Clicks, wheezes, grunts and pops!

Posted by: Duncan Fullerton on 14 March 2006

I spent some time auditioning (visditioning?) an n-vi on Saturday and was suitably impressed with the a/v side of things. The CD side of things was no more than competent, but coming from my CDS-II POV I guess this was to be expected.

What did surprise me was the myriad of clicks, pops and assorted sound effects when mode/source switching with the box. I note from another thread that the AV2 also does this. Indeed the dealer said to me that "they (Naim) all do that, Sir!". Now this is a mantra that leaves me cold when I drop my TVR back to the dealers to have some should-have-been-sorted-when-they-built-it-fault rectified. Not something I expect in expensive electronic gear.

My question I guess is, am I going to have to live with this if I buy one of these? Or is this an early adopter experience, and likely to be ironed out in time?

One other thing, the dealer (who I was suitably unimpressed with on a number of fronts) tried to put the frighteners on me by claiming that the n-vi was going to rise in price by 20% in April - even though he claimed "no one has seen the new prices yet". Can anyone confirm this?

Thanks,

Duncan

Posted on: 14 March 2006 by Chief Chirpa

Hi Duncan,

The best people to answer your question are probably Naim themselves. I emailed Adam a couple of weeks ago with a question about Naim/Chord speaker cable that he's probably heard 100 times. Nevertheless he got back to me within a couple of hours - very impressive, especially as it was late on a Friday afternoon.

Anyway, thought I should let you know that the April price for the n-Vi is £2995 or £3250 with the optional FM/DAB tuner module - i.e. as it is now.

Regarding your overall experience on Saturday, maybe you just caught someone on a bad day. In any case, I can n-Visage you trying out another dealer.

Regards,

Nicholas

Posted on: 14 March 2006 by Duncan Fullerton

Thanks Nicholas,

I should add, in the dealers defence, that he came back to me this evening and confirmed the prices rises to be c. four percent, but thought that the n-vi would not be affected.

Duncan