dr upgrade.

Something must be wrong with the dr service or with a connection....Perhaps unplug and plug all cables ?

Urm I thought the Naim cables more organic.  

Perfect example of how differently we hear things, and basically why you should trust your own ears and never rely on others so called expert opinions or biased beliefs. Which is seen here much too often.

I'm always amazed at how certain members opinions, and, they truly are OPINIONS, are taken as facts, pretty sad really.

 

 

personally i have no pretension to say i am telling a truth : just my ears and personal experience.  I had the stock naim cables and now the chord signature tuned array. For me the chord cables are more pleasant to hear and are more vivid in tone colors, more fluid too. 

I have also the nap 300dr and have listened already to sonus faber speakers with naim amps.

Sonus faber and chord cables have together a nice and soft sound, the contrary of hard. So i don’t know how it can sound hard with nap 300dr....  Perhaps Mulberry had pointed something to verify ?

badlands posted

 

Perfect example of how differently we hear things, and basically why you should trust your own ears and never rely on others so called expert opinions or biased beliefs. Which is seen here much too often.

I'm always amazed at how certain members opinions, and, they truly are OPINIONS, are taken as facts, pretty sad really.

 

 

Blimey!  You're undermining the entire basis of the forum!  

The DR takes two or three weeks to settle-down and can sound wrong at times in different ways, so by week three it should be ok.

If it isn't, do check it with other interconnects, as I know at least one other Forum member that had to remove a very expensive interconnect cable that sounded great before he upgraded a box, but when the Dealer visited and let him try some other cables the problem in his case was a bad cable  interaction.

In general I've always found there are cable interactions with specific equipment combinations and they are not neutral upgrades. As has been said - these are my personal opinions. The Chord should work fine if you liked it before, so it may be just run-in. I did try that Chord cable and did not like what it did, finding it added a hard edge and lost dynamics in my system to what I listen to in music, but many find otherwise, so it is a personal judgement.

DB.

Noogle posted:

badlands posted

 

Perfect example of how differently we hear things, and basically why you should trust your own ears and never rely on others so called expert opinions or biased beliefs. Which is seen here much too often.

I'm always amazed at how certain members opinions, and, they truly are OPINIONS, are taken as facts, pretty sad really.

 

 

Blimey!  You're undermining the entire basis of the forum!  

Opps, I forgot, maybe my post will be removed because someone is worried I may be a bad influence on their kids.

The OP has not disclosed which speaker cable he uses. 

I often despair of a minor tweaks (cable lifters, etc) being suggested to an owner who reports a substantive problem - 'one channel is entirely dead'.

However (of course), when a system that involves Burndy connectors sounds 'off' it is often a good idea to check that their plugs are not strained in the sockets.

https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...a-bit-about-burndies is possibly comprehensible and useful.

I see you also have a 252 and CDS 3. Both of these are powered through Burndys - although, IF NOTHING ELSE HAS BEEN CHANGED, they should be working as well as they were before the DR upgrade.

Why the CAPS?
Because, all too often, the problem is presented to the best of the owner's knowledge of what might be germane to the result.

Given their failure to resolve matters, this may be because they cannot see that other changes could be involved.

I once had a caller who'd lost a channel and listened (for a polite while) to his somewhat disorganised strategy for (failed) diagnosis.

"Do you have children?" I asked to his confusion. "Yes, a (lovely) daughter." "Check the Balance Control". "Oh, I feel a little foolish." I will admit to feeling a little the opposite.

Another: I'd wisely checked that the owner of an overheated NAP 250 was using NACA 4/5. Getting nowhere I was prompted to ask "How long are your speaker cables" - four foot a side and we had a chance of isolating the problem.

Did you dismantle the rest of the system, move it, plug it into a different mains socket, change furnishings, move speakers, add a noisy power supply somewhere in the room, and so on?

Very often an intractable problem becomes less recalcitrant when a relevant detail, unimportant to the uninitiated, is revealed.

Obviously,  Turn Off and wait a minute before making or breaking any of these connections, but there may be some gain to be had from checking out the Burndys on the NAP 300.

If you did dismantle any other parts of the system - check those as well. Don't forget to Turn Off.

analogmusic posted:

The OP has not disclosed which speaker cable he uses. 

Officer Analogue is correct  

You have the right to remain silent,  but it may harm your forum credibility if you do not mention when questioned something which a myriad of experts here can dissect and analyse from the perspective of not being the perfect choice for zealots. 

.sjb

The OP has mentioned “Chord Sarum SC” which I read as speaker cable.

Ok fair enough. But still.... It's still a non-naim full loom.

A few hi-end cables (non Naim ones) I've tried on Naim change the sound, but that's the thing.

Some people may like this change, but it is a departure from neutrality and also a departure from the very careful tuning of Naim cables and Naim amplifiers done over thousands of listening hours by none other than Roy George himself (the keeper of the Naim sound) and the man who created the legendary Nait 2. It is worth remembering no Naim product can be signed off for production without his approval, including Superlumina Cables.

I do feel somewhat like this is an unfair comment to make though, as the Sarum full loom is very damn expensive and for the OP to be told that it is the cause of the issue isn't very helpful or nice.

Maybe it's a burndy issue. Hopefully  ?

Another thing I found when first getting my DR upgraded kit back was that alongside the extra detail and resolution it also sounded  'shouty' or hard - until I moved the boxes a bit from where they traditionally had sat on the Fraim glass. I found the hard-edge went when I moved them closer to the front of the glass and less from the middle.

The odd thing was before the DR the box sitting in the middle was 'nicer' but then it was not and I could hear the glass buzzing. The DR improves resolution of problem things before hidden alongside the extra musical information I found, so worth re-visiting the set-up.

It costs nothing to try. There is a view - wrong by the way - that a more expensive box needs less care and will just sound better, because you spent more money, whereas it demands more care is my experience, then I've been well-pleased with the end-result.

DB.

Darke Bear posted:

Another thing I found when first getting my DR upgraded kit back was that alongside the extra detail and resolution it also sounded  'shouty' or hard - until I moved the boxes a bit from where they traditionally had sat on the Fraim glass. I found the hard-edge went when I moved them closer to the front of the glass and less from the middle.

DB.

Wow, you could hear the difference between boxes by moving them less than an inch! I wish I had the hearing that some of these members have. I honestly have a hard time distinguishing the differences as it is between cables costing thousands of dollars and those costing less than a couple of hundred!  It must be nice to have such acute hearing, I am honestly very jealous.

I think you should change your name to Bat Ears

Darke bear has the most elaborate system on this forum

when he posts it is of great interest to me

Your posts on the other hand.... are getting quite cynical

Right back at ya ANALOG. Almost as cynical as your cable threads. At least I don't seek the approval of everybody by posting what they think is the accepted norm like some to be popular.

just because somebody can afford the highest end electronics, it doesn't necessarily make them an expert.

Dark bear is more of an expert on Naim than you are. 

Somehow money always comes up with you as an issue ? 

There are plenty of luxury brands like porsche, Louis vitton, Chanel.  They exist because people are willing to spend their money

in the case of Naim more performance costs money, something you stated yourself

Why have a go at others who have very revealing systems and share their knowledge on the forum ?

as an aside I'm posting this as I was reading this with interest

I don't agree with it at all, and I'd like to hear others point of view on this.

for the record I think my 250 DR sounds just fine with standard DIN/XLR and NACA5 and I cannot for the life of me understand what was written below having done the same experiment. But then I got Dynaudio speakers, not Ovator S800.

It is from hifi.nl review of NAP 500 vs NAP 500 DR (just google search for it)

Here is the translation

"Then Rowan switches the standard Naim cables that are still used at the time of the session to the NAP 500 DR and we play the same selection again. The first thing I immediately experience is the sharply increased transparency, more resolution, more refinement, a better focus and very important, increased realism. Yet there is also a considerable downside: in spite of all the qualities, such a beautiful synergy from the beginning has not kept pace. As a result, there is now a certain mechanical sounding hi-fi edge to the view that was definitely not in the previous round! "I had more or less expected you to observe this," says Rowan with a puzzling smile. The next moment he walks back to the two power amplifiers, rummages with cables, sits down and asks me to play the selection again. What is happening here? Yes, it is clearly the same NAP 500 DR that I still listen to, but where the music just started to wring, despite all the qualities, everything suddenly falls back into place and how! "What you hear now," says Rowan, "are the new Naim Super Lumina cables. A new cable line that was first designed for the Statement amplifiers and then expanded as a complete cable line and has recently become available. "Because of my soon to be written story about these special cables, I do not want to go into it too deeply now. But for anyone who recently invested in a new Naim DR power amplifier, listening and even purchasing these cables is almost a necessity.

As far as the NAP-500 DR is concerned, it is basically the same sound that I have already heard with the new NAP 250 DR and 300 DR, but with even more ease, peace, refinement and self-evidence. Although 140 Watts per channel in this high price range seems almost nothing, the NAP-500 DR turns out to be able to play loudly in an immoderate manner, while not turning its hand around even very difficult loads. Although the prestigious Statement was not on hand this time, the new NAP 500 DR comes as hoped closer to this reference level than other Naim amplifiers. Add to that the very high, but still considerably lower amount, and a new groundbreaking 'junior' reference Naim has been raised. Finally, it is worth noting that a NAP 500 can also be converted to the new NAP 500 DR version. That will cost you as much as € 7,600, but the very fact that it is possible I find very positive!"

Darke Bear posted:

There is a view - wrong by the way - that a more expensive box needs less care and will just sound better, because you spent more money, whereas it demands more care is my experience, then I've been well-pleased with the end-result.

No direct experience with high-end gear at home myself, but having been privy to group listening sessions at forum friends' homes owning upper echelon Naim boxes, and hearing of all their trials and tribulations to get the sound just-so, I'd agree that with increasing cost comes far more diligence to proper set up.

By comparison, the lower level gear is more set-and-forget. Slap a Nait 5i on a given cabinet and you can have fun with it. This due to the fact that it has less clarity and is far less resolving; therefore more forgiving of installation vagaries. 

OTOH - I've found it a good practice overall to heed advice from those owning the more resolving gear. Getting issues like racking and cable dressing right from the get-go still pays dividends to the lesser gear, and will manifest greater benefits as you move up the chain.

Based on those listening sessions, I learned I am in no way one that needs to squeeze the nth degree of resolution from my system. Not worth the idiosyncratic diligence to me and frankly, I can't afford the required boxes in the first place. Even if I could, I realize my ears are aging and I'm more about preoccupied musical enjoyment than attention to greater resolution.

Kudos to those with bat ears that realize a particular tweak with their high-level gear and gain resultant satisfaction. All part of the same game we're all playing at differing levels with different expectations and wallets.