Naim Open Days - Audio T TW
Posted by: Richard Dane on 16 October 2003
Audio T Tunbridge Wells will be having a couple of Naim open days next Wednesday and Thursday (22nd & 23rd October). Opening times are 10-6pm on Wednesday and 10-8pm on Thursday and all are welcome to come by.
Our own Jason Gould will be there too hopefully accompanied by the Nait 5i, CD5i, Ariva and DVD player - just so long as he can wrestle them away from the guys in R&D!!
Audio T TW can be found at 6 High Street, Tunbridge Wells , Kent. Telephone: 01892 525666.
Richard
Our own Jason Gould will be there too hopefully accompanied by the Nait 5i, CD5i, Ariva and DVD player - just so long as he can wrestle them away from the guys in R&D!!
Audio T TW can be found at 6 High Street, Tunbridge Wells , Kent. Telephone: 01892 525666.
Richard
quote:
Failing that I'll sing for you.
Any good at Opera?... Richard Dane may insist on it
Andrew
Andrew Randle
Linn Binn Sinner
quote:
Failing that I'll sing for you
Will you pass a tune dem?
A.
quote:
Originally posted by Andrew Randle:quote:
Failing that I'll sing for you.
Any good at Opera?... Richard Dane may insist on it
Andrew
Andrew Randle
Linn Binn Sinner
Sadly for the more cultured forum members in the TW area, I won't be attending... I will however secretly replace all of Jasons CDs with some carefully selected operatic gems...
Richard
Nait 5i is powerful enough for Allaes. Very impressive it is too. Thanks Tom for the Ramstien must get that album and "test" my system. A shame we were not able to see the DVD in action another time perhaps.
Regards
Howard
Regards
Howard
Had an all too brief visit tonight, partly to pop my head in the door as Audio T aren't my normal dealer and partly to get a listen to some newer kit.
I met Jason, who's a typically nice and well-informed Naim guy and Tom Alves presence was obvious from the Rammstein I could hear playing
The multichannel stuff doesn't interest me at present, but the DVD player is an excellent looking unit, with the clean lines of the CD5, but with a motorised drawer in place of the swing-arm we're used to. Talking to Jason the swing arm isn't suitable for DVD - the disc speed is much higher and the resonances produced make a motorised drawer more suitable. But, in typical Naim style, there's been a lot of attention to detail here, and it's no off-the-shelf mech plonked in a box.
Of more interest to me was the bigger system upstairs, consisting of CDS3 / 252 / NAP300 and Allae's IIRC.
I strongly suspect some room difficulties (Allaes firing the length of a room) and like any system at any level IMO, one would be a fool to not get a home demonstration - on something of this level it's mandatory.
The room manifested itself I suspect as a slightly boxy hollow sound that meant the bass end was far from even, making the tunes down there harder to follow - I felt I had to concentrate more than I'm used to on some very familiar music. The track I'd chosen ('Tart' from Elvis Costello's 'When I was cruel') has tripped up many a system, but at this level I was suprised at how much was missing.
There was a superb sense of dynamics and lightning-fast response to drums, all enhanced by an obviously more extended bass end than my pair of IBL's are ever going to muster - this is the aspect that's missing from my system, a NAP150 and a pair of IBL's just cannot create that sense of scale, and this can be immediately impressive at first listen.
In every other aspect though I was very disappointed, there was a level of detail and insight to the music that I'd have expected that wasn't evident - everything seemed painted with a very coarse brush and the music as a whole did not gel in the way I'd have expected it to. The system had a tendency to become quite edgy and uncomfortable to my ears and a whole mass of subtle detail that I know this track contains was simply missing.
The intro to the Costello track is a classic case in point, there is a very subtle acoustic guitar backing, that's buried right in the back of the mix. It's an interesting bit of rythmic and musical subtletly in an otherwise bass-heavy simple mix, consisting of bass, voice and piano, with simple percussion. On this system that guitar didn't exist!
It fared better with the much simpler, more acoustic, Hugh Masakela (?) track that Tom played, a lovely recording set within an open and natural acoustic - there was great character and control to the bass end of things and voices were engaging and captivating, but again at the top end it was much more ragged than I'd expected. It managed to sound, at the same time, both slightly rolled-off, but 'splashy' for want of a better description. The subtleties of cymbal work and the insight that I'm used to in terms of not just what is being hit with a stick, but how it's being hit or brushed just weren't apparent to me.
Rammstein just gave me a headache, but was impressive in a visceral, dynamic in-your-face kinda way, if you like listening to Klingon's singing
After that little listen the new 5i components had been packed away, so I didn't get chance to listen to them, which was shame. They look the business though and I hope they help get a lot more people addicted to music in the way the Nait1 I bought all those years ago (and still own), did to me.
Andy.
P.S. For those IBL-lovers out there Jason informs me that Naim have taken delivery of some new grilles, for those of us with old, fading ones. Apparently a worthwhile upgrade and one that will bring your speakers back to that new look. I'll order some soon and report back!
[This message was edited by Andrew L. Weekes on THURSDAY 23 October 2003 at 23:05.]
I met Jason, who's a typically nice and well-informed Naim guy and Tom Alves presence was obvious from the Rammstein I could hear playing
The multichannel stuff doesn't interest me at present, but the DVD player is an excellent looking unit, with the clean lines of the CD5, but with a motorised drawer in place of the swing-arm we're used to. Talking to Jason the swing arm isn't suitable for DVD - the disc speed is much higher and the resonances produced make a motorised drawer more suitable. But, in typical Naim style, there's been a lot of attention to detail here, and it's no off-the-shelf mech plonked in a box.
Of more interest to me was the bigger system upstairs, consisting of CDS3 / 252 / NAP300 and Allae's IIRC.
I strongly suspect some room difficulties (Allaes firing the length of a room) and like any system at any level IMO, one would be a fool to not get a home demonstration - on something of this level it's mandatory.
The room manifested itself I suspect as a slightly boxy hollow sound that meant the bass end was far from even, making the tunes down there harder to follow - I felt I had to concentrate more than I'm used to on some very familiar music. The track I'd chosen ('Tart' from Elvis Costello's 'When I was cruel') has tripped up many a system, but at this level I was suprised at how much was missing.
There was a superb sense of dynamics and lightning-fast response to drums, all enhanced by an obviously more extended bass end than my pair of IBL's are ever going to muster - this is the aspect that's missing from my system, a NAP150 and a pair of IBL's just cannot create that sense of scale, and this can be immediately impressive at first listen.
In every other aspect though I was very disappointed, there was a level of detail and insight to the music that I'd have expected that wasn't evident - everything seemed painted with a very coarse brush and the music as a whole did not gel in the way I'd have expected it to. The system had a tendency to become quite edgy and uncomfortable to my ears and a whole mass of subtle detail that I know this track contains was simply missing.
The intro to the Costello track is a classic case in point, there is a very subtle acoustic guitar backing, that's buried right in the back of the mix. It's an interesting bit of rythmic and musical subtletly in an otherwise bass-heavy simple mix, consisting of bass, voice and piano, with simple percussion. On this system that guitar didn't exist!
It fared better with the much simpler, more acoustic, Hugh Masakela (?) track that Tom played, a lovely recording set within an open and natural acoustic - there was great character and control to the bass end of things and voices were engaging and captivating, but again at the top end it was much more ragged than I'd expected. It managed to sound, at the same time, both slightly rolled-off, but 'splashy' for want of a better description. The subtleties of cymbal work and the insight that I'm used to in terms of not just what is being hit with a stick, but how it's being hit or brushed just weren't apparent to me.
Rammstein just gave me a headache, but was impressive in a visceral, dynamic in-your-face kinda way, if you like listening to Klingon's singing
After that little listen the new 5i components had been packed away, so I didn't get chance to listen to them, which was shame. They look the business though and I hope they help get a lot more people addicted to music in the way the Nait1 I bought all those years ago (and still own), did to me.
Andy.
P.S. For those IBL-lovers out there Jason informs me that Naim have taken delivery of some new grilles, for those of us with old, fading ones. Apparently a worthwhile upgrade and one that will bring your speakers back to that new look. I'll order some soon and report back!
[This message was edited by Andrew L. Weekes on THURSDAY 23 October 2003 at 23:05.]