4.6 update and upgrade sound quality ?

Tim Watkins posted:

Gents - thanks for your replies, alot of which I agree with. I dont wish to get into a debate, as digital comms often misses the point. However I am concerned that posts are regularly using the word 'legacy', and it seems like we should be grateful that these old systems are supported.

One of the reasons that I could justify the outlay, is that Naim gear is supported very well, and the residuals are high, offsetting the spend and de-risking the purchase. To tell a punter who say 45 days (ish) ago bought an NDS that it is now legacy, leaves him or her a little upset. To justify purchase, the product life should be long (I have owned olive 72,82,250, SBLs, Aro, NDXx2, Unitiqute 2) and some of the items I bought were second hand and now sold on. My SBLs cost me £20p.a.! over my ownership. My concern is now that product life is shorter, and it will lead to more difficult decisions.

Just me POV, I am sure others will disagree.

I certainly don't disagree. I've got four legacy streamers that together cost me about £11K, so the fact that three of them are "legacy" and the fourth, a 272,  no doubt will also be legacy soon, doesn't excite me much either.

But Naim can't do anything about the way these are updated now and the issues with 4.6 have mostly been about PCs and Macs moving on rather than this update being different or more difficult to do than the previous ones.

Anyway, it's certainly enlivened the Forum over the last week!

best

David

Tim Watkins posted:

I am concerned that posts are regularly using the word 'legacy', and it seems like we should be grateful that these old systems are supported.

To tell a punter who say 45 days (ish) ago bought an NDS that it is now legacy, leaves him or her a little upset. To justify purchase, the product life should be long

 

Think the NDS was released in 2012, Tim? As such, it's has a decent run, I would say. I can relate to what you feel however, having bought a SuperUniti towards the end of its life span. I think there's a degree of caveat emptor about buying products that are reaching end of life, though I would say that I'm still pretty jealous of your NDS! 

Now I’m really confused! My laptop runs XP and so I think I need a different driver from the one linked in Naim’s 4.6 Pdf?

Anybody able to advise?

Thanks,

Graeme

Hi Graeme,  have you run an update from this laptop before??   In that case you have the correct USB driver already installed.   

If you need a new one then go to www.silabs.com/products/develo...t-bridge-vcp-drivers   & download & install the one marked  Download for Windows XP/Server 2003/Vista/7/8/8.1 (v6.7)

I feel much sympathy with Tim and Duncan. I also fell into the trap of buying a new SperUniti back in March 2016 and then 'hey-presto' a few months later it's 'old technology', 'legacy', 'obsolescent' or whatever you care to call it, cos they announced the new range!

As a loyal Naim user it does cause a certain degree of resentment that the new product you carefully saved up for and invested your time and money in, has been unceremoniously dropped from the product range only a short time later, slashing the value of your investment and raising attendant concerns over continued development and support.

I would definitely think twice now about buying any new Naim product as you are given absolutely no idea if its about to be dropped from the range. This is the second time its happened to me as my first Naim purchase was a 'new' Nait-3 which was superceded by the Nait-5 only a few weeks later. I'll probably look to buy only used items in future as the risk exposure of obsolescence is far less.

Don't get get me wrong I love my SU and think its a great product but .......... Anyway back to the theme of the thread - has anybody installed the new firmware on an SU and id so what are your thoughts about it??

David

Graeme,

I still use my old XP laptop for all the updates I’ve done both for beta testing and the latest official update without having to install the newer driver. I suspect that the latest silabs driver is only needed if you’ve bought a new Windows 10 computer/laptop rather than anything to do with the naim firmware.

David Stewart posted:

I feel much sympathy with Tim and Duncan. I also fell into the trap of buying a new SperUniti back in March 2016 and then 'hey-presto' a few months later it's 'old technology', 'legacy', 'obsolescent' or whatever you care to call it, cos they announced the new range!

As a loyal Naim user it does cause a certain degree of resentment that the new product you carefully saved up for and invested your time and money in, has been unceremoniously dropped from the product range only a short time later, slashing the value of your investment and raising attendant concerns over continued development and support.

I would definitely think twice now about buying any new Naim product as you are given absolutely no idea if its about to be dropped from the range. This is the second time its happened to me as my first Naim purchase was a 'new' Nait-3 which was superceded by the Nait-5 only a few weeks later. I'll probably look to buy only used items in future as the risk exposure of obsolescence is far less.

Don't get get me wrong I love my SU and think its a great product but .......... Anyway back to the theme of the thread - has anybody installed the new firmware on an SU and id so what are your thoughts about it??

David

I have put it on my SuperUniti in my office and I am very happy with the sound. Whether it's really better or not, it's hard to say, but it sounds open and airy and I lose myself in the music, which is the main thing..

best

David

Before the upgrade I tried everything to delete 4.4 updater from my MacBookPro that has High Sierra. I could not. At any rate I decided to give it a go considering I had the USB driver installed already (I could not find any new info for 4.6 fw in that regard). Everything went smooth until writing of streamer files is finished.

At that point UQ2 hanged with “streamer update” display while upgrade box at the laptop read “streamer turn off pending” or something to that effect. I waited for 15 or so minutes but nothing happened. I power cycled UQ2. Now it seems to be running on 4.6.0 (verified from both the unit and the app) but I am not sure if I completed the upgrade process properly. Laptop was connected to the ‘net through wifi.

Sound quality-wise I barely have detected that there is more detail, better defined bass, greater stereo separation. But I have to crank up the volume a little more than I used to. And voices have somehow lost body a tad. System consists of UQ2-NAP100-NEAT Motive SX2, all Naim cabling.

My NDS is currently running 4.3 as I was less keen on the sonic qualities of 4.4 at the time that update was released and after updating to 4.4 I went back to 4.3.

Does anyone know whether it would be possible to change from 4.6 back to 4.3, should 4.6 somehow throw my system off balance (maybe NDS/XPS will react differently to the firmware upgrade differently to what other have found with NDS/555 etc etc.)!?

Feck - Decided to use the PC windows 10 as don’t trust the very old mini laptop. After hauling it all through to living room and trying to download the necessary divers I’m Getting a ‘Cannot Complete the Device Driver Installation Wizard!’ Message!

Aaaargh...

Note to self...breathe in...and out...

Lost now.

G

Make sure you extract the files Graeme. Just trying to run it doesn’t work. 

Graeme, as stated above make sure you extract the USB driver zip file.

Win10 is it 32 or 64 bit, Right click start, click System, system type should state 32 or 64 then run the correct installer file

CP210xVCPInstaller_x86.exe

or

CP210xVCPInstaller_x64.exe

Thank you both! Geniuses to my thicket!

Driver downloaded...now the tricky part!

G

Cool, should be about ten minutes running the Naim 4.6, did my 272 about 30min ago and it sounds wonderful

I updated my 272 yesterday morning and I’m itching to get back out to the “office” for a listen tonight! 

jon_jh posted:

My NDS is currently running 4.3 as I was less keen on the sonic qualities of 4.4 at the time that update was released and after updating to 4.4 I went back to 4.3.

Does anyone know whether it would be possible to change from 4.6 back to 4.3, should 4.6 somehow throw my system off balance (maybe NDS/XPS will react differently to the firmware upgrade differently to what other have found with NDS/555 etc etc.)!?

You can downgrade again to 4.3 or 4.4 from 4.6, no problem. But if you are going from 4.3, then you should go first to 4.4 and then to 4.6, otherwise some 4.4 stuff gets missed (Tidal for instance).

best

David

Finkfan posted:

I updated my 272 yesterday morning and I’m itching to get back out to the “office” for a listen tonight! 

Stop typing on this bloody forum and get it plugged in 

Yahoo! Job done after my initial ineptitude and thanks again for all your help!

G

Great news Graeme. Let us know how it sounds. My bare 272 sounds great! 

Well done Graeme fortune favours the brave, as they say.

best

David

Personally I don't find the 'legacy' upgrade procedure particularly difficult. In my case I have to take the NDX unit upstairs to connect it to the only PC running Windows in this household, but this just adds to the 'ceremony'. The only problem I had this time was with finding the correct Silabs driver (because I had been obliged to reinstall Windows 10 since the last firmware upgrade), but it didn't take long to solve the problem. (I agree that it could have been better explained in the instructions.)

I also think that the SQ is palpably better with 4.6 firmware. More 'refined' I should say. I don't have the experience or vocabulary to put it better than that. This was the first time that I have done a factory reset, after several firmware upgrades since I bought my NDX in 2012. I thought the sound was slightly better again after the reset, but I'm not sure. I certainly don't want to reload the 4.4 firmware to do an AB comparison!

What I will say is that the sound is very good indeed, and gives me a lot of pleasure. Now that I have retired I don't have a large amount of spare income to spend on hi-fi upgrades. I am delighted that Naim have provided an update to kit I bought six years ago that makes it sound even better. It is good to see them looking after their old customers as well as their new ones.

One thing  to note, if you turn off the PSU for your turntable to use the mains socket to plug in the laptop during the upgrade, remember to turn the PSU back on. If not you may have a major panic when you next play a record. Not that I did that, not at all, really. 

Errm. Am I hearing things? There’s more realism, engagement and some tiring aspects appear to have disappeared?

Thanks David

Confident to try 4.6 now!

i have the 4.6 installed now on my nds, after difficulties to install the usb driver....

But i read before that it is advised to do a factory reset.  Do i have to do this factory reset?

I just restarted my nds, my serve, and installed again the app.  Is it not enough?