Is Naim dying?

+1 With Harry, i completely concur.

+1 with Harry & Simon-in-Suffolk

Quality does matter to some & Naim seem to be able to provide it across their product range.

Production quality is certainly a factor. However, there are other factors which I feel are even more important. For example, social and political history.

Events such as the Cold War and the Vietnam War were the backdrop and driver for many movements for which music was one embodiment. Much of the music I enjoy was cut against the backdrop of the US civil rights movement and performed by people who had learned to sing in a gospel church. Some of it against a backdrop of better times for the denizens of Detroit in the motor industry boom. Stepping into rock for a moment, I can’t imagine an album like ‘On the Beach’ being recorded nowadays. In part it is production but in other part it is more the lack of socio-political energy.

In general music seems more coffee-table oriented now…more beige than technicolor. Inoffensive and dull. Like modern politics, always seeking to appeal to the median voter / listener. I think this is because music is driven even more by accountants and marketers now than it was before. Thinking of the energy of Fear of a Black Planet or Nation of Millions in the late 80’s, the ignorant may dismiss these as ‘rap' without ever understanding what they were really all about. Edgy music continued from the 60’s into the 70’s and 80’s and even the 90’s (1870's - 90's for classical) Not hearing these messages so much nowadays and it is not because I am not listening to modern music.

Authenticity is also an issue. Without it, many modern acts seem more like tribute bands. Whilst any one individual may have personal struggles it is simply implausible that there is a social struggle in a hugely wealthy country like the UK, with free education and health-care, that is comparable with what has gone before in say the deep south in the 60’s. I might appreciate the ability of a new act but it is sometimes hard to buy into the story they relay. So much good music has been born out of hardship after all.

Live performance is another factor. Someone like Ray Charles could sit down at piano and lay down a performance which a studio would struggle to compile from many takes of a modern act nowadays. He came from a live tradition and even in the 70’s and 80’s as technology changed that tradition continued. The studio helped rather than was the be all and end all. Other greats like Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson could improvise and ad-lib in a way that modern performers could not rival even with studio support. The recording was still just a souvenir of the live performance.

I suppose that across soul, dub, funk, rock, classical I just don’t hear a body of music emerging nowadays that is as good as that emerging in the 70’s and into the 80’s, There are still some real highlights still but it feels like they are fewer and further between. That for the most part it is derivative of what went before. That the accountants have squashed experimentation and edginess.

We live in a hi-tech world and Hi-Fi is a bit old fashioned isn't it? Yes; even streaming kit. Sitting down and listening to music? Bor........ ing.

There's an interesting article about consumerism here by Will Self.

We used to be called a nation of shop-keepers and are now a nation of shoppers. We want 'new' - a lot - apparently.

Hi-Fi reinvents itself every generation and needs the next digital format to take off again.

John.

Dying of 'consumption' perhaps?

G

Agreed. It is simply fiddling around the margins at the high-end until the next format comes along. If you look at the analogue stage of Naim's best DAC, it is very similar to that of the CDS3 - itself derivative of a CDP released 25 years ago. Your point about consumerism includes the permanent need to feel that what went before has been surpassed - see the streaming forum for more on that . What I feel might genuinely be surpassed in certain cases is the form factor - even before the genuine shift in performance which you describe is achieved.

John, I think sitting down to listen may be boring for some, but so many new recorded musical enthusiasts listen now via headphones or more precisely IEMs..less space, on the move, drowning out reality, easier to get a better sound.. perhaps a mixture of all  ..  and I am told the standard Apple ones sound rubbish... Something I completely agree with.

i also think with the advent of mass online access with the internet (something I still believe is incredible how quickly that has been adopted) that formats will be less important.. I think it will be about accessibility and inventing and/or reinventing that. Unless you are referring to that as a new format?

Also some suggest our younger generations are entering a post consumerisation age.. John Cooper Clarke focuses on some of this in his work.. (I should try and get along to his gig in Ipswich this October)

Simon

All of my children,  ranging from 9 to 22, and many of their friends are just as passionate about music as I was at their age. The difference,  putting aside my views on current music compared to my golden memories of youth, is that they almost all listen to their music via their phone or tablet, usually via utube or spotify. When I was young I aspired to a sound system that did a little of everything, now they aspire to an iphone or a galaxy tab which really does do everything. In real terms my first crappy stack system cost a fraction of Naim's entry level kit. Perhaps what is required is a reasonably priced mobile device that can capture the imagination and act as an entry point but given that we can't even get spotify etc embedded in current kit I think its unlikely and I'm sure many on here would react with horror if it did

Dayjay.. I agree. I remember my first 'system' I got for a birthday present. It was an Amstrad.. It was truly awful.. And I did ask my dad would he mind if he could try and change it...  I made a contribution then got a portable Sharp vertical record player / tape player / tuner... Now that sounded rather good and could play a good tune.. It loved 12" singles and lasted several years of abuse..

Ditto Simon, mine was a Binatone which was dire but at the time I loved it. Wired an amp directly to the circuit board after a while which improved things immensely.  There is no such start point for today's youth. We have years of damage from itunes and low rate mp3 to recover from just to get back to that level

It would be very hard to produce a mobile device that was successful. People want one mobile device not several and Naim could not deliver the software or hardware to support the other functions even if it could miniaturise its audio parts and deliver appropriate software to manage them.

I think Naim might focus on the amplification and speaker end of replay. It it is going to try something new then perhaps active and/or wireless speakers and headphones. More in tune with the brand too. Linn Exakt seems more forward looking to be honest.

Personally I think the multitiude of streamers / network players and hard disk servers in recent times have been at the detriment of focus on the core areas of amplication and speakers. From their comments it is clear the people that use it on here do not consider N-Stream to be a great success. However, the energy it has consumed must be considerable and have created a commensurate opportunity cost. What I fear will happen is just more and more streamers on which the same analogue output stages are used as before. With the right marketing these may increase market share nonetheless and good luck to Naim if this is their plan.

As per John's comments above, you cannot shift performance today. As per my comment, you can shift the form factor. As well as a 252 Dac-Pre in a V1 box I would like a Naim version of Exakt without all the traditional frippery. Is that possible? I haven't got the foggiest!

Not after what I heard yesterday! 

Naim kit is good but it's not the be all and end all - it's just a high quality stereo, nothing more, nothing less. - by the way did anyone here look up the word -Syncretism?

Perhaps Naim could find a niche market producing audiophile hearing aids for it's older members. Unfortunately you'd also have to carry around a 20 pound battery belt connected by a Din cable, and if you tilted your head left or right there's that damn hum again!

Just wait until Steve gets a Statement  - or was it Statement speaker cable?

Driving a bunch of teens home a few days ago and the girls were talking about music - what's cool, what's hot, what songs touch their hearts and souls - and it was so very heartening to hear. They're so passionate.  Even better was to overhear that they all want vinyl and a record player, because it's just so cool and the only way to really hear music.  Things are looking up...

Syncretism is dying" now that we live in a past-post modern age. Did you mean new age syncretinism !

I did  Hence the reference about a fusion of influences

Source first has been an essential part of Naim's DNA since it's inception. As Simon and Dayjay have observed, for Naim's future customers, a source isn't a box on a shelf, it's a smartphone. Naim's challenge is to retain it's relevance in a world where it will have increasingly less control over the source, and which is increasingly app and not hardware driven. That's compounded by what appears to be increasingly poor (technically) recorded music.

Most companies struggle to do software well. Naim is no exception. Software is very hard, irrespective of resources, just look at Samsung. The worlds best software companies have resorted to spending huge amounts of money on acqui-hire deals to get the best software developers. If they are not already, businesses like Naim will find it Increasingly difficult to find and retain good software engineers.

As Naim gradually loses control over the source I largely agree with Marky Mark that it should focus more attention on amplification and speakers. I might have just committed blasphemy in saying that! Modern sources are far more of a moving target to engineer against in my view. Muso will be a very good test of how well Naim can do when it controls less of the stack. 

While people are taking a trip down memory lane I'll add this. In the mid 70's my father bought a Radford power and pre amplifier, which he gave to me; when I went to university, together with some speakers he built in the late 60's. I added a Kenwood tape deck and a little latter a Technics CD player. Latterly I hooked up computers and with adapters an Apple TV. Solid amplification and speakers took me quite a long way.

Responses in turn:

For the mass market of portable equipment convenience outweighs quality 100:1, hence the compressed streaming services still dominating.  Most people are effectively listening to 'personal background music'.  This isn't Naim's market.  Furthermore, feeding this type of source into Naim quality equipment will never make sense.  On the other hand, using the portable as a file server only (N.B. not an audio source) and delivering the digital stream to a Hugo is a different proposition for those few who are interested in SQ and can pay the cost.

Naim couldn't deliver a competitive general purpose portable computing device comparable to a Galaxy S5 or iPhone 5, but with HQ audio.  This is true.

Naim's core business is electronics, not speakers.  The speakers were a diversification and, good as they are, they are unlikely to be successful as a core business strategy for Naim (too many competent competitors).

N-Stream wasn't a distraction as I'm pretty sure they outsourced it's development fairly cheaply.  The replacement (to be released with the Mu-so) should be a lot better (also probably outsourced!).

At present Naim couldn't produce a Naim version of the Exact, the Exact is a piece of computing hardware driving a class D output structure; Naim's core business is analogue.  It will take a long time to develop algorithms for signal processing to replicate the Naim PRaT.

Simon you're quite right about the influence of teenagers in the home.  I had been out of touch regarding newer music for quite a while when my then-teenage son introduced me to a number of artists that I've come to really enjoy (this was about 10 years ago now), including Cake, Guster, The Decemberists, Alaska!, Eliot Smith, Arctic Monkeys.  Things even out, as he enjoyed my Beatles and Led Zep collections

Was that with one of the bentley's with naim

Huge, I did have the pleasure of talking to one of, if not the guy who heads up the software development at Naim.. I was told its in house and they mostly hire software development contractors. This was in connection with the Nstream replacement.

Simon

Then let's hope the replacement's a much more professional product than N-Stream - that shows all the hall marks of a rush job.  In my opinion, it also appears either to have been done without Naim's normal commitment to quality or have been done by an inexperienced designer.

As a systems designer I can easily recognise the symptoms.