Naim and the Environment.

I think we have the answer though. I mean, it is made of metal, plastic, chemicals and so forth that all come from somewhere. Like any product it is harmful to the environment. There is no way that end-to-end, the production of a unit is neutral in the impact. We buy them anyway.

The electricity it uses right now comes from somewhere, which for most of us, is still a power station.

I don't even remotely understand what threshold you have in mind for this hypothetical question. Like if one XPS results in an acre of lost rain forest or what?

I have no threshold for this thread only to hi light the fact that is very easy to judge another person when the choices they have made are not choices that you have had to make this is in response to the recent new car thread where a member was heavily chastised for buying a diesel car. 

If you are outraged at the burning of fossil fuels because of the effects on the environment and on the human race instead of pointing a finger look at what you can do first. 

Putting on another cashmere sweater or another log on the fire whilst drinking a single malt so that you can turn the heating down a notch or riding your nice comfortable £3000 bike to the shop doesn’t give you the right to pass judgement upon someone who you no nothing about. 

Okay. I think people have very limited understanding of the intricate relationship of things and how they impact the environment. To make it worse, most think their limited knowledge is more than it is and judge people unfairly.

Ultimately, people have to make their own choices about what they feel is right regarding the environment and whether a diesel car is better or worse than gas or electric is, quite frankly, not that clear cut. I certainly don't know, and I suspect that anyone who professes to know with enough certainty to judge someone else simply does not know what they don't know.

As to hifi, I often get criticised for leaving it on all the time. Ditto for some computers in the house. Now I cannot say for 100% fact, but I can say that the increase likelihood in something breaking due to a power off results in a larger impact on the environment than the years of idling power leading up to the failure in terms of transporting a unit to and from a place of repair, the demand for manufactured spare parts (which have to come from somewhere) and so on. Not to mention actual cost of the repair to the owner versus cost of the electricity.

Now onto whether a unit should be purchased in the first place, it is much more difficult. I mean, we've already established there is an impact. But then so is there for your TV, fridge, washing machine and so on. I think a deciding factor would have to be longevity. Decent hifi tends to stay in service for decades. Other appliances get replaced more often. So a greater environment impact at manufacture doesn't mean more impact overall if the unit is used for 30 years.

After the big quake here, the government made this huge push to incentivise people to help save energy in a crisis and replace all household items with new energy efficient ones. People flocked like sheep(le) to buy any fridge, TV or air conditioner that had a sticker of a green leaf on it and chuck out the old one. It was all a scam just to stimulate buying by the government and the unimaginable waste of all the discarded items (which were often at the same power consumption rating as the new green leaf models) was an environmental catastrophe as yet unacknowledged.

So within reason, I would buy a power sucking piece of hifi that was a bit harsh to build if it goes for 30 years as opposed to a low footprint item that I might replace 4 times in the same time period. Of course, if things were bad enough for the environment - I might just find a new hobby.

Just thought I would chime in on the electricity front... in the UK on this rather dull cold winters morning at pretty much peak demand, 26% of energy is generated by wind turbine, nuclear is 16% .. of the fossil fuels CCGT (highly efficient combined gas turbines) is 40 % and the bad guy coal is down at 9%... when the demand subsides off peak, the CCGT ratio should subside

so not perfect.. but a huge step change of say 10 years ago where we would have seen I’m sure clad being the dominant source..

So leaving your Naim powered on these days should have less impact on the envinment than say a few years ago.....

Where's George and his clapped out Volvo Amazon when you need him?!

Christopher_M posted:

Where's George and his clapped out Volvo Amazon when you need him?!

Strangely enough on a thread somewhat similar to this, albeit in a different place

Bob the Builder posted:

A recent thread about a new car attracted the usual responses and although we hope it will never needed would you give up your Naim equipment for the environment?

The forecast increase in electric cars by 2030 is estimated to increase demand by up to 8GW,  All the Naim's in the country left  powered on will get nowhere near a fraction of that number.  So keep your Naim on in the knowledge that unlike your electric car at least it's helping to heat your house,  

Note to Simon:  I find it disappointing to see nuclear so low at 6.7GW,  last winter we had close to 9GW.  (thats the entire UK nuclear capacity & just happens to be aprx the increased demand forecast for electric cars)                 I suspect its maintenance,  but if I can grab the time today I will try to find out.   Also interesting to see we are selling to France at this moment,  I saw the same earlier in the week,  but it was then at the links 2GW max.

Mike-B posted:

Note to Simon:  I find it disappointing to see nuclear so low at 6.7GW,  last winter we had close to 9GW.  (thats the entire UK nuclear capacity & just happens to be aprx the increased demand forecast for electric cars)                 I suspect its maintenance,  but if I can grab the time today I will try to find out.  

There are a two nuclear plants off line (not producing) due to planned statutory maintenance.  The remainder are on nominal full load but one (of two) reactors at Torness is on reduced power during refuelling. 

Those off line are:   

Hunterston B     Reactors 3 & 4    Both on planned shutdown for graphite inspection,  both are 9MW  (18MW missing to NG)

Dungerness B    Reactors 21 & 22   Both on  planned shutdown for statutory outage work, again both are 9MW 

 All four of these reactors have specific dates to be returned to service in Jan & Feb 2019.     NB:   All reactors have pre-planned outage, however looking at the published schedule it does not look like it will cause another period of having 4 reactors out of service at the same time as we have now.  

The point is that geographically and economically we are bound by certain constraints and whilst in an ideal world both diesel and petrol cars would be heavily restricted that just isn’t feasible and it is wrong and in fact lacks any real intelligence when one person or group wags their finger and berate someone else without knowing his or her circumstances  for making a choice they disagrees with   

Well, I always turn my power amps  off between use - it only takes about half an hour to get up to operating temp - so that minimises excess energy consumption, which I want to do regardless of environmental impact because it costs me money! (Habit stems from Class A amp days)

otherwise, the DAC has a low power standby mode, and fairly trivial consumption when powered up, ditto the music server/player. But my system isn’t Naim.

As for environmental impact of manufacture, certainly once purchased there is no sense giving it up, as the impact has already happened. It is a bit like chucking a real fur coat in the bin because it is not the done thing anymore to have real fur - that is a real insult to the poor animals that were killed, and neither undies their killing nor does it stop demand. 

Hiwever, severe adverse environmental impact of manufacture may well be a good reason to minimise frequency of upgrades, maximising the gain of individual steps, but to md that is commonsense financially anyway.  Otherwise, if the choice is a good sounding system ir an awful system with negligible environmental impact, I would choose the good system. But if a small refinement in already good sound quality represented a major environmental impact, I might decide it is not worth it.

Bob the Builder posted:

If it was discovered that your treasured Naim hifi was manufactured using a process harmful to the environment or that the electricity it uses discovered to be to harmful would you give it up for the betterment of mankind?

A recent thread about a new car attracted the usual responses and although we hope it will never needed would you give up your Naim equipment for the environment?

of course I would.

and I have thought about it. the old cb/olive models have a very long life span. they are also opinionated an fun.  circuit boards are not surface mounted and use simple componenets mostly. and in the 80s no-cared much about switching them off or not - probably because you were always listening to music anyway :-). In the basement I have the old 72/Hc/135 setup with some crap speakers and I could live with it.

compare this to newr kit which becomes a bit more obsolete as airplay goes from 1 to 2, chromecast from ... and so on. and after thee years the disiplay dies anyway and replacing it require a secret handshake only the factory knows about. and every little function is in a separate box requiring its own little box for the power supply.

there are other hifi-system architectures like Linn or Devialet which have problems of their own but interesting anyway. their model is replacinng all those heavy boxes with software and a path forward is even running on some generic iron, just load Linns or Devialets software. muclike a modern recording studio. Devialet also have an interesting poweramp that from afar look like the old Quad current-dumping, the voltage-amp is class-A but the current is supplied by something looking like class-D and they have 90% efficiency. I am going to play my christmas songs on a borrowed  Devialet.

I am not advocating Linn over Naim, far from it, only that it is time for the designers at the factory to think about these matters.

Jan

I think it's all about scale and proportion. I drive a diesel car but try to walk and use the train as much as possible. When I go shopping I buy loose fruit and veg in an effort to cut down on needless packaging, which for me is a real bugbear. We've got the plastic bag tax yet if I order my weekly shop online it will be delivered in plastic bags, and lots of them that I don't pay for so in my mind the supermarkets aren't fully committed to the green cause. On the other hand, I am sat typing this in a business lounge at Stuttgart airport, soon to take a highly-pollutant flight back to London so I'm hardly one to throw stones!

As for hi-fi, no, I wouldn't give it up because there are no green alternatives I'm aware of, so it's not like there's a choice.

I remember stumbling upon the Telepathic Fish Teepee at Glastonbury Festival in the early 90s.   Where a modified push bike powered a generator to run the sound system. I had a go on it for a good while.  Got a free mug of mushroom tea for my effort...