Qobuz claim streaming via naim is on its way 1st half 2015?

would be great to see more high-end manufacturers, including Naim obviously, working with Qobuz, and not dwelling on the fact that they required investment to continue their growth plans, which from what I understand is basically what happened.  As far as I am concerned they have the best product, and the best attitude to both music, and their customers. 

+1..  Absolutely agree. I hope they don't grow too big and lose this touch. Being a relatively small company it appears they have been able to tune their customer service and proposition nicely... Its similar to why I like and have been loyal to Naim... Even the Qobuz franglais in some of their communications is attractive to me 

Simon

Simple audio managed it http://www.simpleaudio.com/pre...unce-new-partnership

they are also a start up in relative terms

Not any more. According to WHF they ceased trading last month.  http://www.whathifi.com/news/s...o-has-ceased-trading

You are probably right up to a point, but clearly no one told the Qobuz reps at Bristol or on their forum! Based on the comments quoted by @PhilP Linn is clearly quite happy to not only mention a potential partner, but also describe the type of relationship it would like.  

With a number of Naim's competitors either having launched support for CD quality streaming or announced it's future availability, it's clear to me that Naim is not in a position to do the same, otherwise it would have done so.

There is no reason I can see why Naim, would be treated any differently from for example Linn, Meridian, and the increasingly numerous new hifi manufacturers in China, Taiwan and S. Korea. I'm struggling to understand why the commercial constraint of silence applies to Naim and not them.

I'm of the opinion it's not commercial issues that are holding things up. Streaming services are doing deals with companies like Naim; with a few decades of history, to start ups with just a few months, and in the case of Simple Audio has already ceased trading. That's the reason these companies have simple standards based API's, because they want to be on every platform as quickly and painlessly as possible.

I'm not going to be popular for saying this but the opportunity cost of having invested time and resources in to Statement, could we'll be a delayed modern, upgradeable streaming platform. I define modern as:

- not having to set up and maintain a UPnP server for your own music collection;

- reliable CD quality streaming over wifi;

- a fully featured, and easy to use, reliable app;

- a choice of streaming services in Naim's key markets.

YMMV.

I don't disagree. 

The message to Naim from existing loyal owners has to be 'pull your bloody finger out'.

I'd love to be able to access Qobuz directly via the SuperUniti, using the iPad, just like you can with Spotify, but without making the system sound like an Amstrad.

ALL apologies for my apparent confusion about Tidal vs Qobuz...

and

I have never viewed naim as market leaders…  just high quality components, slow to adopt new things…  but this is just my laymens observations… like any business I am sure naim has reasons... 

I bought a SONOS and have been using Qobuz for over a year.

I would love Naim to make the streamed services available via their servers, as I have the NS01. I suspect that even if they do make a deal with Q that the servers will never be updated with the service, in line with their position with Spotify.

My current thought is that when the NS01 hits a snag I will get an Auralic Aries and bin the SONOS.

M

Other manufacturers  don't produce CD players anymore. I wonder seeing as Naim do if the delay is a strategic move as offering these services would impact sales of CD players for Naim.

The more I think about it, I´m truely shure, any streaming-service could only be an additional service and will not replace UPnP-Streaming.

Each service is only as good as your own internet-access - wouldn´t it be boring listen to your favorite tune on a high volume-level and than it stucks because net-split or something else...

I totally agree, but streaming isn't particuarly new, however arguably not until relatively recently has it come into vogue. 

To be fair to Naim I think they have a good record on exporting to consumer markets which I believe they get deserved recognition for.

I suspect quite a number of us on here will be attending the Acoustica show this weekend so the Naim attendees can expect quite a few further questions on this topic.

I trust they will come prepared!

No doubt, if it wouldn't create a value for Naim they would stop it ASAP.

I don't agree. IMHO the data transfer rates for CD Quality are not problem for a standard internet connection. Otherwise video on demand wouldn't work.

You are right!

It belongs not to your personal internet connection itself, the streaming-provider has to deliver the flac-files fast enough for streaming without drops.

So it is a point for Qobuz / Tidal hard-/software-architecture and the bandwith of their connection to the internet.

I had long conversations with two different Qobuz reps at Bristol. They were both very keen to have Qobuz available on Naim and both said that the work on their side is basically done. They said that Naim's demands were a bit different from most other manufacturers in that Naim needs a "connect" type service and they had created one especially for Naim. Their expectations were that Naim would implement this in 6-12 months.

I didn't say much about this in my show report as I didn't want to abuse what I thought was a confidence but as they have now said it on an open forum I see no reason to keep quiet. Like others on this thread I can't see why Linn and others can discuss this in a reasonable way whilst Naim maintain such a miserable attitude. It's a good way to alienate customers who have been loyal to Naim for 30+ years.

Interesting.... so it may be Naim that is requiring the 'Connect' functionality. Until know the view was that this was a requirement of the streaming companies.... and an additional hurdle that streamer vendors were needing to jump through ... so perhaps not the case after all...

Posting another +1 on this assuming Naim use the forum to help judge demand.

I think there is a pretty obvious synergy between people making kit and people providig the service.  Seems like Qobuz recognise this if they are making the connectivity available the way Naim would like it.

My speculaiton on why Naim are pretty silent on their plans is that they've decided the best approach for them is to keep quiet until they have something very definite and specific to launch.  Perhaps feeling burnt by announcing Airplay / Spotify earlier than hindsight suggests was wise?  My personal opinion is they should be more open, but I do sympathise that managing comms for this sort of product / service is more of a challenge than the old days of dealing only with CDPs and amps.

Wow, a special Naim solution.

Who has to pay for this? The customer.

IMHO it was a wrong decission to go with spoitfy.

The only reason can be money or the promiss from spotify to be lossless soon.

To believe high end enthusiasts as the Naim customers would reward this ............

If Spotify forced Naim to go "Connect" then they must have forced the other streamer producing companies as well.

In which case why did other companies not force Qobuz to implement "Connect" but Naim did?

If the Qobuz "Connect" is the same as the Spotify "Connect" then you would have though that Naim could support it quite quickly. ( yes yes it must be because there is no memory ....)

Not really - Qobuz are very keen to have us Naim users on board as it will increase their income from subscriptions - especially at the UK rate which is around 25% more than the Euro rate given the current £/Euro exchange levels (a point I made forcefully to both the Qobuz reps!). Qobuz are very focussed on expansion; not suprising given that the additional cost of new subscribers must be close to zero for streaming and they are all potentially going to shell out for hi res downloads as well. Doing some software development which would expand their market would more than pay for itself.

They told me the "financial troubles" widely reported last year were related to them raising money to expand into new territories. Of course I only have their word for that but they did seem very confident and their catalogue is expanding at a rate beyond my expectations; I'm still paying monthly rather than annually though...

Or, it could be as simple as the current platform (Hardware, firmware and apps) doesn't or can't support the standards based interfaces built by the streaming services.

Of course.

Do you really expect an answer though?