New Hydra

Interesting story Johnathan. I'm sure Naim will supply a mains lead FOC in the circumstances if you get in touch.

How much did the Hydra cost?

PS How is the DVD player?

I have to say that my recent experience with my own dealer would seem to concur with yours.

I although I still rate my dealer highly, mainly due to his flexibility, I have to say that some of the practices I observed in his dem. room recently (listening to 5 series kit) made me think that Naim don't seem to have got the message across completely .

It started well when NACA5 was only used at my request (and this was a completely Naim system), some wierd twisted concoction was the initial choice.

Even then non-Naim 4mm connectors were used, although they were soldered.

It doesn't bother me as the system revealed enough of it's potential to assure me I was taking the right route, and I'm confident that when it arrives at home it will sound even better when well set up.

For those for whom this might have been a first purchase though I doubt they would have got the full potential of some fine kit.

Andy.

Andrew L. Weekes
alweekes@audiophile.com

Well - the Hydra was £60 for a three way (NAP180, CDi, HICAP) You can't use a Hydra on the NAPSC because it has a captive lead. As it uses Naim cable and MK plugs I figured it must be at least as good as any alternative solution at considerably lower cost. One other particularly nice aspect is that if and when I add another Naim box Graham's will exchange it and charge just the difference between a 3 and 4 way Hydra.

Another issue is that my tuner, DVD, Gyrodec etc are still being powered off an Argos block so I need to investigate options for those. Graham's do Crabtree blocks for £70 ish - has anyone tried them? How do they compare to alternatives?

The DVD player is proving great Martin - so much so that since we got it just before Christmas it has been in use nearly every night (playing rented or borrowed DVD's!) So far it has played every disc (including region 1) I have tried without a problem and the picture and sound seem excellent.

As you may recall I bought the Yamaha DSP E800 which is frankly stunning for £299. Bought some Eltax bipolar rear speakers (£149) which are much better at the job than the Kan's I tried originally and borrowed an REL sub from my dealer and a Sanyo digital projector from work to use with my existing 6ft conventional slide projection screen.

I quickly decided that the projector (only SVGA) was far better than I expected and after having a 6ft image in the room any TV is garbage for immersion in movies!! I've decided that a projector is more important than a sub but don't know much about them (other than the fact that they start at £800 and run to £20 000!)so that's next on my list for investigation.

WIdescreen DVD is rubbish on a 4/3 TV by the way!

Apart from that I'm having fun with it - at least I feel I am buying movies on a quality format. The difference between Dolby Digital 5.1 (DVD) and Dolby Pro-logic (VHS and cable) is staggering in terms of surround sound - the Pro-logic isn't really that impressive even on films such as Top Gun.

Kelly McGillis looks good on a 6ft screen though!

Jonathan

Jonathan

I can echo your sentiments about Oxford Audio Consultants. I've found them to be pretty unhelpful the few times I've been in there, and seem only really to be interested in the "big american kit". I'm surprised they even sell Naim kit at all, as last time I was in there for an audition, one of the guys spent the entire time telling me how rubbish he thought Naim was. (I was auditioning Krell kit and it sounded dreadful!)

I've ordered my Naim kit from Overture in Banbury, and the guys there are always extremely helpful....

Btw....casn you give some more details about the Hydra? I guess it's a multiway mains lead?

Cheers

Matt

Jonathan
Mains leads are ~£8 from Naim
I've order some from Naim with my serviced NAXO--I was left with the wrong lead from Grahams.

?have to go through your dealer unless currently having anything serviced
Cheers Richard

Homebase now do an 'own brand' block which allows up to 4 cables to be wired in. You can replace the supply lead and remove the neon very easily. Best to hard-wire it into a cooker type wall outlet. I bought one a few days ago and have just finished soldering the screw terminals direct to the live busbar to bypass the 13 amp fuses.

If it is safe in Germany to use unfused plugs (relying on the circuit breaker and equipment internal fuses) then I reckon it is good enough for UK....

Jo

Jo

Jo,

as you will see from a recent posting of mine that the "Micromark" four-way plug works very well and doesn't have any LEDs to remove. You can see it at URL=https://catalogue.maplin.co.uk/products/frameres.tpl?partcode=VD02C:&SKU=25365&cart=969120424&d=f&max=1]Maplins - Micromark plug[/URL].

The design seems pretty good (except for a couple of rivets in the live circuit). The neutral and earth pins are a solid block of metal with four separate holes for the cables.

cheers, Martin

Jonathan

In our experience, the Sony projector provides excellent value for money at around £5k (used to be £6k). It has a really good picture - much better than that of the Seleco and Davis DLP projectors. The Sony's also a lot quieter than the others.

Basically in one year of trying, we managed to sell one or two Davis projectors at £3.5k-ish whereas we have sold 4 (or is it 5?) Sonys in about 3 months...

There is often debate on the qualities of the various types of projector, being DLP, LCD and CRT. DLP is the newest technology and in theory it should be very good indeed. LCD is a time honoured technology now. The Sony has a 16:9 LCD panel in it which is why it's particularly good for DVD. Obviously it will have a hit for 4:3 pictures. CRT is theoretically the best technology since blacks are truly black as no light is sent to the screen! LCD and DLP prohjectors have bleed-through on black portions since they can't quite shut out ALL the light going through their devices when you want a black section of picture.

But, in the real world of home cinema there is another factor to consider. Typically, one will turn down the lights, but NOT switch them off completely - some ambient light is usually wanted. In this scenario, the newer technologies can actually win over CRT in terms of contrast.

CRT projectors have excellent blacks because they don't project any light to that portion of the screen. However, they have to send a heck of a lot of light for the brighter bits! So, their contrast ratios are excellent because of the black being zero. Great if you're in a black (cinema-like) environment, but terrible if you have ambient light since that lowers the contrast you have on the screen. You only achieve significant brightness with really expensive (£20k-ish) CRT projectors.

Now DLP and LCD projectors have much worse blacks because of the bleed-through of their very powerful lamps. But since most people want some ambient light, this doesn't annoy since the black value is about as low as the ambient light dictates. Now the bright value of the projector is very high (much higher than that of a CRT), so the actual contrast achieved is often better than that of a CRT!

Of course, if you want to watch the movies in total darkness, then the CRT should be better, but this is the exception, not the rule.

Regards,
Frank.

Frank,

As ever your post was extremely informative and useful - you taught me more in 2 minutes than hours of reading Home cinema choice!

One question though - I have been using a 2 or three year old LCD projector from work which I would guess is not state of the art and yet have been really impressed with it to the degree that I would say whilst it is not as sharp as my Sony TV this is offset by the fact I love viewing a 5ft wide image! I've been particularly impressed with the colour and tone of the image as has everyone who has seen it. I have been assuming that the advance of technology probably means that for less than £1.5K I should be able to get a projector as good or better than what I've borrowed - do you agree? I have seen SVGA projectors at around 600 lumens for not too far over £1000. XGA resolutions seems to cost around £2000 - I may be tempted to wait for this to come down in price if this is likely in the medium term.

Atthe end of the day I wouldn't be able to justify £5k on a projector and was hoping that I could get something decent for £1500 ie the price of a really good TV. I'd also be worried that a £5000 projector today would be surpassed by a £1K projector in a year's time - in IT buying at the bleeding edge is always a bad idea so I'd be interested in your views Frank.

Matt, you asked for more details on the Hydra. Basically it is a single MK plug single wired with Naim mains cable to some form of splitter (sheathed in rubber) From there the signal is routed to however many seperate runs of Naim mains cable your system requires (in my case 3) all of which are terminated in IEC Mains plugs.

It's a neat and cost effective solution.

Hope this is helpful.

regards,

Jonathan

Hi Jonathan

Read with great interest your thread on the Hydra mains leads.

Do you think you could get us a picture of this?

As it is, I thought it would be good to get one from Grahams for my stuff, although I'll need a 5-way.

Good listening; the music's still groovin'.

Regards

Philip

naimniac for life

Glad your enjoying the DVD player.

I'm just wondering why you think 16:9 on 4:3 is rubbish. Is it just that there is too little viewing area or are you having problems with the 'tweak' I mentioned in the original posts?