I should have left well alone !!! (More on "How to listen ...")

Posted by: DIL on 16 August 2001

Hi again,

The replies to my post yesterday about not being really happy with my system and wondering about what to listen for sparked something off and I decided to go back to square one. This, however, is not a tale with a happy ending (yet). The damned thing sounds worse. Much worse. I now have a noticable mid-range resonance (indeed, a damned almighty buzz - highly non-subjective) with eg. double bass - 1st track of Rickie Lee Jones latest - which seems to be independent of source - also noticable on the one LP I tried, but CD was easier to work with - pre (I still have my 42.5), volume... As you can imagine, I am not a happy man. (The fact that my PalmV has also thrown a wobbly is not helping matters.)

I am venting. I guess a few words to cheer me up - been there, made that mistake etc. - would be nice, but then again...

Here is a summary of the changes so far. More news later as, hopefully, things return to, and surpass, previous levels of enjoyment !

1. Speaker Placement.
We have an open plan lounge / dining area with the dining area floor some 70 cm above the lounge floor. The speakers were in front of the 70cm "wall" between the two - firing into the lounge area. (I can draw you a picture if anyone is interested.)

Decided to rearrange things so that the speakers were against the main wall in the lounge - firing towards the dining area. Also rested the speakers on 10mm MDF so as to be able to slide them around to sort out positioning.

2. Having moved the speakers to where the system / records were, I decided to move the system up into the dining area. Since I have the speaker cables 'hidden' for much of their length in white plastic tube eg small (25mm ish ?) drain pipe, which is fixed to the wall (No microphonic effects from springy wooden floors there !!!), I is simply pulled the cables through to level them. I searched in vain for direction markings on the NACA4 which I run. The plus side of this manouver was that there is virtually no excess cable and the neat coils that I once had (Yep, it's true) have gone.

3. Shifted the rest of the gear into place and set up as best I could. Sorry to say, I have the electronic components on a standard piece of shelved furniature, and the LP12 on the ubiquitous IKEA small sqaure table (Or at least they were when I bought my first LP12 many moons ago.) Dressed the cables with, where possible, power cables running at 90o to signal cables etc.

4. Swich on and .... The rest you know.

I will try to isolate the problem this evening and see what transpires. Any comments welcome.

/david

Posted on: 16 August 2001 by Duncan Fullerton
David,

Just a thought ... is the 250 old enough to need re-capping? A few yesrs ago I started to pick up some nasty tizzy mush on one speaker and put it down to a knackered drive. £70 for a new drive unit later and still the same noise. Then I did some elimination and it turned out that my 10-year old 135's needed re-capping. Problem solved and good sounds restored!

Posted on: 16 August 2001 by Phil Barry
Are the speakers designed to be placed against the wall? If not, I'd move them for a smoother bass.

OTOH, if there's buzzing, you may be experiencing a malfunction that requires service.

Best of luck.

Phil

Posted on: 16 August 2001 by Greg Beatty
Hummm...

Since you've moved everything and everything was fine (er, buzzless at least) before you moved it, then either:

1) something about the new setup isn't right, or

2) something got damaged during the moving.

I'm guessing #1.

Are you sure you wired everything the same way, including the LP12's ground wire? Some systems buzz with it connected, others with it disconnected.

Also, are you sure the interconnects between the Naim bits are going into/out of the right connectors and are oriented in the right direction?

Is there a buzz when you are not playing any music or is it just a resonance you hear in the playback?

- GregB
More questions, no answer

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