New Naim DAC

Hmm, interesting reading.

@fixedwheel:

I appreciate where you're coming from on the HDDs in the HDX. However, I disagree with you wrt the ripping engine. I In part, this comes down to the 'bit perfect' issue. Your reasoning would be sound if bit perfect rips were indeed a possibility. My understanding is that this is not the case. Apparently, although you can make bit perfect rips, there are differences in the timing information which cause what appear to be minor differences in the eventual file but which are fundamental to the rhythm and timing of a track. For example, taking a CD and ripping it using the HDX, and ripping it using a PC with EAC and in both cases producing bit perfect rips will produce different sounding tracks when played through the same machine even though they should ostensibly sound precisely the same. Malcolm Steward has just written an article on this subject in HIFICRITIC called Ripping Yarns (not his editorial in HFN).

He noted that a laptop running off its battery with a dedicated CD drive (rather than DVD) actually produced a worse result than his PC with a DVD drive and he believes that part of the reason for this is the more highly specced power supply in his desktop. He also found quite major differences in results between using (in order of quality) Macs, PCs using iTunes, dbPoweramp, EAC (setup correctly) and finally his HDX.

As I recall, when the HDX was originally talked about at a hifi show, one of the things that was mentioned was that the hardware had much to do with the quality of the rips. i.e. that it wasn't enough to have excellent software but that the controller chip on the mechanism and your ability to manage the stream was just as important, if not more so. This is where naim have scored highly. It means, of course, that if you're luckjy and/or manage to find a suitable combination of your own, you may be lucky enough to strike on a brilliant software/hardware combination that could give you high quality rips, but generally you don't know what you've got in the box, you don't know how it's been setup (that's another thing that doesn't get mentioned often enough - mechs can be setup differently, and computer mechs are always setup to read anything and not worry to much about the stream) and finally you can't even be sure that you're controlling the mech properly. This is all taken care of in Naim's ripping engine.

Now I admit that a Naim streamer would be a nice thing to have, but I would not want one at the expense of a machine with the Naim ripping engine. I'm fine with ripping the files to NAS or to the local disc, but once I've had an HDX do it, I know I have the best quality rip in the first place. This is a source-first question. There seems little point to me to rely exclusively on rips which may or may not have been done correctly.

quote:

Originally posted by Frank Abela:

Apparently, although you can make bit perfect rips, there are differences in the timing information which cause what appear to be minor differences in the eventual file but which are fundamental to the rhythm and timing of a track.

I'd like to know what this timing information is, as far as I can see the CD audio information is made up of a pair of two's complement 16 bit integers. The timing information in implicit due to the fact that there are 44,100 of these pairs per second. As long as the data is read without error you will get identical files. If moving data around was as complex as some people think our whole technological society would colapse.

would the perfect solution, since the internal discs are ridiculous small ,not be a discless rippstreamer ?...

keep the ripping device and drop the cd replay... drop the internal discs. if you don´t want to lower the price, better the internal dac or even provide a better dac to slightly higher costs.

quote:

Originally posted by Frank Abela:
In part, this comes down to the 'bit perfect' issue. Your reasoning would be sound if bit perfect rips were indeed a possibility. My understanding is that this is not the case. Apparently, although you can make bit perfect rips, there are differences in the timing information which cause what appear to be minor differences in the eventual file but which are fundamental to the rhythm and timing of a track.

Really? I would like someone to show these differences, minor or otherwise. Everyone who has tried has found none.

quote:

Originally posted by matt303:
I'd like to know what this timing information is, as far as I can see the CD audio information is made up of a pair of two's complement 16 bit integers. The timing information in implicit due to the fact that there are 44,100 of these pairs per second. As long as the data is read without error you will get identical files. If moving data around was as complex as some people think our whole technological society would colapse.

Couldn't have said it better myself! Actually, I believe the "timing" is stored in the header of the WAV or other file. After the header there is just the stream of two's complement 16 bit integers (for 16/xx obviously)

quote:

Originally posted by Frank Abela:
@fixedwheel:

I appreciate where you're coming from on the HDDs in the HDX.

Hi Frank, also scary is the long term customer satisfaction, and impression, of Naim as a manufacturer and a brand.

As I work in the small business market one of the biggest sources of grief is failed hard drives. They are a royal PITA. Nowadays my usual thing is at 3 years / 1st gut feelings of impending doom we *replace* the whole PC, then salvage any bits.

Sounds extreme? Not really. I've just been on Dell's site and specced up a dual core PC with 2gb RAM and a pair of 320gb drives for £309.

When the drives in the HDX fail how much are Naim going to charge for a 400gb? How long are they gauranteeing parts for? How many drives are they putting in store for each HDX sold?Will you just be able to drop a larger drive in?

I read today there is a noisier, faster ripping drive in the current models. So is that down to parts availability of the first gen drying up?

Correct me if I am wrong, but Googling shows that Naim launched the HDX at Munich less than a year ago, with an expected ship date of Aug 2008.

When owners talk fondly of their Naim equipment that is 10, 15, even 20 years old, what is the servicability / life expectancy of the HDX?

IMHO Naim should offload the storage headache ASAP, by all means produce a ripping solution that drops the resulting files onto network storage, and produce a player that means you can use the same files on a second, or third, Naim player around the house.

I think Matt and Harry have covered a lot of the other points, and my response is long enough!

Cheers

John

Hi,

I agree with the rips being the same. They are digital so must be. Am sure you would be less than happy if the bank transfered your account data to another computer overnight and ended up with a different balance. Data is data and that is it.

This ripping and cat5 cabling debate is getting like the story of interconnects and speaker cables


As for disk drives. I bought my Netgear Readygear NAS 9 months ago. It used to sit on a shelf in a cupboard and it worked silence I now have got to sit it on Blutac as the drives are making such a noise. This in only 9 months.

So for all these people who say, no problem sit the NAS in the same room as the HiFi, take note, these things start to become very noisy after a short time.

Agree with the breakdown senario, 3 years and if used 24/7 it will break within the 4th year.

Cheers

John

Hmmm, not good about the Netgear. I noticed Naim were using Netgear ReadyNAS Duos at the Bristol show, and I had been half tempted to buy one for personal use. It does seem that drives develop nasty noises over time.

And yet they're digital so they must sound the same...

quote:

As for disk drives. I bought my Netgear Readygear NAS 9 months ago. It used to sit on a shelf in a cupboard and it worked silence I now have got to sit it on Blutac as the drives are making such a noise. This in only 9 months.

So for all these people who say, no problem sit the NAS in the same room as the HiFi, take note, these things start to become very noisy after a short time.

Agree with the breakdown senario, 3 years and if used 24/7 it will break within the 4th year.

...which is as good a reason as any to leave music storage to the storage vendors. I have no problem with a smallish drive on the HDX, but I wouldn't jam a 1.5TB drive into a consumer audio product, seriously.

quote:

When the drives in the HDX fail how much are Naim going to charge for a 400gb? How long are they gauranteeing parts for? How many drives are they putting in store for each HDX sold?Will you just be able to drop a larger drive in?

John, currently hard drive warranty is 5 years, I am sure storage will increase and larger drives will be and can be fitted by us.

quote:

Originally posted by David Dever:
...which is as good a reason as any to leave music storage to the storage vendors. I have no problem with a smallish drive on the HDX, but I wouldn't jam a 1.5TB drive into a consumer audio product, seriously.

Wha ? I don't understand the logic ? A server-grade HD is a server-grade HD no matter who is doing the 'fitting'....A SATA drive is practically a self contained unit, so the mechanical guarantee comes from the particular HD manufacturer, irrespective of the end use....Whether it be Joe Blogs fitting a HD into a computer at home or another manufacturer using it their product, I don't see much difference....

I have 4 x 1TB drives 'jammed' into both my Mac towers, which I independently purchased (better spec than Apple's off the peg, and cheaper), fitted in 30 seconds, and have never failed me....And believe me, they would get worked harder than any audio HDX type product...

I don't see the problem, with a standards based company like Naim, or any other, putting any quality large HD in an audio product or anything else for that matter....?

The problem is that traditional HDs are spinning around at 7200rpm or higher causing vibration and not a little noise. Generally speaking, the larger the disc capacity, the faster you need to spin. This causes higher mechanical energy components that need to be managed. Vibration control is one of the key aspects of HiFi design so if you can avoid having a vibrating component in the box, then you avoid it.

In a computer it's no great shakes (pun intended) since all you're interested in is data retrieval, but in a HiFi component, silence from the unit is almost as important as the quality of its output. After all, it's not much good having the best CD player in the world if it physically sounds like a bag of spanners in operation.

The future of HD-based domestic units is solid state.

quote:

Originally posted by Frank Abela:
The future of HD-based domestic units is solid state.

Nail on the head...very true Frank.

quote:

Originally posted by Paul Stephenson:
John, currently hard drive warranty is 5 years, I am sure storage will increase and larger drives will be and can be fitted by us.

Paul,

That is fantastic news, thanks for the clarification. I couldn't see anywhere on the specs whether the drives were SATA or parallel IDE. With a lot of the AV drives still being PATA I was worried about long term availability of the drives.

I'm sorry if I seem to be coming across as anti - HDX, honestly I'm not, I see it as part of a suite of products.

But I'm still looking forward to an XPB, a discless HDX.

Cheers

John

quote:

Originally posted by SC:

quote:

Originally posted by David Dever:
I have no problem with a smallish drive on the HDX, but I wouldn't jam a 1.5TB drive into a consumer audio product, seriously.

Wha ? I don't understand the logic ? A server-grade HD is a server-grade HD no matter who is doing the 'fitting'

I'm pretty sure that from the bits I have read that Naim specifically used AV grade drives, not server drives.

AV (or CE, for consumer electronics) drives run slower, cooler and generally for longer than server drives.

Some server drives run at 15,000rpm, and noise is secondary to performance, reliabilty, random access and sustained data transfer rates. They are expected to fail, and be replaced easily. And the server they are in will, more than likely, be de-commissioned in less than 4 years.

Anybody who has fired up a dual Xeon in a 1U case will know they are not quiet!

quote:

I don't see the problem, with a standards based company like Naim, or any other, putting any quality large HD in an audio product or anything else for that matter....?

I think my POV is coming from a different background. One where failed hard drives are relatively common. So putting them in something which people are possibly looking to be a part of the system in 10, 15 or 20 years is a little un-nerving.

We shall see how the range fills out.

Cheers

John

quote:

Originally posted by Frank Abela:
The future of HD-based domestic units is solid state.

As I said in the 3rd post of the thread, I think this will be the way to go.

The data very rarely changes, it's is usually added to when a disc is ripped, then the file is usually only read from. Ideal for solid state.

Cheers

John

I should point out that I believe there will be a whole set of new problems to fix with solid state to do with buffering.

quote:

Originally posted by Frank Abela:
I should point out that I believe there will be a whole set of new problems to fix with solid state to do with buffering.

Expand upon this please.

quote:

Originally posted by matt303:

quote:

Originally posted by Frank Abela:
I should point out that I believe there will be a whole set of new problems to fix with solid state to do with buffering.

Expand upon this please.

Unless you're dealing with a RAM drive, the access time is much slower when using FLASH storage at equivalent capacities.

absolutely,

Ever noticed how long it takes to transfer a file onto, or from, a flash drive? Brutal.

With most SSDs reading and access times are faster but writting can be slower. You'd be hard pushed to find a drive that wasn't idle or doing other file transfers 99% of the time when even a completely uncompressed stereo 16bit 44.1KHz was being played.

quote:

Originally posted by matt303:
With most SSDs reading and access times are faster but writting can be slower. .

Not in my experience. But then again my dealings with SSD is restricted to USB sticks and memory cards.

Why the woody over SSD anyway?

My Seagates (external Free Agent Pro) are silent to the human ear. No fans, no ticking, nothing. I have even pressed the drive to my ear when it was transferring files. Maybe I could just barely sense a slight mechanical hum.

Like no other internal or external (Seagates included) i have even heard. And I have own dozens of drives.

All WD = Loud
Seagate Internal = Better
Seagate Free Agent Pro = Dead Silent

Plus the Free Agents have a metal case (heatsink) which I like. And a 5 year warranty.

As someone who requires as nearly silent as possible PC, the Seagates, of which I have 4, are unbeatable.

With a silent fan, water cooled video card, and super quiet hard drives, only the stock CD-ROM drive makes a peep.... and I have an external for ripping anyway so I dont use it.

quote:

Originally posted by pcstockton:
Not in my experience. But then again my dealings with SSD is restricted to USB sticks and memory cards.

Current sustained read speeds on SSD drives are in the range of 40x the data rate for CDs. Most memory card readers are USB, and subject to the same transfer rates.

According to the white papers for the HDX, the drives are Seagates.

I could hear the drive(s) in the HDX from about 8 feet away in a dem room.

I don't think NAIM intentionally went for a noisy version of the Seagate drives.

Cheers

John

That's interesting since I sat right next to an HDX while it was playing at PM and I couldn't hear a thing from the drives.

quote:

Originally posted by gary1 (US):
That's interesting since I sat right next to an HDX while it was playing at PM and I couldn't hear a thing from the drives.

I wouldn't expect to hear it "while it was playing" either. It was while it was idling that it was annoying, much like my mates Sky box that I referred to earlier in this thread.

Speaking of earlier in this thread I replied to some of your comments, but I assume you missed it as I didn't get a response. Could you take a minute to answer the following:-

quote:

Originally posted by fixedwheel:

quote:

Originally posted by gary1 (US):
John,

I'm sorry, but I don't agree with some of your points.

Fair enough.

quote:

I understand what you are asking for which is a streamer like a Linn Klimax DS and you'll take care of the rest. I get it.

I am afraid you don't get it! I am not asking for a streamer.

I said:-

quote:

Originally posted by fixedwheel:
What I want is basically a HDX without internal hard drives or a CD player.

That is different from a streaming device, a Squeezebox or Transporter relies on SqueezeCenter running on a PC, or a few NAS boxes such as some of the Netgear ReadyNAS range.

In the product that I am suggesting the only stuff that is not on the Naim player is the music files.

Let me take this a point at a time and see where we agree and disagree. Please note that in the following scenarios *no* computers are being used, and *no* music playback software (ie iTunes, SqueezeCenter, yada yada etc.) is in use.

1. The HDX rips CDs to its own hard discs.

2. The HDX can play back files from other storage locations.

3. Nero has said that a update to the software will allow the HDX to place (or move) files, that it has ripped, to an external storage location.

4. A HDX playing back a file, that it has ripped, will sound exactly the same whether that file is physically located on its own hard discs or located somewhere else on the network.

5. A second HDX in the house, playing back the file ripped by the first HDX and placed on the network will sound exactly the same as the same file played back by the first HDX

6. A diskless HDX (let's call it a XPB, no HD as it is diskless, PB for playback only) playing back a file, originally ripped by a HDX and placed on the network will sound exactly the same as a full HDX

Can you tell me which of those statements you disagree with?

quote:

Regardless of your opinion about bit perfect rips being equivalent there is one step in the process that you are overlooking. When you are using the computer you are using the "music player" which is part of your software or an external one if you choose.

But I wouldn't be using any "music player" software, that is the whole point of the product I want when I said I wanted a diskless, and mechanically silent, HDX!

Cheers

John

quote:

Originally posted by fixedwheel:
I couldn't see anywhere on the specs whether the drives were SATA or parallel IDE. With a lot of the AV drives still being PATA I was worried about long term availability of the drives.

Can you even find a consumer drive that is NOT SATA these days?