Qb in da house

Hungryhalibut posted:

The 272 is wired, and the Qb is wireless. The Qb won't play 192k albums without dropping out. I played a 96k album on the 272 and the multiroom to the Qb won't work. But standard CD definition albums are fine. The boys, who are upstairs and access the Internet wirelessly, are saying that their connections have slowed down. I imagine that this is because the Qb is grabbing the bandwidth, as it's nearer to the router than their computers. I suspect that in the longer term I will need to run a wire, but I need to know the Qb's long term location first. 

What I find fascinating is that with the same music playing in the sitting room and the kitchen, it's perfectly synchronised. It's obvious that it would be, but it does seem really clever. 

Thanks HH, I have everything except multiroom sorted, time to sit and read the manual !!!! impressed so far. A little too much bass for me so have tuned loudness off and have changed the positioning setting to less than 25cm, time to let it run in..........

Manual read.....not exactly difficult  click the icon next to the volume slider and away you go with multiroom. All sounding good now.

joerand posted:

 

Those lovely vine-ripened tomatoes are the most appealing item in the picture to me.

Excellent product placement Nigel

Thanks! It's hard to get decent tomatoes here at the moment - they are all watery and horrible.  These were actually very tasty, having been sat in the kitchen ripening for a week, as we found when we had them with dinner last night. It was good to cook while playing the Qb. 

Nigel,

Tomatoes are my favorite fruit but to be honest, the black wallet also caught my attention - still looking kind of fat.

Maybe just full of receipts or maybe poised for more upgrades?

Clearly I should have put more of my crap away first! The kitchen worktop seems to be the dumping ground for all sorts of stuff. If you looked in the wallet you'd be sorely disappointed.

Hungryhalibut posted:

As an experiment I've ordered a 20m long cat 6 flat Ethernet cable, for the princely sum of £5.97 including delivery. It'll take a few days to come and I'll then be able to see what impact this has. It can only do good, I'd have thought. 

You mean you didn't buy an Audioquest Diamond at a gazillion pounds per metre? I assume that's a dedicated mains spur you've got it plugged into? 

I am thinking of one audiophile upgrade for it.... It comes with two mains leads, one with a uk plug and one with a continental two pin thing. As the Qb is really close to the socket and the mains lead is long, I'm going to cop down the two pin lead and make a shorter one. That may upset the delicate tonal balance!

It seems perfectly happy plugged into the same socket as the kettle. It's my own little bit of Statement; the illuminated base is rather nice. 

HH, I'm not surprised to hear that wireless performance is suffering for your other devices. The Qb supports only the legacy 802.11b/g wireless protocols which support much lower data rates than newer 11n/ac protocols and b/g is not as efficient in streaming applications as the more modern protocols. In addition to using available bandwidth while streaming, it is also likely that the Qb is dragging down performance for the more modern devices as the router has to work in a compatibility mode to accommodate the legacy radio in the Qb, hence the complaints from the boys upstairs!

I'm sure that running it wired will cure all these ills but surely the whole premise of Qb is that it is small and light enough to be moved around the house and that it will fit in places where people will not have wires, and that it must therefore work well and cooperatively when run wirelessly. I'm sure it saved Naim a few pennies to reuse the (already legacy) wireless module from the original Mu-so but this decision is the product's Achilles heel.

Do you have an old wireless router? If so you can always use this to run a separate wireless network with a different SSID and channel to your main network. I'm planning on trying a Qb shortly. If I decide to get one this is how I would set it up.

noname posted:

Hungryhalibut posted:

... The boys, who are upstairs and access connections have slowed down. I imagine that this is because the Qb is grabbing the bandwidth, as it's nearer to the router than their computers. I suspect that in the longer term I will need to run a wire, but I need to know the Qb's long term location first

There has been another thread discussing possible slowdown due to the fact that the Qb, like the original Mu-so, supports only the legacy 802.11 g and b wi-fi protocols. Depending on your access point this might slow down other devices that use the current n or ac protocols.

Getting mine tomorrow so hoping not to have same problem.

(Noname but have had Naim systems for 30+ years)

 

 

I think the first thing I'd do is hide an Airport Express or similar near the QB and let that take over WiFi duties. At least then it will be running on 802.11n. I ran my SU like this for a while, and it would play 24/192 files over WiFi, when the built-in WiFi was buffering and dropping out with 16/44. Of course, if an all-wired setup is possible, so much the better.

Hungryhalibut posted:

I am thinking of one audiophile upgrade for it.... It comes with two mains leads, one with a uk plug and one with a continental two pin thing. As the Qb is really close to the socket and the mains lead is long, I'm going to cop down the two pin lead and make a shorter one. That may upset the delicate tonal balance!

It seems perfectly happy plugged into the same socket as the kettle. It's my own little bit of Statement; the illuminated base is rather nice. 

All this talk made me go out and collect mine. 

It IS surprisingly heavy in the box, given said box's dimensions.

Yes, the Statement-esque volume control and clear plinth do look nice, don't they?

Not sure if it is covered in the documentation (or whether you knew) but apparently when in multi-room mode the stream to the Qb (and I would assume it's bigger brother) is 320Kbps only.  Trevor Wilson mentioned it to Mark Raggett while we were in their listening room in Salisbury.

Yes, and converts to MP3 I remember reading. Anyway, on way home with mine now. I plan to use a power line adapted to extend Ethernet to the kitchen. Everything else has direct connections.

Note that the Radio Paradise preselected is only the 192k version. I've switched to the 320 stream and it's much better. I've been running the Qb in while I was at the gym - it does go jolly loud. 

From the manual:

"The handset [remote control] can be purchased as an accessory to work with Mu-so Qb."

That's a bit cheap!   Anyone know how much they cost?  Hopefully less than the £1,200 for a Statement remote...

If the remote is anything like the one that comes with a MuSo it should not cost more than £2.50; a rather tacky piece of nastiness that is bettered but the elegant remote that accompanied my Tivoli DAB radio. But you need an iPhone, iPad etc to get the functionality you need from a MuSo.

Lack of FM is a serious omission in the 2 MuSo. 

I can't see why you'd need a remote. The key thing for us is to be able to put Radio 4 on in the morning - just press radio, toggle to the right preset (presets one to five correspond to five lights) and it's on. For playing upnp a remote is hopeless anyway, so it's easier to use the iPad or iPhone. Everything extra costs money - adding FM would need an aerial as well - and I think it's bloody good value for £595. 

The only thing you can do with the remote that you cannot do from the Qb itself is alter the Naim logo brightness or turn it off. The app is needed for everything else.

Well, it's primarily laziness.  Qb will be at far end of kitchen.  Remote left on the kitchen table would let us turn on/off and select one of the two radio stations we usually listen to.  I think it will be used more for that than upnp streaming, although I could be wrong.

And yeah, laziness.  Our kitchen isn't THAT big...

Can you use the Qb as an alarm clock, to wake you up with the radio?

DELR, you can: 

Picked mine up after work. Very impressed and makes the Sonos  Play 5 look and sound cheap. 

It's quite a weighty sound,  very surprising. 

Ours is located in our home office,  I expect it will get mainly used for radio but I did push  Meet Me In London through in hires and it did sound spectacular for a unit this small. 

Absolutely delighted,  thank you Naim 

Richard 

Hungryhalibut posted:

 I'm going to cop down the two pin lead and make a shorter one.

1) Warranty voided (public disclosure no less).

2) Discussion of modifications to mains leads is a clear violation of forum rules. I'm surprised at you

Hungryhalibut posted:

 the illuminated base is rather nice. 

Could make for the perfect £595 night light in the privy when guests come to visit. Impressive!

Nigel,

I simply would take it a little out, less against the wall. Its design suggests to me that it should be able to sound interestingly stereo, with some space around it. It's a lovely thing and looks a little cornered this way..

Max

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Skip posted:

We are finally happy with the MuSo after about a year of fiddling with it.    My son has a UnitiQute2b at school which is truly outstanding with the minimalist Blumenstein Thrashers, and the UQ2b sounds awesome with an aerial to pick up campus radio stations, Bay Area jazz and sports.   I wish there were an FM option on the Qb.   I need it for football and talk radio and the Qb won't find its way into our kitchen without such a module.   Wonder what would it take to add one?

Indeed FM module or lack of it is the thing holding us back in SinS towers... I wonder if there might be an upgrade option? I kind of doubt it... Not all of us live in cities or suburbs and so are reliant on FM rather than web radio streaming or even DAB... and yes because of rights management much football radio is not permitted online in the UK, and depending where you are is not available on DAB but only FM.

I guess they were desperate to save space (and maybe keep the cost down) but I agree it's a shame there's no FM. If you can fit FM on a mobile phone, it can't take up that much space. As it stands, you can't use the Multiroom feature to send FM or DAB from another streamer - maybe there's a workaround challenge here for someone?

Massimo Bertola posted:

Nigel,

I simply would take it a little out, less against the wall. Its design suggests to me that it should be able to sound interestingly stereo, with some space around it. It's a lovely thing and looks a little cornered this way..

Max

Don't worry, I moved it very quickly after realising it was boomy in the corner. And just for Joe, I've included some rather tasty Sicilian vine ripened cherry tomatoes.

Hungryhalibut posted:

Massimo Bertola posted:

Nigel,

I simply would take it a little out, less against the wall. Its design suggests to me that it should be able to sound interestingly stereo, with some space around it. It's a lovely thing and looks a little cornered this way..

Max

Don't worry, I moved it very quickly after realising it was boomy in the corner. And just for Joe, I've included some rather tasty Sicilian vine ripened cherry tomatoes.

Oh but Nigel, the sympathetic vibrations from the keys must be playing havoc with the sound stage!

Good job the tomatoes aren't rotten.

Before anyone says anything, I know the worktop and tiles are skanky. We are going to redo the kitchen in the late summer, hopefully, with nice stone worktops and all that malarkey. The Qb deserves a nice environment.