The nexel ring

One thing I do know is that naim don't carry a pot of this special stuff which would require that it gets sent to where ever, and would need also to assume that phillips or who ever would have a special room where someone would be paid to apply this stuff.

The long and short of it is, once the ring is gone you are left with home remedies, it can't be long before my CDi starts giving up, how can you tell if its becoming worn, is there any visable signs?
Mine looks slightly scratched so you can see signs of metal underneath. ut oh.

I think the trouble with home remidies will be insuring the whole ring is perfectly even.

I wish I hadn't started looking now.

In my opinion, there's no excuse for cd players that cost as much as Naim's players do to require such "maintenance" (god forbit, requiring the replacement of a transport because a piece of rubber failed--if that's what's required).

Judd

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In my opinion, there's no excuse for cd players that cost as much as Naim's players do to require such "maintenance" (god forbit, requiring the replacement of a transport because a piece of rubber failed--if that's what's required).

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In retrospect, the fact that an $8,000 player can fail mechanically with no service options is a bitter pill to swallow. The mechanical soft spot of this player resides in the fact that the disk is somewhat elegantly decoupled from the hub/spindle through a single low pressure rubbery contact point and therefore prone to wear-inducing slippage. It would have been mechanically more reliable for the disk to be more rididly clamped to the hub via a more robust mechanism, but this would be the equivalent of bolting down the LP12 subchassis to a point where it no longer moves- it is less likely to drift, but there are serious compromises in so doing. I am sure the R&D for the original CDS had included a more conventional method of securing the disk, but was rejected because of unacceptable sonic compromises. This was after all a unit made to sonically match the capabilities of the 52/135s, not a 32/Snaps/160.

The way I look at it is that the CDS2 rebuild of the CDS1 is priced to a point where the full retail value (maybe $3000) of the head unit is applied to the rebuild. So the $7000-plus CDS2 headunit is now priced at $4000-plus.
In other words, by having it rebuild you have effectively used the S1 head unit for 5-6 years for 'free'. With this perspective the CDS1 then becomes very good value for money with the S2 then allowing an additional 10 years (or so) of sterling service. All for the price of just over 1.5 CDS1's.
The CDM-4 transport is very robust by itself.. I have a circa 1990 then top-of-the-range Phillips CD80 player (that uses the same transport as well as chipset as the CDS1) that has been in heavy daily use without so much as a skip. It does have an aftermarket machined-from-brass clamp/machined synthetic damping platter (from Simply Physics in Houston- I think) which may have aided in its longevity.

Ron
Dum spiro audio
Dum audio vivo

There are replacement CDM4/2x transports available for the CDS mk I and CDI mk I, though they may be secondhand.

From a technician's standpoint, I'd take the VAM1205 any day of the week over a less-reliable transport, as I play discs constantly--even if it meant a 10% penalty in the signal quality off the disc...

Dave Dever

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There are replacement CDM4/2x transports available for the CDS mk I and CDI mk I, though they may be secondhand.

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About six years or so ago an audio engineer friend of mine contacted Phillips US (based in Knoxville) to enquire about replacment transports, as we both had CD transports based around these units. At that time there were exactly 4 CDM-4 transports left in the entire US, and never to be replaced/restocked. We ordered 2 of them at about $100 each. Somewhere I have it NIB, although it has not been periodically been fired up (as Naim is reputed to do to prevent disuse-related locking-up). I may one day be talked into parting with it as my Phillips CD80 (on permanant loan to a friend) looks like it will live another 10 years plus.

As has been pointed out before, the output from a transport is NOT digital- it is an FM analog signal, and as such can be 'cleaned up' through software, rather than data lost forever. This enables a technically poorer transport to match data integrity of a better one.

Idle philosophy:
I wonder how having a higher performing optical lens instead of the cheapo plastic ones would affect the final audio output. I'm sure that low dispersion glass would be unacceptibly heavy when attempting to scoot across the surface. And since the laser is monochromatic then chromatic aberration would not be THAT important. Hard to imagine a plastic lens wouldn't have spherical aberration and astigmatism though. I seem to remember that there was one company that provided aperture reducers that stuck on the lens surface to reduce aberrations.

Ron
Dum spiro audio
Dum audio vivo

[This message was edited by Ron Toolsie on MONDAY 31 December 2001 at 20:58.]

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Originally posted by Ron Toolsie:
Idle philosophy:
I wonder how having a higher performing optical lens instead of the cheapo plastic ones would affect the final audio output. I'm sure that low dispersion glass would be unacceptibly heavy when attempting to scoot across the surface. And since the laser is monochromatic then chromatic aberration would not be THAT important. Hard to imagine a plastic lens wouldn't have spherical aberration and astigmatism though. I seem to remember that there was one company that provided aperture reducers that stuck on the lens surface to reduce aberrations.

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Date: 3-Aug-99 05:13
Author: julian vereker
Subject: a view

Joe

In the past we tried various of the optical 'impedance' matchers, aperture definers and other bits of stuff that one sticks on to the lens. All of these devices, while making an obvious improvement on many other players, didn't work at all on Naim players. (much to the surprise of the protagonists).

julian

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