The CDS-II is brilliant but...

Posted by: NigelP on 25 June 2001

My CDS-II has been good getting better. Some CD's were a little hard and my dealer suggested sending the unit back to have it checked over. I've just got it back and the difference is actually quite staggering! It appears that a couple of resistors on the line-out circuitry were overheating and showed signs of excessive power being run through them. Naim replaced these with two higher power resistors and I am blown away by the amount of information that was being lost. Mine is an older CDS-II - any words of wisdom from Naim on whether this was a mod that was made during its lifetime?

Posted on: 25 June 2001 by Don Atkinson

NigelP,

You say "Some CD's were a little hard"

Crikey! from your description there didn't sound to be a lot wrong with what I presume is a 2 or 3 year old cds2 ?

How many others are out there sounding just like yours was, with owners not fully satisfied, but with less knowlegable and less helpful dealers !!

Or does it also apply to the occasional new one !!
The one that never seems to fully break-in ?

Please tell us all of the symtoms (not the benefits now that its fixed, the symtoms) so we can all rest assured that ours are 'good-uns that don't need surgery!'

Still dazed and shocked !!!!

Cheers

Don

Posted on: 26 June 2001 by Paul Stephenson

"replaced these with two higher power resistors"
The 27r resistor was burnt out and replaced with new 27r, possible fault caused by short in burndy interconnect.
We also re-dressed an internal cable which had been changed since your model had been supplied.
The sound quality improvement was due to the 27r working correctly.

Posted on: 28 June 2001 by NigelP

I just went down stairs to try to figure out what I mean. The CDS-II is one of the best CD players I've ever heard and I am truly pleased with mine. It took about two weeks for it to really get going but, on some CD's, the music didn't seem to flow in quite the same way as my LP12. Also there seemed to be strain in some of the peaks (voice, piano and guitar). My dealer (a true expert and trusted advisor) suggested the investigation. This is the second reason I am very pleased with my purchase. Naim's customer service really is second to none here. I didn't know that the resistor had burnt out and I am still using the same burndy - I'll speak with the dealer tomorrow.
Anyway, I've just listened to a couple of CD's (BB King's Blues on the Bayou and David Gray's White Ladder) and the flow is there. The Blues on the Bayou CD is absolutely stunning with flow, attack and speed which is just music and easily as good as the best in vinyl I've heard. David Gray's CD is not such a good recording but the feeling in the songs is there. So when I say it was good before I mean it was the best in CD (apart from the CD12) that I'd ever heard but now its better. I would like to put it up against the CD12 now! So thank you Naim for pulling my CD player up to where it should be although this means that my wallet is going to get a little hammered when I buy some more CD's.

Posted on: 28 June 2001 by Allan Probin

Is it possible that this could have occured by plugging the burndy into the CDS whilst the XPS is switched on ? The burndy never goes straight in and usually requires a little rotation backwards and forwards until it locates, perhaps this allows some of the pins to brush against non-matching sockets.

Allan