Naim Lossless Streaming Roadmap Campaign

Dave

DrPo, interesting summary, which i can't help agreeing with.

simon

@DrPo - I'm not sure that's altogether a fair summary. the audiophile hifi market is highly fragmented, and no company can constantly be at the forefront. These are quite small businesses. Good for Chord for getting an advantage, but it will likely be relatively short lived. I agree that Naim is behind the curve on lossless network streaming, but these services are very new and, being honest, generally somewhat shaky from a commercial perspective. It's very early days. I support the idea that Naim should offer a little guidance about their intentions, but I won't criticise a business of around (guessing) £40m turnover (including Focal), for not being first to everything.

I'm sitting here listening to Joan Armatrading on my new NAC172 and feeling very happy with this particular streaming product. 

Fair critique! Just "browsed" Joan via Spotify on my NDX and heard her for the first time :-) 

Solid Air, I agree some of the services are new but  others are quite established such as Qobuz and Spotify for example. They have been around since 2008 or thereabouts albeit only more recently expanding into new global markets.

Simon

Interesting to note both Audiovector and Dynaudio in the list of respected audio brands signed up with Tidal.

Proper lossless streaming hi-fi, self-contained within a pair of top quality speakers, now there's a prospect!

I'm starting to think I might never buy that NDX (or equivalent).

Olly

I've been using a Sonos Connect simply to run Spotify for the last few years. It's plugged directly into the 252. It has taken an increasing share of my listening time due to it being so convenient and the fact that it just works brilliantly with an iPad controlling. It doesn't sound too shabby either...

I've been considering streaming options, but the way I see things moving forward, I won't ever need to faff about ripping 4000 CD's because of lossless streaming services. I don't care what the streaming service is called (Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify, Soundcloud, Deezer etc etc), or which one provides the music I want to listen to. Sonos enables me to do this right now. The way it searches across multiple music platforms is great. The music services will come and go, change and evolve over time. I'd love a Naim solution with an agnostic approach to support this (is that called a computer...?!). Maybe it's just to put a DAC V1 on the end of the Sonos, or whatever technology solution provides this functionalty, I don't know. What I do know is that the solution today is not for me to buy an NDX, cemented by the rise of lossless streaming. 

Happy listening!

Best, Ponty

Ponly, interesting post. I thought the ZP90 was a bit shabby inside in terms of quality and specs, but I saw the review and measurements taken by Stereophile magazine, and it was a lot better than I thought.. Overall not really Naim territory on its own, but reclocked and /or connected to a Naim Dac or other you can see how it can be  an outstanding source.

Simon

@AllenB    I think it's highly unlikely that they don't have a product plan for 6, 12, 24 and 36 months. It's pretty standard practice, with the nearer-term plans being firmer, of course. Without such a planning process they wouldn't be able to get parts supplied. Plus, they have shareholders.

I think this conversation may have become a little heightened. 

- Naim has a roadmap for products, but they may not be willing to share any part of it. That is their right, although of course the commercial risk is theirs too, ie potentially losing loyal customers.

- They clearly listen to forum members. It absolutely is a form of market research. Of course it isn't representative of the wider buying public, but companies operating in the high-end and hobby markets have to listen to their early adopters and advocates. Naim isn't a big company and isn't as systematic on this as some - they should adopt 'social listening' tools such as Tracx if they haven't already - but they clearly take an ad hoc interest, and Paul has given his explicit support to the forum in the past.

- Lossless streaming services are still very new, and are commercially shaky. I take Simon's point that Spotify and Qobuz aren't that new, but Spotify isn't lossless and Qobuz, while several years old in France, is new to anywhere else and seems to have had some financial wobbles. I agree that Naim should be working on delivering these services asap - and they probably are - but I'm not going to blame them for not being in the vanguard on everything.

I think I am interested in a roadmap as I don't want to buy anything too early and see it superseded too quickly.

I went for NDS (and very happy too BTW, after testing Devialet at the same time) as I wanted many years use of a high quality source, but seeing how quickly things are currently seeming to move the NDS could look a very expensive piece of kit in under a year or two.

For me I would love to see NAIM commitment to NDS and its products and more and know that in say 18 months time I will see a new products planned that I can look to invest in then and not buy now, regret later.

If I saw NDS upgrades being planned and say a statement 'lite' or similar then I can see where my journey is heading in the next months/years, at the moment, especially with the Hugo chatter, you could feel like you went in too high too early.

I want to feel the NAIM love thats all and feel that the purchase is a commitment from both parties to long term enjoyment so why not let us in on the planning ;-)

Again, thanks for all the interesting contributions gentlemen. Some good debate.

G

A roadmap would be helpful, but I wonder if something even more fundamental is needed. A 100% commitment to the digital domain and in particular software/firmware.

Almost all the interesting innovation I have seen in the last 24 months has come from devices that are either computers in hifi packaging or hifi devices with a good deal of computing power.

Without knowing what is ahead and what innovation there will be in other areas, what kind of sensible company gives a 100% commitment to anything?  Those who thrive are those most able to adapt and you don't do that by tethering yourself to hard and fast commiments to any particular type of technology

Dave, I agree about 100%, but 50% would be nice.

I think it would be beneficial also to know this.

Naim aren't adverse to announcing things and waiting months before people could get their hands on the devices i.e. Statement and Mu-so.   But the streaming part of the business I would hazard is on the increase and with the that the competition.

I'm sure CES will have new enhancements/announcements, I'm certainly looking forward to the full size Hugo TT - although not the cost, and I think this will be an even greater challenge Naim has to address.

But I would also like Naim to be more clear on which DAC chips are in their devices as currently it's not clear what's in the CD's, DACs and Streamers.  I bought a Burson headphone amp for my PC ( it was 1/4 of the cost of a V1, much as I would have liked one ) with the Burr Brown PCM1793 DAC in it, based on the fact Naim had made clear which DAC was as in my CD5si, which I enjoy a great deal. 

Franks explained: “I’ve been noticing various postings on various forums".

From the above piece regarding Hugo TT (TableTop)  :-)

On the Hugo TT: “We doubled the capacity of the batteries and we’ve also added well over 100,000 microfarad of super capacitors which have the ability to store a vast amount of energy and release it very quickly."

Is this an even greater challenge or in fact something Naim have done for many years??

On a positive note it is good there is competition and it sounds like this might improve the analogue output from the old Hugo.

I hope they get it into market quickly so I can get a good S/H original Hugo  bargain.

I would be amazed if that is the case (nothing beyond 1-2 years).

Recall that last year that the Focal/Naim group got funding from an investment capital company.  The IC company would want to know what they plan to do with the money and unless they expect to only be involved for 1-2 years (unlikely, given Naim is an established business they probably wouldn't grow quickly enough for return on investment without some major plans). 

That would mean they'd want to know about long term growth plans.  Saying "we don't have any roadmap or business plans out that far" would not make them look an interesting prospect and would also give an underlying message that the company doesn't know where the market is headed, which would ring alarm bells.

Also, Statement took 3-4 years to develop.  I doubt they started the project without any ideas on timescales or impact on other product developments although it IS likely it took them longer than they anticipated.  Engineering teams are often overly optimistic!

I would be very surprised to see a Statement 'lite'.  Statement is a halo product and the market for it is small compared to their other products and what the market in general is demanding; not many people are crying out for a £135K pre/power amp system.

When you consider that a 552/500 pre/power is now nearly £38K, Statement 'lite' would need to sit between these two price points.  That would be dividing up an already small market even further.  Likely those that would consider and could afford paying say £75K for a pre/power combination would also be able to pay £135K for Statement.

I think what IS very likely is that we'll see a trickle down of the technology into the existing products.  That could happen without any official change to the existing products (these would keep residuals high on the current models); we know that Naim already do that (e.g. the 007 transistors from the NAP500 going into the NAP300) or maybe a replacement model at a similar price, for instance a NAP 500.2.

In the article about the Hugo TT it says the price will be twice that of the Hugo portable.

Interesting post with a lot of great ideas.

I think the concept of a roadmap is very difficult with regards to be open about it - being first is still important to win a keep the heart of the hifi consumers. What could help would be a kind of teaser policy which enables you to understand in which areas the company is working, and it would avoid people from stepping away to the next great product on the market. If for instance it would be know that Naim is working on an upgrade of the NDS, it could stop the urge of people to try to shoot for something new like the Hugo etc. So indicative roadmap, without revealing the exact features would help.

a second point would be the way the DAC components can be upgraded. I think this is still an area of massive evolvement in hifi. I don't know if it's at all possible from an engineering perspective but ...... If I look at my AV receiver which is a NAD they have a great concept of interchangeable modules which can be upgraded/interchanged when technology evolves. So that's how I upgraded in an efficient and cheap manner to the new HD standards in sound.

a last point. We as Naimees should also put a bit more of trust in the roadmap and development of products going forward. I think we all have seen that some great products have been emerging in the last years which definitely evolved the listening experience in a positive sense. If we just look at the developments since I own Naim (NDAC, DR upgrades, NDS, Muso, Statement, new cables and interconnects coming.....), so I guess we will see some surprises coming....

You can all imagine we have a road map, we do. You can all imagine  given our postion on SQ we would wish to add un-compressed streaming, we do. Correct Implementation of this is to us is critical and when it's sorted we will launch additional services. We will.

That'll make the DAC-V1 a bit of a bargain then.

Dave