Naim DAC - Is there ANY word?

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That's pretty much it.................Hope that's what you were looking for.

Thanks for that js, and yes, it does help very much.

FWIW, I have found your posts here very informative, both from a technical point of view (which interconnects work, which don't) and your willingness to put equipment into context (HDX cd replay lies below CDS3 etc). I think most of us accept that these views are yours, based on your listening experience, and other views and listening experience might differ. However, at least your's seems to be a relaible and informed starting point and i'm sure that many of us feel able to trust it. Thank you for being prepared to put time and effort into the forum.

cheers

Don

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Originally posted by kuma:

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Originally posted by tonym:
The MacLavry as I experienced through my system sounded very good indeed and stood up to my 555 remarkably well.

wow.

I must have a very good sample of CD555/555PS.

Kuma, behave yourself

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Originally posted by tonym:

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Originally posted by gary1:
I do not in any way think that it was due to the unit despite protests to the above.

Not a protest, merely a possible explanation. Please share with us why you know the Lavry you heard was not a below-par unit?

Tony, and this is going to be my final word on the Lavry (I hope), I really have no way of knowing whether the Lavry we tested was a bum unit or not. There did not appear to be anything wrong with the unit I obtained in the way it functioned, nor there was anything obviously amiss that we noticed in sound quality.

I cannot explain why you and others have demoed the Lavry and feel that it performs to the levels you report (when compared to the Naim CDPs)and while myself and others feel otherwise. I know some have commented of a variety of possible factors. If the opportunity arose to hear another unit I certainly would give it a go and if my opinion differed the second time I would certainly be happy to update my findings. However, short of this all I can go by is the unit which was shipped and the variety of different conditions we exposed the Lavry to (eg. PC, K8 etc...) and where we felt that particular unit fared.

What I do not think is fair is that you feel that those of us who didn't think that the Lavry was up to snuff must somehow find an explanation for that difference, with the latest problem being the "bum unit" theory. I also do not appreciate the fact that every "DAC" thread becomes another referendum to discuss the Lavry.

We will never be able to explain why certain individuals have felt the Lavry to outperform top end Naim CDPs while others including myself feel that it doesn't perform as well as a CD5i-2. I think for a $1000 DAC it's decent, but I've heard better. We'll just have to agree to disagree and hopefully move on to discussing other DA issues and topics. So please can we put the Lavry to bed and move on?

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Originally posted by gary1:

I cannot explain why you and others have demoed the Lavry and feel that it performs to the levels you report (when compared to the Naim CDPs)and while myself and others feel otherwise.

I'm heartily fed up with the whole Lavry issue on this Forum myself Gary. I concede that to satisfactorily explain the differences of our individual experiences is not really feasible here. Suffice to reiterate that I respect your opinion, please extend me the courtesy of respecting mine.

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Just like every single turntable used with EVERY single Naim phono pre.

Yep. This was the case for the first 25 years of Naim's existence where they relied on Linn and Rega, more or less, or tape recorders and cassette decks for pre-recorded music.

Of course they eventually produced the NAT 01.

But until the cds1, there was 10 years of 3rd party cd players. I don't recall Naim recommending any particular 3rd party CD players. The AV2 also preceded the dvd5 by a few years IIRC. Again, chose your own dvd player, but no recommendation

So, a stand-alone DAC would be nothing new in principle - find your own source for 10 years - until Naim produced a decent input. Some sort of solid-state storage medium that can rip CDs and DVDs? (but cheaper than an HDX/Supercap)

But we speculate. Naim haven't announced an imminent DAC.........
However, when (if) they do, we'll have a wonderful time slagging off each other over the best source.

cheers

Don

Tony--will do

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Originally posted by goldfinch:

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Goldfinch, there are differences in sources on the Lavry but less so in the jitter reducing(reclocking) crystal mode. It will however sound best through narrow with a low jitter source. This is the reason that narrow mode is offered. It's better with good input. Sources like Mac tos out sounds better after reclocking in crystal mode. When I used coax out from a TC, narrow was clearly better and crystal deteriorated it's performance. The 2 were more similar in crystal mode with some of the TC's improvement being negated by reclocking. There's always differences but crystal mode diminishes them. Sometimes for the better and sometimes not so much.

It is difficult to know what exactly Lavry's narrow mode does but to my ears I prefer crystal mode. Maybe my M-audio SPDIF out is producing a lot of jitter. Anyway, manufacturer recommends crystal mode for better quality in stereo music. I hope my new Lynx AES16 (I am still looking for a good custom 110 ohm digital cable) will be good enough to use narrow mode and get better performance.

Respect to the "fith" possible factor -setup-, I found out that it is necessary to check polarity. For those of you using Flashback XLR to DIN cable, as David says Lavry's internal jumpers must be configured to PIN 2 hot, but in this case to get correct polarity you need to switch front panel selector to "inverted", otherwise you will be hearing music with the wrong polarity (depending on the kind of music, speakers and room this will be more or less noticeable).

I noticed that they recommend crystal for stereo and that TOS is favored due to length and grounding restrictions we seldom have problems with in this context. You'll notice that only the initial DA10 is recommended for crystal mode when more are used downstream. This is probably because once the clock is well 'set' and jitter corrected, more reclocking is a not desirable so narrow becomes the recommended setting when the stream is properly conditioned or constructed. If reclocking was perfect than there would be no need to opt out of crystal downstream. I found that the TC set the clock extremely well without the need for further crystal processing and that setting undesirable. The reason this should be better if is because the clock was only properly established once as opposed to being ignored and the stream reconstructed as it would be on downstream DACs as described earlier or in crystal mode when as in this case, not needed. Narrow doesn't do as much and refers to clock frequency bands accepted to lock onto. It's what crystal does that either is better or worse depending on the integrity of the input signal. That's my take anyway.

The Lavry isn't exactly a "plug and play" solution!, I understand designer tried to do a very versatile product but all these things make difficult to use it properly.
It is the same with the polarity issue, depending on what jumper configuration is used polarity has to be corrected!
I hope Naim can make a more friendly use DAC, although I still would like to see it with AES/EBU input for computer music compatibility.

Thanks for your info about Lavry mysterious clock modes.

Lavry seems to me a product carefully engineered and built but I think it is stupid to provide three clock modes and not provide precise instructions about when should they used. This product is not definately consumer oriented, see the manual, it look like an internal tech document, impossible to understand for common mortals.

USB or/and firewire, especially with asio would take the dig cable and audio card interface entirely out of the equation.

Please Naim, take note of that!

I think it would be very silly of any company to produce a dac nower days without usb and/or firewire*

*Firewire seems to be on the decline, apple are slowly stopping it and I think it was them that started it.

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Originally posted by garyi:
I think it would be very silly of any company to produce a dac nower days without usb and/or firewire*

*Firewire seems to be on the decline, apple are slowly stopping it and I think it was them that started it.

Yep, firewire is on the way out. It is better to forget it, USB2 seems to take its place.

I would like ethernet. Allows the host computer to be much further away from the analogue electronics

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Originally posted by garyi:
I think it would be very silly of any company to produce a dac nower days without usb and/or firewire*

*Firewire seems to be on the decline, apple are slowly stopping it and I think it was them that started it.

I think Apple is thinking of the next generation Firewire, which can be used with the present fw800 and RJ45 connection as well.

There are tens of thousands pro audio interfaces sold by dozens of pro audio manufacturers with fw and there are only very few ( I think less than 5) with USB2. So I think fw interfaces are to be sold in the next few years without a problem. Apple is doing something like they did with the floppy drives with their first generation iMacs.

firewire has only gone from the macbook, which is not a workstation grade device anyway. still there on the macbookpro

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Originally posted by jon honeyball:
I would like ethernet. Allows the host computer to be much further away from the analogue electronics

I thought there was some way to use ethernet for this purpose Jon.

I need to get my head around the whole USB/ASIO subject...

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Originally posted by kuma:

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Originally posted by tonym:
The MacLavry as I experienced through my system sounded very good indeed and stood up to my 555 remarkably well.

wow.

I must have a very good sample of CD555/555PS.

Ha! Another example of product variation! Wait 'till I tell Dr P he's sold me a duff one...

Certainly, given the experience with the HDX, if Naim were to produce a stan-alone DAC that they would include at least USB/Eternet connectivity and possibly more as mentioned above.

The ability to have your External NAS tucked away somewhere unseen is a beautiful thing. It's really nice to be able to keep your stereo system looking like a stereo system and not a computer hub. An ethernet switch is easy to hide. The wife acceptance factor is very high.

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The ability to have your External NAS tucked away somewhere unseen is a beautiful thing. It's really nice to be able to keep your stereo system looking like a stereo system and not a computer hub. An ethernet switch is easy to hide. The wife acceptance factor is very

That'll be the HDi then - no internal storage, no ripping engine and maybe lose the display. Perfect.

I doubt ethernet. They already make servers and when do you add remote and screen etc. You still would still need the control what comes into the DAC. This would basically be a complete server without a built in HD and a dig in instead. I would prefer something more cost effective even if it didn't replace the sound card dig out though that would be great. I suspect products like this always have manufacturers thinking long and hard about what they actually want it to be. For access to storage, it's easy enough to have an ethernet and usb cable connected to your laptop.

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Originally posted by james n:

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The ability to have your External NAS tucked away somewhere unseen is a beautiful thing. It's really nice to be able to keep your stereo system looking like a stereo system and not a computer hub. An ethernet switch is easy to hide. The wife acceptance factor is very

That'll be the HDi then - no internal storage, no ripping engine and maybe lose the display. Perfect.

No, that'll be the Linn DS!

I find the thought of having computers close to sensitive hi-fi quite scary. All those noisy power supplies and RFI. This is one of the main reasons I like the Sonos solution because it is small, compact, streams network audio, has digital out and has a great remote control system.

It doesn't currently handle 24 bit so it's not for me right now though.

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Originally posted by goldfinch:
Respect to the "fith" possible factor -setup-, I found out that it is necessary to check polarity. For those of you using Flashback XLR to DIN cable, as David says Lavry's internal jumpers must be configured to PIN 2 hot, but in this case to get correct polarity you need to switch front panel selector to "inverted", otherwise you will be hearing music with the wrong polarity (depending on the kind of music, speakers and room this will be more or less noticeable).

That's interesting. I am sure that at the recent UHES demo my Lavry was definitely not in Crystal, no was it in the inverted position.

Little wonder its sound was not as gtood as it might have been.

On my simple tests, I cannot hear any differences whatsoever. But as others claim they can, then it might have been a more meaningful demo had these little items been attended to.

Richard

Graham if you find that scary then you don't listen to the news much.

I still like this...



But I'll definately listen to a dedicated Naim DAC if they ever make one.