Not quite deserving of a Darwin Award but.....

Cheapest and quickest upgrade ever!!!!

I presumed that you meant L and R were reversed, so no sound quality effect expected - as opposed to wiring out of phase, which would not have been so good?

How is it, violins on the right side of an orchestra?

ChrisSU posted:

I presumed that you meant L and R were reversed, so no sound quality effect expected - as opposed to wiring out of phase, which would not have been so good?

Exactly. Looking at the amp from the front, the speakers were connected to their nearest ports. I had the phasing correct but never in a million years did I think the cables needed to connect to the ports furthest away from them. I only found out when I sent a dodgy interconnect cable back for inspection which kept dropping the left channel (which I posted on a few weeks ago). The manufacturer confirmed 1 channel is dodgy but it's the right one, not the left one. He then asked if I had the speaker cables plugged in correctly - they should cross over at the back (which they don't!).

What an absolute berk!

Jonners posted:

I've just found out I've had my speaker cables plugged in the wrong way round on the back of my 200.

They've been this way for the last 14 years. Humiliation and embarrassment doesn't even come close.....

Never had cause to use the balance control ?  Or to dust ? 

Naim have always put the sockets the 'wrong' way round, allegedly from their days of producing pro audio gear which would be used with the sockets facing forwards, and therefore the 'right' way round. They finally got round to changing this with the latest Unitis, so if you buy one of those, you'll probably make the same mistake again  

Ardbeg10y posted:

How is it, violins on the right side of an orchestra?

I don't listen to Classical music but forming a mental picture of an orchestral put, I'd have to say the sections would be out of kilter. It does explain why listening to music with heavy left to right and right to left "panning", such as "The Race" by Yello seemed to sound rather odd! 

Guinnless posted:

Never had cause to use the balance control ?  Or to dust ? 

Balance? no. Dust? Oh yes, every week. It's one of my obsessions.

I did the same for about 5 years.  I noticed that L/R presentation was different when I switched to separates from the Nait but there were other more interesting changes too.  I didn't care about soundstage (still don't) and had a small listening room besides.  A similar thread on the forum clued me in.  

Jonners posted:

Ardbeg10y posted:

How is it, violins on the right side of an orchestra?

I don't listen to Classical music but forming a mental picture of an orchestral put, I'd have to say the sections would be out of kilter. It does explain why listening to music with heavy left to right and right to left "panning", such as "The Race" by Yello seemed to sound rather odd! 

I can’t think of a reason why it should make anything sound noticeably odd Jonners. The way I understand it, you’ve simply been listening to a mirror image of the intended soundstage with no effect on image centralisation or the quality of sound reproduction as such? Jumbled up phase could have caused SQ issues, but as I understand it, switched L/R is really just cosmetics. Someone please correct me if I have that wrong.

Me, too!

I immediately checked, by moving the balance ... indeed odd by Naim ...

(But only since 6 months or so .... ;-)

KR,

Steffen

kevin J Carden posted:

Jonners posted:

Ardbeg10y posted:

How is it, violins on the right side of an orchestra?

I don't listen to Classical music but forming a mental picture of an orchestral put, I'd have to say the sections would be out of kilter. It does explain why listening to music with heavy left to right and right to left "panning", such as "The Race" by Yello seemed to sound rather odd! 

I can’t think of a reason why it should make anything sound noticeably odd Jonners. The way I understand it, you’ve simply been listening to a mirror image of the intended soundstage with no effect on image centralisation or the quality of sound reproduction as such? Jumbled up phase could have caused SQ issues, but as I understand it, switched L/R is really just cosmetics. Someone please correct me if I have that wrong.

Well, I have intentionally listened a few weeks to an inverted image - I'm trying to find different positions for my loudspeakers. There were two reasons why I did not entirely like the inverted image:

1) It simply does not compute in my mind anymore. I have a persistent trigger telling me something is wrong - mostly because of the violins on the other side.

2) reflections. When one loudspeaker is closer to a side wall, that loudspeaker sounds louder causing an unbalance in the image. The other way around would have been an issue as well though.

Proof of Naim amps infamous take on soundstage and other cosmetic niceties over musicality and PRaT ?

You might end up feeling something's missing and switch back.

A while ago I noticed during a demo that my dealer had wired L and R the wrong way round. I only noticed because it was a track I knew very well, and the vocals were coming from the wrong side of the room. As expected, it didn't sound worse, just different.

I was trying DSD 512 upsampling to  Holo DAC and noticed Ringo had switched sides in strawberry fields and contacted Magna Hifi who I’d bought the DAC from. They confirmed the LR switch and said I was the first customer to notice it. So it’s easily missed apparently. (A firmware update moved Ringo back!). 

.sjb

For rock & pop, there's a language [for want of a better word] that music and stereo positioning fits within. Movement is generally left to right, hi-hats & crashes have a place that corresponds to the drum kit; when a guitar is double-tracked and starts first on one side then the other joins in it'll be left first then right. That's just the way it is, normally.

Disclaimer - 70s rock & pop is my gig, ymmv. One of my usual checks when reconnecting everything new or old back together is to play It's Late on the News Of The World album. a) It's great and b) the guitar double tracks left to right at the start. It just does. Any excuse will do to play it.

When I bought my first 'serious' TT after years I connected my Grado Prestige Blue and listened happily for months. Then one day I noticed that definitely with classical music the orchestra was reversed. So I checked and found out that not only my channels were in fact reversed but there was a chance that one of the two was out of phase with the other.

Working with glasses, tweezers, a magnifying lens and the care one would reserve for his own testicles, I started to disconnect the four straws and they were so tight that extracting the first one I tore off all four and remained with the bare wires, naked copper, hanging out of the tonearm.

I wonder if it wouldn't have been wiser to simulate I was listening to an American Orchestra of the 50s and keep everything as it was...

Best anyway,

M. 

Doesn't it mean that if you transpose the players from left to right and vice versa that the right-handed players are playing left-handed (and vice versa), as in a flipped photo? Or maybe they are facing the wrong way?

i did this with my 300 when it first arrived, luckily i also watch TV through the system so when some guy in a film ( left of screen) started shouting and his voice came out of the right speaker i had a doh! moment  much head scratching and eventually - why the hell have they done that!

Linn CDPs have two sets of outputs right next to each other. The left is ABOVE the right, rather than next to it. I had both speakers  playing the left channel for a while.

Nagual posted:

i did this with my 300 when it first arrived, luckily i also watch TV through the system so when some guy in a film ( left of screen) started shouting and his voice came out of the right speaker i had a doh! moment  much head scratching and eventually - why the hell have they done that!

I have my TV through my 282 but didn't notice anything was awry, possibly because my mind or my ears were playing tricks, a bit like getting used to varifocal glasses. As a side note, I recently got a Hydra cable to power the hi-fi and deployed the Russ Andrews XBlock I had been using to power the TV and Playstation and boy, what a massive difference to the picture that made!

Ardbeg10y posted:

How is it, violins on the right side of an orchestra?

OTOH “Made in Japan” would be the right way round!

You need the clowns to the left and the jokers to the right..

Suzy Wong posted:

Ardbeg10y posted:

How is it, violins on the right side of an orchestra?

OTOH “Made in Japan” would be the right way round!

Excellent post.

Even with rock music (as opposed to the formality of an orchestral layout), a drumkit should be the 'normal' way around in the image.