Naim Lossless Streaming Roadmap Campaign

As I have said previously, I own an NDS and can, to an extent, understand the concerns expressed in this thread. However I have got to say that if I was Paul Stephenson, I would be somewhat insulted by a number of the comments on here.

I have owned Naim equipment for well over 30 years and they have never let me down in any way shape or form particularly in terms of product longevity, upgrades and servicing. DR is a good example, they didn't have to make that available as a retrofit, a lot of companies would have taken the line that if you want it by the new model, but they did.

Against this background, if Paul Stephenson says 'we will' that means in my experience they absolutely will and given their track record the solution will probably be class leading. I also have enough faith to believe that he is not talking about 18 months/2 years.

Doubt his veracity later if you wish but lets give the guys a chance to deliver on this promise first eh?

Last week I bought Apple TV (in order to stream/mirror television, from my ipad - which works a treat).

The idea that it could access my music from the computer (itunes) on the network was a minor afterthought, (I hadn't even realised in fact).

I listen to long playing records on the grammophone, you see. Because I am too old for all this (or so it feels).

But I connected the Apple TV into the hi-fi via a small DAC (Fiio something at €39) and the sound coming from the speakers was of astonishing (almost depressingly good) quality. I sort-of wish I'd ripped everything lossless into itunes at the time (MP3s still sound like MP3s whatever you do), but the few lossless things I have are really very/alarmingly close in quality to the sounds emanating from my cd player (Naim CD5). Even the music ripped AAC is fine to listen to. Maybe my ears are going.

(However, notwithstanding all of the above, in my side-by-side comparison, the Roksan still recreated the most engaging music by some margin.)

Now that storage is so cheap, I can see me going down the streaming route for all my cds. So convenient. The prospect of re-ripping them is not a particularly enticing one, but can't be helped. I wondered what the best system for this is. I don't want to over-lay everything in my itunes library, because I still use my ipod/phone for running/travelling etc where quality isn't the optimum consideration, but choice is.

So I made my first venture into the Streaming part of the forum and decided to have a look around.

I just read this thread in its entirety and I have to say my heart sank a bit.

All this Spotify / Tidal stuff seems interesting and worth exploring. But, if I like music, I like to buy it, and listen to it how the performer wanted me to, with the artwork they chose for it, and in such a way that they make a living. Does that make me hopelessly fuddy-duddy?

What should I do? Given how long it took to rip all my cds into itunes at AAC quality, the task of doing so again, lossless, is going to take ages. Can I buy a new hard-drive and make a start - if so what should I look for?

And Apple TV is brilliant, can't believe it took me so long. All of Itunes store stuff to buy/rent, Netflix and the like and lots of free telly, Youtube, the lot. Probably the best €99 gadget-thing I think I've ever bought.

Right now I'm off to make a cup of tea with my i-kettle and put a record on though.

If you don't get it you don't get it. You don't have to get it. Just do what suits you but don't expect everyone else to do what you do just because you do it. Choice is key.

Pay per listen is the the Labels' cross between a wet dream and Utopia. Nobody gets to keep anything. They just pay and pay and pay. Pay again and again and again if you want to. That's fine. Just don't expect me to embrace this model. I use the internet for research which encompasses many sources of material including Google, Youtube and iRadio, and I pay quite enough already to do this to my ISP. I also use Freeview facilities to research via my telly and I pay quite enough already to do this with my licence fee.

+1 Camian

Am very much amused as to how this discussion thread has proceeded and will not pretend to say that I have read all of the postings. However, what has become very apparent is how many 'old world' HiFi enthusiasts are duscovering, enjoying and assimilating wirekess based streaming services into their domestic setups. Someone said this afternoon that they had thousands of LPs and CDs do would remain faithful to those formats because of his commitment and, of course, pleasure. Myself, I have LPs in my loft dating back to my very first gifted LP, Rubber Soul, back in 1965. Most of those are in a frighatful condition due to the primitive hardware they have seen. These are accompanied by my Linn Axus and Tag McLaren gear. The CDs are jumbled up in racks and will never be sorted properly. All of this music is on hardware either in FLAC or AAC formats as well as many newer acquisitions. All accessible and playable instantly in any order in, currently, 3 rooms of my house.

The future, in my opinion, for Naim at least, is to maintain and offer a certain amount of legacy equipment but they had better get up to date with the underlying software aspects of streaming audio products, incorporating it swiftly into their gear and ensuring it can be reasonably quickly updated. Gradually, higher and higher quality and density source material wil become available, probably much to the horror of the old world music moguls as well as complex multibox hardware vendors. Muso, in my opinion, is Naim's first real foray into this area and proves they can do a job as well as make the music. HDSs and NDXs are, I'm afraid, very expensive first steps by Naim into this area with a limited shelf life, akin to your old PC or NAS. The stability, flexibility and technology of these products are in software terms quite crude. They basically do the job that your NAS, Spotify, Qobuz and Apple TV does more reliably and resiliency if not with all the quality, so far. 

If Naim can pack 6 x 75 watt amplifiers and speakers into a Muso as well as the hard and software needed to translate the digital signal from either WiFi or Ethernet then you can easily see how this closely coupled and packaged integration is, whether you, I, or Naim like it or not, going to be very much the future for our highest fidelity current and future musical offerings. Why, for example, should we have just one or two output units when we can plug in four, six or eight units offering a panoramic musical event, if that is what we wish, without a complexity of wires and boxes, although largish speakers will still have their place and need. 

Andarkian

You might be right but I am old enough to remember 1983 and 'perfect sound forever'  reality is it's taken 30 years plus to get digital on a par with a well set up LP12 or Xerxes.  The NDS is the first digital source that has really done it for me.

i guess I just don't see things moving that quickly. Oh and don't start me on surround sound!

I am confused by this post. I thought we were talking streaming services ie media and content  and the ability to connect to this media  .. Technically this is all digital streaming, and I blieve more specifically we have been talking about lossless FLAC streaming, whether it be from a local UPnP media store or a web service media store on the Internet. Good thing though FLAC is FLAC.

Simon

I must say, given Paul's comments, I'm now quite relaxed about the whole situation. My NDX is perfect as a hub to reclock the (very affordable) Sonos Connect and read from the NAS. A mixture of my own library and lossless streaming gives me all the music I might want at the quality I want. I find the differences between 24&16bit less of an issue than the mastering quality but, if I really feel a 24bit worth it then I'll buy it.

I don't feel the Sonos fed through the NDX want's for anything and is easily a match for the NAS feed, so the eventual integration of lossless will sound much as it does presently I imagine.

Access to the largest music library possible trumps all these concerns imho.

G

Simon

Apologies for any confusion, I was merely making the point that, in my experience, the pace of change is historically over rated. So now the new dawn is lossless streaming and in 1/2 years time we will all be looking at a new paradigm (God I hate that word but it's the best descriptor I  can come up with). Well we'll see.

I'm getting used to buying downloads instead of a physical entity, and getting to like the convenience, especially as an auxiliary source. Online rental has its merits as long as the quality is OK, but there's a world of music on the fringes that appears in none of these streams. 

I understand and that the vast majority of folk are happy with their musical meat and two veg, and I wouldn't want to appear to sneer at them because a music lover is a music lover whatever the breadth of their love, but so much new music is being made on a small scale on places like Bandcamp which don't appear on the Tidal/Qobuz/Spotify/Whatever axes, that I couldn't do without.

What also concerns me, as I've recorded elsewhere, is the rental mindset of instant gratification - that the opportunity for great music to grow on repeated listens will be list where there's no financial commitment towards getting to grips with something less immediate, instead of skipping on to something more immediately gripping through the online media.

Camlan, thanks for taking the time to explain. I think I agree about change is overstated.. My angle is that a lot of what we are dealing with here, ie web services started many years ago. However initially I guess it was  enthusiasts who led the way in using this technology. It was the late 90s when i first started playing with some early web music services. So the tech isn't new, what is new is perhaps it crossing over into mainstream hifi. And that is being helped by the different ways that  us the masses are consuming music.

So the behaviours might be changing significantly, but the the technology less so..

Simon

Yes Simon, agree 100%. I was ripping CDs to Itunes 10 years ago and perhaps should have smelt the coffee then but it wasn't an issue in terms of real music listening.  Maybe  I'm just getting old but 'things come to those who wait' still has resonance for me.

Fair enough guys, you have risen to my contentious bait. Well, let's hark back to 1967 when The Beatles broke new ground and complexity by recording Sergeant Pepper on 8 track media. To this day, we have no real means of playing back those 8 tracks. They are probably still there for George Martin and any other sound engineer allowed near the tapes to remaster time and time again. But you, me and the rest of the musical world have been conditioned for nigh on fifty years to believe that the only true way to listen to music is stereophonically, anything else is, well, heresy.

Why is stereo the only way to truly listen to music? Why can't we immerse ourselves and reconstruct however many tracks are actually available? You could be your own conductor or sound engineer, take your pick. The physical complexity of outputting multiple tracks and complacency has limited our horizons. This has slready been challenged by current hard and software engineers and is now a reality in our musical world. The output sound may appear to be embryonic to some of you but it is not, and the challenge for the Naims of the world is to be with the wave in refining the sound or simply be submerged. 

You can delude yourself that your NDX is doing something for the sound of your Sonos, or question why I am debating this on this on some closed shop subject on FLAC or UPnP or whatever, but there is a whole new HiFi world emerging that I bet you every engineer in Naim is aware of and would have a very hard job knocking down my proposition.

Oh, and I am not talking about surround sound, but the fact that we can pack zillions of bytes, 4K definition and multiple sound channels into a film deliverable via the Internet to our homes should give you a small clue as to the complacency that has existed in the HiFi industry so far. The Brave New World is not a danger or corruptor but hopefully a revelation for manufacturers and enthusiasts alike. 

There is no delusion, only technology.

We have been specifically discussing the use of Sonos as a digital source using S/PDIF output. The NDX (and NDS) both inherited the buffering and reclocking logic from the Naim DAC. This functionality removes all S/PDIF related jitter, and results in improved sound quality.

If you are confused about how this works, you can read the DAC white paper where it is explained very clearly.

Erm, ok

Andarkin, sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about especially the bit about being deluded , perhaps I am just a simple soul. I guess I am coming from all this from a far simpler perspective, ie my joyment of the accesability  of my private and web based collections of recorded music using my favourite Naim audio replay equipment. The original query on this thread, was simply will we be able to do this totally with Naim or will we need to use a third party such as Sonos ....

cheers

Simon

I don't know how prevalent this attitude is, but if at least one person has articulated it, there is a good chance others are thinking it. A big part of the attraction of streaming on your home or public network is convenience. If the scope, usability and reliability of a significantly lower cost product is turning the head of a Naim customer in the honeymoon period of their Mu-so. Naim should be concerned. 

My n=1. Last summer when I decided to upgrade my old Radford Power/Pre combination I was very keen on a 1 box solution circa GBP 5K. After testing a number of options the SuperUniti really hit the sonic spot for me, but ultimately I passed because I felt the streaming platform wasn't as flexible as I would have liked. I decided to wait, going back; for an interim period, to a super flexible Power/Pre combination by buying a NAP 100 / DAC-V1. I already had a spare Mac Mini and I've subsequently bought a Sonos Connect.

They have trodden different paths but Naim and NAD were founded within 2 years of one another and now NAD has one of the most flexible 24bit streaming platforms with Bluesound boards/modules for it's Master Series hifi in the living room and dedicated Bluesound speakers for the kids, kitchen, bedroom etc.

I remain hopefull I'll be able to spend that 5K on a SuperUniti II :-)

That makes about 125 of us.  Those that take his "bait" that is.

+1

Streaming services are not for me, at least not as my main source of music. I'd feel not at home but like a guest, browsing someone else's vast music collection and trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. And then they go out of business and I'd have to switch to another streaming service, having to explore and map another library again.

My own library is likely to remain the center of my musical universe. Here I know the albums, the good, the bad and the ugly.

Whilst this largely sums up where I stand, the attraction of the streaming services to me is the ability to 'try out' before buying. One of my favourite pastimes on this forum is reading the 'What are you listening to now...' in the Music section and it would be great to be able to listen to some of the albums shown there on a trial basis prior to possibly adding to my collection. However I do want to do this in a quality in line with the rest of my music and that is my reason for waiting for Lossless.

Exactly, I do exactly that, using Qobuz - it can be great fun. It allows me to listen and enjoy the suggested album as if I had a CD or FLAC download. Often I find in music that I really enjoy , the appreciation is in the subtlies whether it be in the voices, instrumentation, phrasing , and feel of the music. Lossy encodings in the past have  often removed a lot of this feel and musical info from a track sometimes rendering a recording of a great piece of music as nothing special.

Simon

You are of course free to pay whoever you like for this type of research. It can also be done for no additional cost and not involve a subscription service.

Clearly I am one of the deluded too...

G

I will keep this very simple & brief - as my opinion have been covered by many contributors...

Tired of waiting for further development on US, I bought Bluesound Node with Tidal Subscription (with free 3 months subscription - courtesy of Sevenoaks).

Connected via Toslink into Ndac/XPSdr into 202/200/HCdr.

Currently, using no-name cheap optical cable streaming 24/192 files which a £40 QED graphite couldn't do. Any recommendation is welcome otherwise I will stick with my cheap cable.

Sound wise (to my ears) - it is very good. Is it better than US? I am not sure - early days but i notice some files sound better than other from either BS or US. Also, 24/192 files sounds very similar/same.

BS app: ipad is far better than Note 4 android (maybe Android tablet will give similar experience ipad) - anyway Nserve is far superior in every-way.

Tidal Service: Expensive but very good and I love the integration on BS, for instance when listening to a file from personal library, it will prompt that other albums/files are on Tidal - a click and you are presented with the albums/files from the artist. Wonderful! Cloud 9?

I don't think i need to buy CDs anymore (except special audiophile labels) because of redundancy of formats, over the the last 35 years I've had:

Vinyls - hardly played, sold my sondek lp12 and still selling albums

Tape/Cassette - gathering dust, vtuner killed it off

Minidisk - same fate as tape

CDs - ripped to NAS, (over 2,000 cds). the first 1,200 cds cost more than my hi-fi system. Kept a CD player as back up (whenever US misfire)

US is currently converting WAV files to FLAC, I've gone full circle - I used to have FLAC files on Squeezebox duet which i deleted (due to claims of NAIM's WAV perfect rips). This time around, i will keep my WAV backup files - who knows?

The big question is do I need US in the near future - considering past teething problems and lack of development. I love US (my first Naim box) but it gets to a point when love is not enough.

By the way, can US serve files to BS? currently, BS pointed to share folder on Synology NAS.

Troubleshooting on implementation: It would have been none if it wasn't for digital cable. I never thought an award winning cable from a reputable company couldn't stream 24/192 files. The penny dropped when i rang QED to confirm, they say 95% sure not 100%.

On final note: Wish i didn't have to spend £400 on BS to achieve my goal/aim. The penalty/cost for early adoption of technology. Thinking back, I bought squeezebox mainly for internet radio but i was surprised Flac files sounds very close to £2,500 CD player. Had the Squeezebox dac section modified into my wonderful Audio synthesis dax decade. Sold the CD player and never looked back.

Enjoy, life is too short