Help. Lost all the bottom end...

Speakers out of phase?

Nope. All connected correctly, hence cracking clarity and soundstage. Baffled tbh, I’ll shove it back from whence it came later and hope it reverts to being too much bass. 

Maybe you've just grown accustomed to the bass response of the smaller room, and need to acclimiate to the system in a larger room. Maybe try some speaker positioning too.

What do you mean by where it works but "doesn't have the space" in the smaller room. I guess you now realise how important the room and speaker placement is when the smaller system based on the Nait 5i is capable of sounding better than the larger separates system in certain situations.

I would suggest optimising the speaker placement in the living room and listen to the system for several weeks or months to acclimatize to the sound. Then switch over to the smaller room and do the same thing. See which configuration you prefer. Obviously the system will sound very different between the 2 settings, not only in the bass response but other aspects of sound reproduction.

Good luck.

I'm not sure how is the placement of the equipment rack in the smaller room. You may experiment by switching from the centre between speakers to the side of the room. If the equipment rack is along the side wall, you may also experiment with the placement. All these will affect the sound too.

Losing all the bottom end is a good thing for me whilst the Other Half is away.   Saves the neighbours having to complain.

Speaker placement and room interaction are both important. Ideally, it may be more a matter of moving the speakers to another location  - (probably) possibly closer to a rear wall and (also) closer/ further apart. Still before doing anything else, double check that the speakers are in-phase ,much easier to do than moving speakers around only to find no improvement.

ryder. posted:

What do you mean by where it works but "doesn't have the space" in the smaller room. I guess you now realise how important the room and speaker placement is when the smaller system based on the Nait 5i is capable of sounding better than the larger separates system in certain situations.

I would suggest optimising the speaker placement in the living room and listen to the system for several weeks or months to acclimatize to the sound. Then switch over to the smaller room and do the same thing. See which configuration you prefer. Obviously the system will sound very different between the 2 settings, not only in the bass response but other aspects of sound reproduction.

Good luck.

Thanks ryder. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you didn't purposely intend to post a patronsing and useless response.

Let's see... " I guess you now realise how important the room and speaker placement is...". Yes, I do actually, which is why I commented that it's frustrating for it not to work as well as it did in the larger space that's much more akin to how I heard it all in various demo rooms, and why I'd naturally assumed that the boomy boxy bass issues in a smaller room would be hugely improved by giving the speakers room to breathe and to express themselves by moving it all to a bigger space, one where the 'cheap gear' worked superbly.

Let's cut to the chase. In my world I'm lucky enough to work with real people for whom a good stereo is one that costs 500 quid in Currys PC World, or a £750 splurge in Richer Sounds. A few hundred notes for an amp, the same again plus a bit more for a CD player then a couple of grand on top for some speakers is beyond reality for  our cleaner at work, but she's a tremendous woman and a devout Oxford United fan; each to their own. A Nait 5i with a CD5 and a pair of PMC 20 23s is the pinnacle of audio nirvana for her, presumably others too, me included not so long ago. So if I'm spending close to £17k on a handful of of black boxes and some stupidly ludicrous speakers, our cleaner and yours truly too would expect them to be awesome, like they were in the demo. I might accept that there would be small improvements to be found by tweaking the position of it all, or by adding carpets and cushions to soften the boominess in the smaller room. But I wouldn't expect Neil Nunes or Shawn Keaveny to go from sounding as if each was in the room while I'm in the kitchen making coffee of a morning, to sounding crapper than they both sound in the car on DAB. And being told that for this £17k outlay I need to spend a few months getting used to it - i.e. stick at it for a bit and accept the flat dull sounds as the new norm - would probably get on my wick, esp if the dealer who sold me all this gear told me that. I'd be asking what happened to the sonorous voices, the life, the drive, the chutzpa that it had previously. Motorhead, Hawkwind, LZ; these bands don't work without that low end shove that previously I could feel as well as hear.

There's something massive missing from it as it now sounds, not some minor tweak that can be resolved by moving things a bit or swapping the rack from in the middle to one side or the other. It's lost all of its energy and life, the very things that in the demo room in the summer made me grin with each new track that I played from my USB stick of carefully chosen demo music. The idea that sticking with it till next Easter and then giving it another go in the smaller room is a bit barmy, if you don't mind me saying. Still. OH is back tomorrow, so the audio gear reverts to being an occasional thing. Being on the settee watching the news together feet tangled up in a comfortable semi-silence is more enjoyable than trying to get the best out of these black boxes.

Triple check phase. Gently check that all bass-drivers are working by gently touching them. Move the speakers closer to the wall.

Thanks Winky, but it really isn’t the phase. Two checks is enough and if it were incorrectly connected it wouldn’t have the rock solid image and sound stage. 

There is some bass, the bass drivers are working. But it sounds flat, dull, and thin; even at serious volumes where normally even I'd be backing off and having a concern for the neighbours.

"oomph and the drive has all but gone"

A lot can be lost if the speakers are not sitting firmly on solid floor.  Re-siting them requires adjustments to the floor spikes. Hope this helps ...

1. spikes must pierce through carpeting and underlay to the rooms solid floor.

2. spikes must be adjusted so the speakers are level

3. all four spikes need to make floor contact so the speaker can't wobble. This is particularly important for bass to be fully transmitted into the room space without losses and lack of definition caused by speaker cabinet instability.

4. all spike nuts need to be tightened. Again, looseness of spikes will inhibit bass performance.

Same goes for any speaker or speaker stand designed to be mounted with four floor spikes.

When you say “gone back into the livng room” I assume it was the previous system that was there before rather than this one. It’s unlikey you’ve done any permenant damage just from moving it but your expectation that you can just plonk the speakers where they’ll fit in a different room and they’ll work optimally is unrealistic. Speaker positioning can be quite critical in getting the bass to work in a room, I remember when I was positioning the allaes in my second system, which is in a nearly  square room, the difference between an even bass response and a one note bass was 5mm in how close they were to the wall behind them. A sneaky move into the livingroom while the boss is away would require considerable luck to work with random postioning, the more capable the system the more sensitive it is to setup and this can take time and patience to get right which you don’t seem to have.

ChrisR_EPL posted:

OH is away for a couple of days, I've grown frustrated at the audio being relegated to the smaller room where it works but doesn't have space so whilst there's an opportunity it's all gone back into the living room.

If you allow OH to mandate the system's position it's no surprise to me it's compromised.

Time to get a pair, and I'm not talking about speakers.

Chris West posted:

"oomph and the drive has all but gone"

A lot can be lost if the speakers are not sitting firmly on solid floor.  Re-siting them requires adjustments to the floor spikes. Hope this helps ...

1. spikes must pierce through carpeting and underlay to the rooms solid floor.

2. spikes must be adjusted so the speakers are level

3. all four spikes need to make floor contact so the speaker can't wobble. This is particularly important for bass to be fully transmitted into the room space without losses and lack of definition caused by speaker cabinet instability.

4. all spike nuts need to be tightened. Again, looseness of spikes will inhibit bass performance.

Same goes for any speaker or speaker stand designed to be mounted with four floor spikes.

I find I have to re tighten the spikes a few days after moving my 804s as they settle. Is the flooring different between the two rooms? Have noticed in past that putting a rug or two down on a hard floor helps. 

ChrisR_EPL posted:

ryder. posted:

What do you mean by where it works but "doesn't have the space" in the smaller room. I guess you now realise how important the room and speaker placement is when the smaller system based on the Nait 5i is capable of sounding better than the larger separates system in certain situations.

I would suggest optimising the speaker placement in the living room and listen to the system for several weeks or months to acclimatize to the sound. Then switch over to the smaller room and do the same thing. See which configuration you prefer. Obviously the system will sound very different between the 2 settings, not only in the bass response but other aspects of sound reproduction.

Good luck.

Thanks ryder. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you didn't purposely intend to post a patronsing and useless response.

Let's see... " I guess you now realise how important the room and speaker placement is...". Yes, I do actually, which is why I commented that it's frustrating for it not to work as well as it did in the larger space that's much more akin to how I heard it all in various demo rooms, and why I'd naturally assumed that the boomy boxy bass issues in a smaller room would be hugely improved by giving the speakers room to breathe and to express themselves by moving it all to a bigger space, one where the 'cheap gear' worked superbly.

Let's cut to the chase. In my world I'm lucky enough to work with real people for whom a good stereo is one that costs 500 quid in Currys PC World, or a £750 splurge in Richer Sounds. A few hundred notes for an amp, the same again plus a bit more for a CD player then a couple of grand on top for some speakers is beyond reality for  our cleaner at work, but she's a tremendous woman and a devout Oxford United fan; each to their own. A Nait 5i with a CD5 and a pair of PMC 20 23s is the pinnacle of audio nirvana for her, presumably others too, me included not so long ago. So if I'm spending close to £17k on a handful of of black boxes and some stupidly ludicrous speakers, our cleaner and yours truly too would expect them to be awesome, like they were in the demo. I might accept that there would be small improvements to be found by tweaking the position of it all, or by adding carpets and cushions to soften the boominess in the smaller room. But I wouldn't expect Neil Nunes or Shawn Keaveny to go from sounding as if each was in the room while I'm in the kitchen making coffee of a morning, to sounding crapper than they both sound in the car on DAB. And being told that for this £17k outlay I need to spend a few months getting used to it - i.e. stick at it for a bit and accept the flat dull sounds as the new norm - would probably get on my wick, esp if the dealer who sold me all this gear told me that. I'd be asking what happened to the sonorous voices, the life, the drive, the chutzpa that it had previously. Motorhead, Hawkwind, LZ; these bands don't work without that low end shove that previously I could feel as well as hear.

There's something massive missing from it as it now sounds, not some minor tweak that can be resolved by moving things a bit or swapping the rack from in the middle to one side or the other. It's lost all of its energy and life, the very things that in the demo room in the summer made me grin with each new track that I played from my USB stick of carefully chosen demo music. The idea that sticking with it till next Easter and then giving it another go in the smaller room is a bit barmy, if you don't mind me saying. Still. OH is back tomorrow, so the audio gear reverts to being an occasional thing. Being on the settee watching the news together feet tangled up in a comfortable semi-silence is more enjoyable than trying to get the best out of these black boxes.

I apologise if you regard my post as offensive. That is certainly not my intention as speaker placement and setup in the room have always brought the largest difference in my experience, and that was the reason I made the suggestion which unfortunately appears to be useless to you. I hope you would get everything sorted out in the end.

If it was me I’d place the speakers right back to the wall. Then pull them off the wall 1 foot at a time to get the perfect bass response. If you find that the bass is lacking while against the wall I would suggest you have a problem with either your naim boxes or the speakers. Maybe both speaker xovers which I doubt. Could be like the 250 has crapped its self. Or the 272  is hissy fitting.

Cable dressing can help if you have a hi line make sure that is hanging free. 

Back in the day you could call the naim dealer and they would come out and sort it for you. Have things changed?

what I know for sure is that you system should be  peeling the wallpaper off the wall  at volume. Somethings wrong. 

I can imagine that this is very frustrating. Here are a few suggestions:

1. You could be sitting in a room null. With music playing move a meter or so forward and backward from your listening position and see if your bass is anywhere to be found. 

2. If your speakers are designed to allow tri-wiring make sure all the jumpers are tight and plug the speaker cables into the bass sockets

3. Check to make sure all mains socket phases are correctly wired (remember that mains can kill you if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing). If unsure get an electrician and ask him to check the earth on each socket while he’s at it

4. Anything new like a mains block? Are you using all the original mains cables?

5. Plug and unplug all your cables a few times to make sure they’re clean and making good contact. 

Simply moving your speakers is not going to cause any damage. They are designed to survive international shipping so going from 1 room to another is nothing

Maybe trivial, but have you got a cold or the flu ?  Sometimes under these conditions a major problem with the sinuses can cause hearing loss at certain frequencies.

Morning all. It's going back to where it lives when I get round to it, got a busy day ahead.

@ ryder; thanks, and apologies from me for going off. It was the suggestion that I give it some weeks or months to get used to it for what is a 2 day hiatus that did it.

@ Joerand: thx, but I agree with her. The rack + black boxes plus a large pair of floorstanders looks ridiculous in the living room and dominates a nice space. I'll keep the pair I've got if it's all the same to you.

To all the others, thanks for the suggestions; most [spikes, repositioning etc] I'd tried to no avail. It'll be back in its usual place soon; drama over.

ATB.

Nonetheless it is odd as bass is a PMC characteristic. It's almost as if they may not be run in enough so if you don't already do so, leave everything on 24x7 and give it a spin after a few days to see if there is any improvement. If not I would be back to the dealer if it were I. I don't think putting them towards the rear wall will help much due to the front firing bass port. 

Good luck!