Hi Folks,

I've finally completed my visit report on Peter (of Cymbiosis fame) to Hong Kong. Apologies for the delay in posting, but I have been very busy with all sorts of things going on and following up on work left aside while Mr Swaine was in town. The report runs for 5 pages and over a dozen photos, so I decided to put it on my own web site, but available to Naim forum members.

I have no doubt that some forum members will agree with my / our findings / comments whilst others will disagree. As always, to each his own. There is no definitive answer or panacea for our audio systems. It’s a good hobby, lots of fun, we make lots of friends and it keeps us all at home (except Peter) and off the streets.

The link is here :

http://web.mac.com/joe.silva/iWeb/Site/Photos.html

regards,

Joe

Joe

What an amazing review. What sort of pills did you arrange for the chefs to add to the cuisine that enabled the pair of you to keep going over those crazy hours?!!!

Thanks very much for taking the time to compile your report - a most enjoyable read - especially from wet, windy, dark, UK!!

Peter

Hi Joe,

Great review! I wish we here in the USA had someone like Peter who will come to your home and spend time tuning your system to perfection. I live in Central California where the only cuisine I could offer is barbequed Tritip beef!!

Anthony

Great read Joe!

Maybe some of us in the States can chip in and purchase a plane ticket for Peter.

Gregg

Brill review, Joe. Nice to see peter initially wrecking your room is not a unique experience!

I still recall my wife looking shocked as we wrecked cushions and curtains on his 1st visit to my place (when I had SBLS).

Brill.

A most excellent wte up Joe.

I find it interesting we were both playing around with the spikes under the Emotions at the same time. It looks like we both decided that the spikes were letting the speakers down.

I think I can also agre with your comments on the Valhala cable but I have yet to experience Peters new power chords and boxes as I intend to install seperate spurs sometime in February.


I have yet to discus te way your speakers sound in depth with peter yet as we are both all over the place. I am sure that when Peter has heard my Emotions on cones we can compare notes.

Interesting on dimensions, I have my tweeter sitting 125 cm away from the rear wall with toe in of approx 7 cm. I may experiment with moving them back a little now the bass is more under control,

Regards

PB

How very disturbing! I see Mr Han of 'Enter the Dragon' infamy is still alive and well....

Excellent report Joe

As one who has also had visits from the NHS consultant there is a feeling of deja vu to the long listening sessions interspersed with breaks for good food.

That is one serious cat. Do I detect a slight nervous edge to Peter's smile. The claws of death hovering no false moves on the LP12 allowed.

regards
Geoff

What an enjoyable and fascinating report, Joe, thanks. Peter is pretty amazing and certainly knows a thing or two about customer service!

I bet you're enjoying your fabulous system even more, now.

I know what you mean about being careful with your dad's LP12; I've got my dad's 1982 LP12 and I'm taking it in for a new power supply tomorrow.

Regards

Mark

Great write-up Joe.

I think we can all relate to the incredible cumulative effects of Peter's attention to detail.
it was also intersting to hear your report that the Indigos have mellowed. Has iming also tightened up? Maybe they're worth a more extended audition?

Cheers

Mike

I really enjoyed reading your experiences Joe. It seems that no stone was left unturned. There's a lot of valuable observations in your write up, thanks for sharing them.

Those resonators sound really interesting, I thought that the different metals resonated at different frequencies?


Enjoy!

quote:

Originally posted by Geoff P:
That is one serious cat. Do I detect a slight nervous edge to Peter's smile. The claws of death hovering no false moves on the LP12 allowed.
Geoff

Pixie is a big boy and weighs close to 20 pounds. He may look intimidating but he's just a giant marshmallow

He managed to get Peter to give him a good scratch in places he is unable to reach himself. So Peter is very useful for things other than hi-fi as well.

quote:

Originally posted by Polarbear:
A most excellent wte up Joe.

I find it interesting we were both playing around with the spikes under the Emotions at the same time. It looks like we both decided that the spikes were letting the speakers down.

I think I can also agre with your comments on the Valhala cable but I have yet to experience Peters new power chords and boxes as I intend to install seperate spurs sometime in February.


I have yet to discus te way your speakers sound in depth with peter yet as we are both all over the place. I am sure that when Peter has heard my Emotions on cones we can compare notes.

Interesting on dimensions, I have my tweeter sitting 125 cm away from the rear wall with toe in of approx 7 cm. I may experiment with moving them back a little now the bass is more under control,

Regards

PB

Hello Nigel,

I was very surprised how much differance the spikes and the a.c. cables made, but I guess once your system is highly tuned you can hear the affects of any changes quite noticably.

Peter might make another trip in Spring. Maybe you and others who are interested could make it too. We can have a big Shindig on the South China Coast. Maybe even take in Thailand, Peter's favorite haunt.

Joe

quote:

Originally posted by Polarbear:

I find it interesting we were both playing around with the spikes under the Emotions at the same time. It looks like we both decided that the spikes were letting the speakers down.

I think I can also agre with your comments on the Valhala cable but I have yet to experience Peters new power chords and boxes as I intend to install seperate spurs sometime in February.


I have yet to discus te way your speakers sound in depth with peter yet as we are both all over the place. I am sure that when Peter has heard my Emotions on cones we can compare notes.

Interesting on dimensions, I have my tweeter sitting 125 cm away from the rear wall with toe in of approx 7 cm. I may experiment with moving them back a little now the bass is more under control,
PB

Hi Nigel,

Experimenting with spikes makes quite a big differance to the sound quality. Peter moved my wooden spikes closer together (away from the original holes made by ART) and the image and sonics improved quite remarkably, with less nasality to voices.

I think you will be quite surprised with the Experience filtration kit. Compared to many others with fancy metalwork, etc. these perform very well with Naim equipment and are not expensive. Having said that, the Venture a.c. cables are quite a bit better than the Disclosures. We found that we could get a lot of the performance by plugging one Venture into the 555PS and using the cheaper Disclosures on the rest of the system.

Once the room's sonics are properly dealt with, speaker positioning is a little easier as the differances are quite noticable. You should be able to get better bass without the confusion.

Joe

quote:

Experimenting with spikes makes quite a big differance to the sound quality. Peter moved my wooden spikes closer together (away from the original holes made by ART) and the image and sonics improved quite remarkably, with less nasality to voices.

Interesting Joe, I had a conversation with peter about the placement of the cones. He advised me as to the best place to have them. When I got home hey presto guess where my cones were, exactly in the same place yours are.

I had a chat with derek today about removing the spikes and using the cones. It is something he is going to try out.

Regards

PB

Joe,

has the timing of the Indigo's tightened up as well as the treble mellowing now that they've "run in" a bit?

Cheers

Mike

quote:

Originally posted by northpole:
Joe
What an amazing review. What sort of pills did you arrange for the chefs to add to the cuisine that enabled the pair of you to keep going over those crazy hours?!!!
Thanks very much for taking the time to compile your report - a most enjoyable read - especially from wet, windy, dark, UK!!
Peter

Hello.

Back to Leicester this morning after my flight back from visiting Yeldarb and Dan in Northern Ireland. I must say, what a comprehensive review of my exploits with Joe's system Wow!

Peter - what kept us going? - Well, I'd say simply the enthusiasm to try to get more and more music out of Joe's system, which sounded mighty fine when I arrived, and just got better and better as we addressed various elements of it's set-up. We addopted a very systematic approach to our experimentation - for me, this is the only way to do it. ...Changing one thing at a time. Often we would be able to confirm an improvement by reverting back to the previous set-up, and so on and so forth. It's worth mentioning that sometimes, our changes didn't give any benefit, so we'd just move on to other things.

However, some of the greatest improvements were the simplest! For example: stopping unwanted movement from cupboard doors in Joe's room (initially by wedging them with folded paper tissues) had to be heard to be believed! These were replaced later by some self adhesive felt bump-stops which seemed to do the trick nicely!

The consistancy of the improvements we were making over the time gave us plenty of motovation to look for more (and not pay attention to what time it was . ) And, I must say that although perhaps initially I was, shall we say sceptical of some of the devices Joe had acquired to try and improve the acoustics of his room, I have to say that those resonator thingies do work I was able to hear differences during some blind listening tests, and I was suprised In fact, I was able to pick out when Joe placed the "best" resonators in the room (as per the manufacturers claims) each and evey time!

However in pure VFM terms I felt they lagged some way behind other changes we made to Joe's system, such as the re-positioning and re-building of the Fraim along with the attendant attention to cable dressing etc. But, they did allow the system to sound better using all our normal criteria PRAT, musicality etc. Clever? Strange.... but true!

Anyway, as you can see in the picture above I had a fantastic time. Joe and his family made me so very welcome. And yes, the cuisine was truly wonderful. So much so, that I must put myself on a diet! Especially after my jaunt over to see Brad and Dan too! .

Must go and do some work/catching up now.

Kind regards,

Peter

So Peter,

what are your impressions of the Emotions now?

Regards

PB

PB,

Some can sound very good indeed!

Ask Mr C how good mine sound