Experience with Naim App

Hi,

My first post, I’m new to the Naim world, I’ve become a fan and regular reader of the forum and I thought it might be time to contribute. In 2016 I got a SupeNait Mk1 (paired with an Audiolab 8200CD) and then last year I upgraded to a 272 and 200 and then two months after that upgraded to a 250DR. The 200 just didn’t have the boogie factor of the SuperNait Mk1that I got used to and really enjoyed. The 250DR corrected that. Like a lot of people I had a bit of a bumpy ride with the Naim App and I thought I would share my experience and learnings.

The first version of the App I used was 5.6. It took a couple of hours before my iPad Mini 2 found the 272, after that all was good. Versions 5.7 and 5.8 were very frustrating, more often than not the App couldn’t see the 272. I have a very cheap Android phone, it could see and communicate with the 272, it was a little slow (because it is a cheap Samsung) but it worked. So I went and bought a very cheap Lenovo Android tablet. A bit clunky, the web browser was very slow and took a long time to load webpages but it worked. 

Version 5.9 of the App came out for IOS, could see the 272 straight away, all good. I have a habit of surfing the net while having music playing in the background and sometimes I’ll have 5,6,7 or 8 tabs open on the Browser. The the Naim App started dropping out again and having problems seeing the 272. Closed all the tabs on the browser, App worked fine.

I work in an IT department, I had to troubleshoot a problem, we have an App that is used on iPads that move between buildings , the App would work fine and then all of a sudden the App would drop out, even standing directly under a wireless access point (It looked very similar to when the Naim App would just drop out). So I started to do some research, I’m probably stating the obvious but IOS and Android are stripped down Operating systems that are designed to work on devices with minimum hardware resources. So I started to experiment with my Android tablet and my iPad. The more Apps you have running and the more web pages you have open, the more unreliable the Naim App became to the point where it wouldn’t see the  272. 

Now if I am just going to listen to music (or I'm  watching sport on the TV with the volume off), I’ll use the iPad. Always have the email on and the web browser on with only one tab. Naim App works fine. If I want to surf the net on the iPad(and I usually have a lot of tabs open as I move between pages) I’ll use the Android tablet for the Naim App with no other Apps open and it works fine. 

I know there was a period that the App on the iPad was unreliable, but I might have been making matters worse because I had too many apps and web pages open. Moral of the story is if you are having problems with the App, just check how many apps you tablet/phone has open, maybe you have just got to the point where the tablet/phone has got to the tipping point. 

Hope this helps. Hope this wasn’t too long.