Naim and speed

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I know Naim is highly regarded for its PRAT but can it be that Naim might be 'too fast' for certain music?

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IMHO when Naim kit sounds too fast it is set up wrongly. A well set up system should portray timing and tempo with great accuracy, i.e. fast sounds fast and slow sounds slow. If a system artificially rushes a piece of music it is wrong, and I have heard less than perfect Naim installations do this. Similarly if a system sounds lean, bright, or aggressive it is set up wrongly / not matched to the room, or some other factor is amiss. When correctly installed none of this should be the case.

Tony.

Andrew

Andrew Randle
2B || !2B;
4 ^ = ?;

if i play a piece of a music on a perceived "fast" system, will it finish sooner than on a perceived "slow" system?

enjoy

ken

I think the people who find it too lean may be right in some cases depending on set up and speakers. In the systems I have heard I have always found SBL, NBL, INTRo to be artificially lean. This could be set up or components, as I have yet to hear an active system or a 500, just passive 135s.

Some people seem to find all naim speakers too lean, but I cannot comment as I have not heard all speakers in all set ups. But many of these people have opted for different speakers and find that they are happier in this regard. I don't think its an inherent fault in naim systems, but rather a strength, as a properly set up naim system is anything but lean, just neutral, no extra fat added for comfort. Rich velvety recordings sound rich and velvety on my system. If all your recordings sound rich and velvety maybe you are putting a little too much gravey on your plate!

dave

I think it has to do with the amp's ability (or disability) to render the leading edges (and decays) as accurately as they should be. Much of this comes down to transient response and headroom. The reason for this is because as a leading edge gets "smeared", it creates the impression that it is late temporally. In reality, no part of the quanta is "late". Rather, the leading edge of the quanta is missing entirely. Maybe it's only the first couple of microseconds, but if the amp fails to render them accurately, then the whole note comes off being late (perhaps by a few microseconds). At the same time, the middle of the note appears as it should. Accordingly, on a macro-scale, everything comes out of the amp in the right sequence. But on a micro-scale, the amp appears slow because it's missing the leading edge information.

That's what I figure so far.

Judd

Ken, don't worry about all these terms. If you asked me to define 'fast' or 'timing' I would probably get mixed up myself. I think I am trying to talk about bass more than midrange and treble. If Naim bass might be 'too fast', would that not allow you to hear the full bass note, say from one of those large pipe organs you find in churches?

I appreciate the response Tony and Andrew, but I don't think I'm looking for that particular answer. It's just too easy. And Jez, comparing a bass note from a kick drum and a pipe organ is almost like comparing apples to oranges no? A kick drum is meant to be quick and precise whereas a really low bass tone is meant to be felt (low and slow baby). I think Lo Fi Si might be getting my poorly worded question.

Just reading over my initial post, I can't believe I put an apostrophe after "patient". Bad, bad English. Wasn't someone complaining about the abuse of apostrophes a while back? My apologies sir.

[This message was edited by bam on TUESDAY 13 November 2001 at 13:59.]

enjoy

ken

Obviously when I comment on the performance of an amplifier, I am commenting on its performance into a load. When an amp has no load attached, I'm not certain it does "anything" at all, let alone anything well or less well.

Judd

I remember Paul Darwin putting it succinctly when he said of a known bass player, that he was dead, but with a poorly controlled speaker by the amp, that he was still playing....

It's always a nice day for it Have a good one!
Steve.
It's good to get back to normal.

Naim have always majored on building high quality power supplies rather than chasing their own tails in an endless effort to reduce non-linearity's to sub-atomic levels and squash the life out of the music signal in the process.

Naim go to great lengths, often against common industry practice, to preserve signal integrity from source to loudspeakers. They were pioneers of high current amp design, tone control less pre-amps, separate pre-amp power supplies, common signal ground paths, loudspeaker cable as output inductor, and so much more.

I can't see a reason why Naim amps wouldn't time correctly, can you?

Simon

I wonder if what I perceive as speed is actually accuracy and precision. If you take a complex piece of music with lots going on (say OK Computer) then what I used to lose with my previous CD player was the accurate discrimination between instruments in terms of timing and placement. The whole became blurred and thus sounded 'slow', in other words you did not really hear each discrete event happening one and after the other in quick succesion but an approximation of it all happening together.

My system now makes everything sound more complex and 'interesting' but somehow without it sounding fragmented.

For me slow=blurred, fast=precise. this seems especially true with bass notes having a 'kick' without a boomy 'bump'.

Bruce

Listening to naim equipment whilst on speed is not a good idea. Me gran tried it once, she was checkin out some opera & was so out man she forgot to take a trip down the hall to the ladies room! Mr Pav consequently caused her to loose control & you quessed it, she peed her pants!

So the morel of the story hear is just enjoy the music for what it is..oh yes & don't take drugs!!

Mad Boy Matt

Just in case its all an unhappy rumour...

I have some off the wall views about the ways in which electronics corrupts music. You see, what we hear are changes in spectral content of sound (I believe our ears consist of fibrous detectors that resonate at different frequencies). An amplifier, on the other hand, sort of works on trying to track a single voltage signal, who's shape is the convolution of all that spectral information.

Why does this matter? Well, because the ways in which the electronics gets it wrong are to do with tracking a signal and when it "mistracks" the affects on the spectral content are extremely complex to predict. What I'm saying is that what you perceive cannot easily (or intuitively) be definitively related back to macro characteristics of the signal shape as such.

What?? Well, I mean just because something sounds "slow" may have nothing to do with slowness of signal tracking. Slowness of signal tracking usually has a filtering affect - in fact this is what a filter does. But a filter doesn't screw the timing up as far as I know. So soething more subtle is going on.

For example, power amps do really unatural things to sound - things that your brain is not used to in the natural world. For example, the positive voltages may have different levels and types of distortions to negative voltages. Weird but true. Similar things happen with CD DACs - you get wholly diabolical timing jitters and asymmetric distortions that "kill" the music. But these causes are not to do with transient response or frequency response or any of these other macro effects that we intuitively understand.

When your brain gets the unatural spectral content from these electronic nasties it has to draw some conclusions about what's going on. So we perceive bad timing or boring sound or even suffer headaches from prolonged listening. Or we just don't hear things, like soundstage, or we hear things playing too fast or too aggressively.

BAM
(this is all top secret stuff so please don't divulge to any hifi manufacturers. Drat - too late)