Hi-fi nonsense

Maybe it's best to audition everything whilst being blindfolded....

I once saw a silver Naim preamp at Naim. Didn't have to hear it to know it wouldn't sound the same...

Maybe that hint of brightness I just reflected upon on the 300DR thread.. 

Chag -

ChrisSU posted:

Richard Dane posted:

Chris, I think you are referring to the piano blacked finish compared to the veneers. There was certainly a difference, and I personally preferred them prior to having the piano black process applied. They did look nice though... 

btw, the n-SAts were done differently - I.e. They were piano black finished from the start rather than regular finish that was sent away to be done as was the case with the other speakers. Differences with the n-sat finishes were nowhere near as marked and were probably more down to the grille change. 

Of course there was the joke about either the black or white NACA5 being better than the other...

Found it......actually, it seems it was the other way round! Apparently?

https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...45#47323795888999045

Other way round? Not sure I understand.

wenger2015 posted:

I was reading a review on the focal Aria 926's Speakers  and it was claimed that they sounded better in black.....the black lacquer that is used helps the resonance, and helps in the overall performance ect ect 

I was somewhat disbelieving of this claim so checked this with the good people at Naim, the answer was ' it's a load of old nonsense' ...the colour of the speakers is immaterial.

So just wondered if anyone else has experienced what I would describe as Hi-fi Nonsense ...? 

 

Look at the process used to get the finish, not the finish itself. Every material, layer and thickness added to some high performance speakers' enclosure will change its 'sound'.

wenger2015 posted:

Maybe it's best to audition everything whilst being blindfolded....

Ah, but even better if I could blindfold the wife.....

Oh dear this almost feels like the old Peter Belt treatment of a piece of paper under one leg of the listening chair

When you've an active system, having different coloured speaker cable to each side saves any confusion when connected. Perfect! So I have black NACA5 to the left speaker. And white NACA5 to the right speaker. Except for the cables going to the midrange drivers, which are the other way round.

Well there are quite seriously held views on other forums that cables and racks make not the slightest difference and they back this up with double blind tests and the like.   Even more Peter Walker used to demonstrate his amps and speakers using lawnmower wire as speaker cable    

Ravenswood10 posted:

Oh dear this almost feels like the old Peter Belt treatment of a piece of paper under one leg of the listening chair

What colour paper is best?

if you didn't hear a marked difference then the colour was obviously wrong  (or the paper wasn't marked...)

Ravenswood10 posted:

Oh dear this almost feels like the old Peter Belt treatment of a piece of paper under one leg of the listening chair

Never heard of Peter Belt....? Please tell more....

wenger2015 posted:

Ravenswood10 posted:

Oh dear this almost feels like the old Peter Belt treatment of a piece of paper under one leg of the listening chair

Never heard of Peter Belt....? Please tell more....

I believe he was something of a Hi-Fi tweaking guru with fanciful ideas ( some would say far fetched). There have been references to his exploits on this forum before.

sheffieldgraham posted:

wenger2015 posted:

Ravenswood10 posted:

Oh dear this almost feels like the old Peter Belt treatment of a piece of paper under one leg of the listening chair

Never heard of Peter Belt....? Please tell more....

I believe he was something of a Hi-Fi tweaking guru with fanciful ideas ( some would say far fetched). There have been references to his exploits on this forum before.

Interesting,  will give him a Google.... 

Google PWB Electronics

wenger2015 posted:

I was reading a review on the focal Aria 926's Speakers  and it was claimed that they sounded better in black.....the black lacquer that is used helps the resonance, and helps in the overall performance ect ect 

I was somewhat disbelieving of this claim so checked this with the good people at Naim, the answer was ' it's a load of old nonsense' ...the colour of the speakers is immaterial.

So just wondered if anyone else has experienced what I would describe as Hi-fi Nonsense ...? 

 

Funny that. When I visited the factory about 3 years back our tour guide (Jason) recounted the tale of a customer who wanted his speakers refurbished in black gloss lacquer. Neither Naim or the customer liked how they sounded and they were subsequently put back to their original veneer, which restored the sound. 

The moral of this story seems obvious.

Innocent Bystander posted:

Ravenswood10 posted:

Oh dear this almost feels like the old Peter Belt treatment of a piece of paper under one leg of the listening chair

What colour paper is best?

if you didn't hear a marked difference then the colour was obviously wrong  (or the paper wasn't marked...)

 

I actually have a piece of A3 size black 120gsm paper on top of my 552.

This is because the 552 sits atop the rack and gets used as a place to put LP covers & CD cases whilst playing said contents, so the stiff paper covering protects the 552's imaculate finish.  So far as sound quality degradation is concerned all I can say is that, having tried both white paper and black paper, the black gives the better performance.

At first I found this incredulous, but after a while discovered what it was that caused the difference - it was simple:

With white paper atop the 552, one's eye was drawn toward it - it was so obviously 'out of place', The black on the other hand was for the most part 'invisable' and is easily ignored.  Try it yourself... if your Naim stack is not placed centrally between speakers ( as mine isn't ), just, during a listening session, turn your head slightly away from central  and toward your stack (as if distracted by something on top of your preamp)... see how the sound changes?

Snake oil?  Nonsense, this is science in action, no less.

Of course as everyone knows white NACA5 sounds better than black!

sheffieldgraham posted:

wenger2015 posted:

Ravenswood10 posted:

Oh dear this almost feels like the old Peter Belt treatment of a piece of paper under one leg of the listening chair

Never heard of Peter Belt....? Please tell more....

I believe he was something of a Hi-Fi tweaking guru with fanciful ideas ( some would say far fetched). There have been references to his exploits on this forum before.

Guru? Some would use other words. He was given print space in one of the UK HiFi Magazines back in the 1980s, and the apparent seriousness with which the press seemed to regard his, erm, meticulously researched tweaks was a factor in making numbers of people give up buying the magazines.

I don't remember the paper under a chair leg, but that was exactly the type of thing. I seem to recall that a saucer of water in the corner of the room made a night and day difference as well...   Some things might have had some basis in reality, but claimed effects were rather, shall we say, exaggerated (e.g humidity in the air can affect sound, but unless the humidity levels are so low as to be causing irritation of mucous membranes of the listener, and the saucer the size of a bucket with a towel acting as a wick, the effect of the saucer on the sound would be negligible).

BigH47 posted:

Of course as everyone knows white NACA5 sounds better than black!

 

Is it the same for both L & R channels?

Emre posted:

I tried orange vs black sopras, black got more detail and a tighter bass, expended stage and my wife accepted only black.

So I went for the black!

My findings were the exact opposite.  I tried a side by side comparison with the orange sopras connected to a full SL wired Statement system and the black ones were connected via bell wire to a Nad 3020 fed by a 3.5mm output of an MP3 player and the orange definitely had more detail and a tighter bass.....

What do you expect? You should have disconnected the bell before playing.

Johnell posted:

Emre posted:

I tried orange vs black sopras, black got more detail and a tighter bass, expended stage and my wife accepted only black.

So I went for the black!

My findings were the exact opposite.  I tried a side by side comparison with the orange sopras connected to a full SL wired Statement system and the black ones were connected via bell wire to a Nad 3020 fed by a 3.5mm output of an MP3 player and the orange definitely had more detail and a tighter bass.....

Alas, was the 300 DR ?

Don Atkinson posted:

If the LP12 plinths and the Isobarik cabinets are made from different timber, oak, ash, rosewood, teak, afrimosa etc its almost certain they will sound different  well, they did to me !. Better or worse to many people, but certainly different. Colour induced differences from a coating would probably be masked and relatively insignificant.

If these timber items are all made from the same species, they would still sound different, depending on moisture content, grain, cell density......again, colour induced differences might exist but probably swamped by the underlying material.

With materials of more consistency, the pigment of a colour-coating might produce a difference in sound quality as outlined in the initial post

Sounds like the Stradivarius principle.

Nonsense moment: being told I was wrong to prefer the Prefix over the Dynavector phono stage by a dealer who 'wanted to be my only supplier of hifi'. This was the same dealer who tried to demonstrate that pre-cirkus Linns sounded better and tried to prove it until I asked him to swap the aro tone arms on the two decks to reveal that of the two identical cartridges, one was clearly badly worn. I never went back.

i put a photo of my boss on my nap 300 dr during listening. I don't understand why but the music sounded worse.