- Room is approx. 7 x 4 metres, with sloping ceiling whose height varies from 2.5 to 3.5 metres lengthways
- Speakers facing shorter end of room, about 2.5 metres from that end, LH speaker about 0.5 metre from side wall
- As already mentioned, single microphone 2 metres behind RH speaker
- The room, a work room, is extremely cluttered, full of hard and soft surfaces, carpet on floor
- Deliberately started part way through track so that the the sound of the room and noise levels could be picked up during the gap between the the two tracks captured
As a reference for comparisons, other YouTube clips with the actual source material are The Faces - That's All You Need - YouTube and Jimmy McCracklin, EVERYBODY ROCK - YouTube.
The NAD amp uses relays driven by protection circuitry to connect to speakers, delayed closing of contacts on switch on, etc - and I was hoping that these wouldn't prove to be a quality bottleneck. Unfortunately, even though earlier listening didn't show any major issues this is ever more becoming noticeable, as improvements elsewhere make it easier to pick this happening - especially on pre-WWII recordings, which so easily descend into sounding like AM radio broadcasts, the harsh edge that typically vocals acquire when poor connections are a factor was clearly evident. This was easily tested by switching off the amp while music was playing, then switching back on again some seconds later, cleaning the contacts temporarily - the natural sweetness of the voices returns, only to slowly degrade with continuing playing of the track.
Hard wiring, bypassing the switch contacts is a permanent solution, from previous experience; but I lose the protection mechanism, plus have possible power on thumps through the speakers. Anyway, I will use this method for now to confirm that what I'm hearing is directly caused by the particular contacts - and then decide what to do about it, long term ...
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