British Speakers

Steve, interesting, certainly there are a wide range of audio styles of British speaker but I agree they tend to look somewhat similar. Sonically for example ATC and Harbeth in my experience couldn't be more different...

as far as Naim developing a standmount.. kind of unlikely given the ownership/partnership (?) by Focal who do have standmounts..

Back to your room of speakers.. Nice idea but not very practical. Speakers passively interact with each other, and so the end result would almost certainly be non optimum.

Simon

Extremely aroused by speakers? Perhaps this is the wrong Forum. 

quote:

Does Naim have ambitions for a stand mounter for the smaller systems?

I wish they do, but I'm afraid they don't. Such a pity, as I loved the little n-Sats.

(would buy them in the blink of an eye if they show up)

Imho a Naim standmount speaker would be a great addition.

Currently their's only the large, larger, XXXL S400/600/800's, but I'd think a new 'n-Sat' would complete the speaker line-up and be the icing on the cake for say a UQ2 or 5si system.

I believe it's called the 906.

It is, but for another reason: there's a lot of forums (or fora, like some latinists here love to spell it) where perfectly happy and decent people gather various pieces of equipment and keep them all together in a room, swapping them at leisure, enjoying the pleasure of collecting; there are pages of pictures on the Internet about Japanese owners, or from any other place of the world, except perhaps one.

Those are secular forums... This is a monotheistic, and basically nationalistic, one. What's more, rule #1 of the Linn-Naim decalogue, in the early 80s, was Just One Pair Of Speakers In The Room.

I understand your lust, but perhaps there are better places than this one to exchange ideas on one's itches.

Good luck!

N

I did think that too - the idea of having a collection of speakers and choosing which yo use fills me with horror. I just want a system that lets me sit down and listen to what I want and it will sound great, whether it's Nirvana, Nick Cave, Kate Rusby, Stacey Kent, John Potter or Angela Hewitt. Having a roomful of speakers is taking a love of the equipment rather than the music to the extreme. 

I've mentioned this before, but one of my relatives is a dominatrix with her own dungeon and associated facilities: I'm sure she could arrange something with speakers. 

Lol! I get what AussieSteve is saying though. If I ever opened up my own little hifi shop it would be 'just for speakers', with a little archway / beaded curtain into the 'vintage' area (where Naim can be found!)

It might also be worth looking at French manufacturers like PELeon, Mulidine and JMR. Very traditional and intrresting, but not particularly 'belle' like alco's!

Hi Steve,

Of the brands you list, I've heard some models from PMC, Spendor, Proac and Wilson-Benesch, all very likeable (not sure about arousing) and all very different.

I've owned a pair of Spendor BC1s which maybe have the look you like:

There are castors on the stands too, so you can wheel them in and out with ease. Shouldn't break the bank. Good sound and Naim gets the best from them...

Chris

Too many dirty minds here! I'd love a large room with a few setups, tube and s/s with a variety of 2 dozen speaker types to roll in place and play with. It's my OCD, when I get hooked on something I'm like Charlie Sheen in Vegas, I want all shapes and sizes!

Very Cool mate, great stuff!

Just a word of caution regarding your dream to have a room full of speakers. One of the reasons Linn mandate single speaker pair demonstration rooms for their licensed dealers is that other speakers in the same room affect the sound. According to Linn, this is quite noticeable. The cones in other speakers move sympathetically with the pair that is playing to a minute degree adding coloration.

To mitigate this, they advised dealers that they could have multi speaker demonstration rooms as long as all the other speakers not used for the current demonstration were actively amped with the volume down (not muted) and no source. The current from this helps hold the drive units in situ better to remove their colouration of the playing pair. In truth, the cones move more this way (the low hiss) but sympathetic movement is prevented.

Naimiac mentioned those pictures of Japanese rooms packed with speakers. Sorry, cannot resist commenting on this. It is true and not uncommon here but not I would not emulate a Japanese hi-fi enthusiast. I've posted before that this is the land where hi-fi comes to die. It's not that there isn't decent hi-end gear here. There is. But having loads of equipment packed into a room is characterised by some unique aspects to the market:

• There is almost no such thing as a home demo. Not saying they don't exist but in 15 years here I have never come across a dealer that will do it for any level of kit.
• In shop demos are meaningless. You could be in the market for GBP 50K worth of speakers but often the best demo you get will be a noisy shop floor with 50 speakers and a guy that flips a switch on a box to the speakers you want. An up market dealer may have a less noisy floor.
• And a VERY strong belief that quality can be measured in terms of documented specs alone (which probably explains the above two points).

So those pictures you see of Japanese enthusiasts with a tiny room packed with 4 pairs of speakers totally the cost of a sports car are not audio nirvana but audio hell.

+1 for British speakers and hi-fi in general. Sound first, looks ... well not second but let's say they don't have an inferiority complex and feel the need to be noticed at the party.

A few points...

Shorting the speaker terminals works better to damp the cones than connecting them to a power amp.

Turning speakers round so that the cones are in close proximity to a wall helps (along with putting bungs in the ports).  But as you say much better to only have one set of speakers in the room at any one time.

I believe you're not in the UK: Japan I believe?  The Japanese market isn't typical and is certainly very far form the UK (geographically, socially and commercially).

In the UK most higher end hi-fi dealers have dedicated demo rooms and will bring in just the pair(s) of you are auditioning, one pair at a time.  Also, many high end retailers will allow home demo if they've dealt with you before and/or you leave a substantial deposit.

Based on these descriptions, it sounds like the Japanese market is a nightmare for hi-fi in terms of really accessing what should be the point of hi-fi; music.

As I have said more than once here, hi-fi equipment as a hobby unto itself makes no sense to me personally, and while there is nothing inherently wrong with it (to each his own and it's their money, etc) it is just absolutely a different hobby than hi-fi as I approach it.  (A means to an end as opposed to an end in itself.)

If you loved the 901s you must have been feeling VERY zen - lol.

"No highs, no lows, it must be Bose..."

Boris approves !

Good boy! Our Ben would too I'm sure.

A dog's hearing doesn't lie. He jumped up and barked at the doorbell the other night, except that it was in a movie soundtrack. Yup, the Grahams are staying.

Our labrador is so 'hard of hearing' now the speakers would need to fall on him for him to jump up. He still loves his slow sniffy walks though. At least I can't disturb him. Boris looks the boss!

Boris just turned 10... months, so we're going through his Ivan-the-Terrible phase.

He's ready to help me build my next pair of speakers. The Grahams give me a target to aim for

I was quite amazed one time when one of my cats reacted to the recorded sound of a cat on the television; and not just reacted but turned to the location of the stereo image of the sound.  Apparently cats can use Blumlein stereo for localization of sound!

When he couldn't find the interloper in his house, he realised it was a fake and he wasn't fooled any more after that.

Jan, beating the performance of the Grahams is aiming high, they're d**m good speakers.  I'll be intrigued to learn how you get on.  Do you do your own design work?

P.S. I'm about to start looking for the JV interview again, but I've realised it may have been in a conversation with one of the designers in Salisbury, (when I worked in the city), rather than a published interview.  This would be unfortunate as then I won't be able to provide the supporting evidence for the assertion about design of power amps.  We were comparing my design with theirs - a lot of similarity of principles, but theirs was better; it was also a lot more expensive!

When I was reviewing the Atoll MS100 streamer, I was playing a track of electronic music from the group We (Vulpecula). At one point a door opens on the right (in the recording) and my cat turned his head to the right. I had to be sure, so I reconnected my reference DAC, replaced the cat on my lap and replayed the track, but no feline reaction this time. Had he become accustomed to the sound? I reconnected the MS100 (gently repositioning the cat) and replayed the track and once again he reacted, turning towards the sound. A neat way of blind testing!

Hi Huge,

Yes I do my own designs and I never expect to beat the Grahams, but they'll be an excellent reference to tell me what I'm doing wrong. I'd love to build a thin-wall design as the benefits seem to outweigh the drawbacks. Besides, the dust from MDF is royal PITA.

Thanks for the followup on JV,

Jan