This report is a brief account of Peter’s 5 day visit to my home in Hong Kong, and the sonic improvements that have resulted in my system.   Peter spent over 50 hours adjusting my system, mostly in the evenings until the early hours of the morning.  I guess this was partly because it is quieter at night and the a.c. is a lot cleaner.  Most nights, we finished at 5:00a.m. or 6:00a.m.  In the daytime, I took Peter sightseeing.

 

I wish to point out that whilst the opinions are entirely my own, I believe Peter concurred with my opinions and I trust he will back me up with my findings.   Nevertheless, a similar system in a different room may or may not bring about the same results.  I encourage readers to experiment and draw their own conclusions.

 

 

My system before Peter arrived consisted of the following :

 

Naim 555 / 552 / 500, Hi-Line, NACA5 and Naim-wired HYDRA a.c. connector.  Naim fraim on three bases

Kondo M-7 Phono & MC step-up transformer

Linn LP-12, Lingo 2, Ekos 2, Akiva

ART Emotion Silver Signatures & Murata 103 Ceramic Super Tweeters

Acoustic System Resonators and diffusers

 

 

About a week before Peter’s arrival, a one metre din-to-din Chord Indigo and Nordost Valhalla a.c. cable arrived in the post, some 10 weeks after it left Leicester.  I replaced the Hi-Line between my CD555 and 552 and immediately noticed a significant improvement in overall sound quality.  Compared to the Indigo, the hi-line appeared tonally flat, and the soudstage was dimensionally compressed both from a depth & width perspective.   There was greater detail, especially microdynamic detail and frequency extension at both ends of the frequency spectrum with the Indigo in place of the Hi-Line.   I own a pair of Chord Signature speaker cables which I took out of the system in favour of the NACA5 when the hi-line first arrived some six months ago, as the two Naim cables seemed to work together so much better than when mixed with Chord.  With the inclusion of the Indigo, the preferences changed once again, this time in favour of the Chord Signature / Indigo configuration.   Everything just seemed more detailed, natural and dynamic, without any noticeable deterioration in timing.

 

I connected the Nordost Valhalla a.c. cord into the part of the Hydra which connects into the electricity supply.  I felt that this caused a timing mismatch and no significant overall improvement in the sonic presentation, although there was a slight reduction of hiss.  After a couple of days with the Valhalla in place (just to ensure it was not a warm-up issue), I decided to remove it, and immediately the timing improved.