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New Hifi Day - Naim SL2 Aktiv Exakt

gidders

gidders

hifi enthusiast, golfer & photographer
You may have seen my posts that I've been running SBLs aktiv with a Linn ADSM/Exaktbox digital crossover & DAC/2 x Naim 250s and loving the transformation which I described as having seven league boots on compared to my Naim Snaxo active . But when a pair of SL2s came up at the right price it was an opportunity too good to be missed.

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I picked them a couple of weeks ago I installed them using the same digital crossover as I'd used with the SBLS (after all Naim used the same Snaxo for SBLs & SL2s) They sounded great, more bass control, more separation around vocals & cymbals. If SBLs are like your young mate who is larger than life & great fun to be around, the SL2s are the person they've matured into. Something a bit more rounded, not quite so in your face, having bags of authority & still great fun to hang out with. And they look great so added WAF, not that I have a W whose A I have to F :)

The filters/digital crossovers for my SBLs were created for me by Neill Hallworth / @sunbeamgls of www.speakerfilters.com and when he heard that I'd got the SL2s, he offered to come & create some dedicated bespoke filters rather than just using the SBL ones. He advised me that, although the drivers were very similar (my SBLs were Mk 1) they would have different impedances, the cabinet volumes would be different, there would be phase difference etc etc and he was confident that he would be able to extract more performance from them.

So yesterday Neill called with his majik box of triks. The first step was to take electrical diver measurements which, together with some base crossover information from Naim, were then plugged into exakt design to create an initial filter. Before loading that into my Exaktbox, we reset the speakers to passive & took a frequency response scan as a reference point. V1 of the filters was a good starting point although, as with the passive crossover, there was a big dip at 560hz (which I'd read about in a review being down to a diaphragm resonance) with a hump either side but high frequency roll off better controlled.

So Neil lowered the bass/mid roll off point, added a boost at the dip point and a couple of cuts either side to smooth out the humps. With this iteration the dip was significantly reduced & the whole frequency response was much flatter. Being a non -ported design, the bass starts to roll off at about 120hz so lastly Neil added a subtle lift from this point down.

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So how do they sound now. Well I wasn't ready for or, expecting the magnitude of the improvement. All the strengths of musicality & PRaT are there in spades but now hi hats really shimmered, recording venue acoustics were tangible, bass lines are so solid, the space around instruments & performers improved, the decay on notes seemed to hang in the air. Boundary speakers are not renowned for their imaging but this has tightened up so that you can place individual performers, or even where the cymbals in the drum kit, are. The mid range has a much smoother integration. The slight mid/high frequency brightness had been tamed & the somewhat bass light presentation was gone leaving me wondering if I would still need my sub. (I have still got it in the system but I've dialled it down about 30% :))

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The end result is so impressive, I've done no work today, I've been sat here listening to track after track. A big thank you to Neil - another awesome job.

If you want to come & have a listen to Exaktly what SL2s Aktiv should sound like, (Birmingham, West Midlands) or to have a chat, just get in touch - you will be very welcome - just be prepared to radically rethink what Aktiv can do for you :)
 
I’d love come and have a listen, I’m not too far from you, I’m in Shire Oak, on the Chester Road. I’ve had Naim with Linn speakers, but never the other way round. Also, Exakt is the route I’ll likely take eventually, so I am interested.
 
Very cool that you're doing this. I've no doubt that custom tuning filters, with today's consumer-available tool sets and knowledge bases likely make for fantastic results and much improved to off the shelf solutions. I think the use of the Linn exaktbox at the front end whilst still mating naim to naim amp and speakers is a great way to go. I'm sure it sounds excellent.
 
Interesting that the Exactbox is used as the active crossover - Exactbox model is that? Does it include a DAC, I know some models do have one?

Does this better a Naim SNAXO? It appears Linn are ahead of the curve here and the Exactbox possibly opens up options for existing S/NAXO users and more. Are the filters programmable by a user to setup, or does this require specialist setup?
 
Well, I went and listened to this last night.

Firstly, Clive was a most welcoming host and I look forward to meeting him again, now onto his system, in a word wow! The first few notes sounded a little dry, but it didn’t take long before it became very apparent that I wasn’t listening to his room and instead you could just hear the system doing it’s job... or rather you couldn’t, there was no sense of anything getting in the way of the music, everything just flowed effortlessly, no attention drawn to any one part of the frequency spectrum.

Now for the negative side of my experience, well I’m gonna need to raise some cash, I need that sound in my life!
It has become very apparent that my room is playing a very large part in the sound of my system, I have a noticeable bass boom at around 65Hz, and the room is a little too lively, so my first port of call will be to fix that with some room treatments, I need to get measuring. Next step will be addressing the system itself, Exakt works brilliantly, Clive was able to easily remove the room correction and change to the stock filters, which immediately highlighted what Exakt is capable of. I’m now certain that this is the way forward for my system, I just need to find a way to make that happen. Also props to Neil (Sunbeamgls), he really knows what he’s doing with this Exakt stuff... once I’m there, I’ll be more than tempted to invite him round to wring the best out of my setup.

Thank you for the invite Clive,
PS I’m envious of your home, and your beautiful system.
 
@gidders great write up, interesting stuff, do I also spot something going on with spike replacements on the SL2s? Don't want to derail the thread, just interested!

Sorry I am very ignorant of Linn stuff outside of LP12.

Obiously somewhere there must be an ADC for the turntable. Which box of tricks is that?
The Exakt takes digital inputs?
The Exakt implements cross over and room correction tweaks in DSP?
How specific to your set up are the Exakt filters for the SL2, presumably some of it is speaker related and should be common enough to all SL2 owners, some of it is room related and may be specific only to you?
Obviously somewhere there must be a pair of DACs now, one for HF, one for LF. Which boxs of tricks is that?
Then out to your Naim amps driving the SL2 active.

Apologies for the daft questions.
 
nobeone said:
@gidders great write up, interesting stuff, do I also spot something going on with spike replacements on the SL2s? Don't want to derail the thread, just interested!

Sorry I am very ignorant of Linn stuff outside of LP12.

Obiously somewhere there must be an ADC for the turntable. Which box of tricks is that?
The Exakt takes digital inputs?
The Exakt implements cross over and room correction tweaks in DSP?
How specific to your set up are the Exakt filters for the SL2, presumably some of it is speaker related and should be common enough to all SL2 owners, some of it is room related and may be specific only to you?
Obviously somewhere there must be a pair of DACs now, one for HF, one for LF. Which boxs of tricks is that?
Then out to your Naim amps driving the SL2 active.

Apologies for the daft questions.
Click to expand...

The Akurate Exakt DSM is several things - it is a streamer, has digital inputs, a phono stage, analogue line level inputs and an ADC stage. It is also the pre-amp and has a Linn "Exaktlink" output.

Exakt implements the crossover, individual driver phase correction, avoids crossover phase and time distortion, provides time alignment between the drivers, room optimisation and performs the digital to analogue conversion - all done in the Exaktbox which is connected to the DSM via the Exaktlink. The Exaktbox is programmable and can be changed from one type of speaker to another, for speakers where Exakt filters are available.

The Exakt filter used by Gidders are for any pair of SL2s - he was previously using the Exaktbox with SBLs - a simple configuration change uploads the SL2 filters. The room correction is specific to the room and is achieved by inputting the physical dimensions of the room into the system, the Exaktbox then does the processing according to the room's requirements - they're also user tweakable across a number of parameters. When moving the system to a different room, its just a case of inputting the new room dimensions.

The Exaktbox (in Gidders' case) has 6 channels - there is a DAC per channel, each one dedicated to one drive unit in the speaker. As the SL2 is a 2-way speaker (a total of 4 drive units in the system), 4 channels of the Exaktbox are in use in his system. This outputs line level (but volume controlled) to any standard power amplifier - in this case, 4 channels of Naim 250s.

I believe he's happy to have visitors for a listen.

Also, at the Wam show on 15th March there will be a Linn Exakt system running Graham LS5/9 (modified) if you can get to the show for a listen. Room 120.
 
@sunbeamgls ok thanks, I get the architecture now. So where do you come in? Presumably Linn cover their speakers and allow third parties to cover other speakers?

So what is the entry level cost for the DSM and Exakt box? I had a quick look but I have always found Linns range utterly obscure in their naming and so have no idea if to get the DSP cross overs you are £5k or £50k down!
 
nobeone said:
@sunbeamgls ok thanks, I get the architecture now. So where do you come in? Presumably Linn cover their speakers and allow third parties to cover other speakers?

So what is the entry level cost for the DSM and Exakt box? I had a quick look but I have always found Linns range utterly obscure in their naming and so have no idea if to get the DSP cross overs you are £5k or £50k down!
Click to expand...
The (almost) cheapest route into it if you’re buying new is with the Akurate system hub (£2700 and includes the steamer, a very decent MM/MC phono stage and ADCs for all analog sources) and the Akurate Exaktbox i, which now has Katalyst DACs and eight channels of amplification and costs £4995, so that’s £7695 for an entire Akurate Exakt system (minus speakers obviously).
 
Stuart Frazer said:
Interesting that the Exactbox is used as the active crossover - Exactbox model is that? Does it include a DAC, I know some models do have one?

Does this better a Naim SNAXO? It appears Linn are ahead of the curve here and the Exactbox possibly opens up options for existing S/NAXO users and more. Are the filters programmable by a user to setup, or does this require specialist setup?
Click to expand...

@Stuart Frazer I'm using the Akurate Exactbox. All EBs have DAC in them, The Majik EBi & Akurate EBi also have power amps in @sunbeamgls can probably explain the differences

Is Exakt better than a SNAXO? Miles!! I has Aktive SBLs using an Akurate DSM / SNAXO / Supercap / 2 x 250 but the improvement going Exakt was huge - you can read about it here https://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/sbls-from-snaxo-to-exakt-a-world-first.232226/
 
nobeone said:
@sunbeamgls ok thanks, I get the architecture now. So where do you come in? Presumably Linn cover their speakers and allow third parties to cover other speakers?

So what is the entry level cost for the DSM and Exakt box? I had a quick look but I have always found Linns range utterly obscure in their naming and so have no idea if to get the DSP cross overs you are £5k or £50k down!
Click to expand...

Linn write the Exakt filters for their own speakers and a tiny number of non-Linn speakers. There are also a very smaller number of filters written by speaker manufacturers such as Kudos and Manger.

For all other speakers there is me. I was trained by Linn's chief speaker designer and the software team in how to design the filters. I've now completed around 20 different speakers including the filters for Gidders' SL2 and his SBL before that.
Once the designs are complete, they're available "off the shelf".
HouseofLinn have a pair of modified Graham LS5/9 on dem with Exakt using my filters and as of 2 weeks ago the Linn reps who look after the dealerships have been distributing my contact details with the dealers.
 
Thanks @gidders, very kind offer, and great to see you extending the pfm hand of friendship to come and listen to your system, @linnfomaniac83 report makes it sound very inviting, if I am ever coming anywhere near I might just take you up on that, however you can rest easy, I don't leave the county very often ;)

I think what @sunbeamgls is providing is fantastic, dragging the Naim speakers into the future, with Linn tech! :eek:

Thanks for the answers chaps!
 
sunbeamgls said:
Linn write the Exakt filters for their own speakers and a tiny number of non-Linn speakers. There are also a very smaller number of filters written by speaker manufacturers such as Kudos and Manger.

For all other speakers there is me. I was trained by Linn's chief speaker designer and the software team in how to design the filters. I've now completed around 20 different speakers including the filters for Gidders' SL2 and his SBL before that.
Once the designs are complete, they're available "off the shelf".
HouseofLinn have a pair of modified Graham LS5/9 on dem with Exakt using my filters and as of 2 weeks ago the Linn reps who look after the dealerships have been distributing my contact details with the dealers.
Click to expand...
Do you have settings for kudos 606?
 
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