Time for a little balance?

Haven't NAIM made a move in this direction with the Statement.

It would be interesting if we could get a view from someone who is  fortunate  enough to make a comparison of the available options of the Statement.

Any dealers out there tried it?

i can't see the problem with people spending zillions on cables if they think they've got their moneys worth...it's their money, they can do what they like with it....

From the manufacturers point of view there wouldn't be much point in developing balanced  cables at a cheaper price  if they can command the large sums they are currently getting from these high end cables...

Sister xx

If going balanced is ultimately a more technologically proven solution manifesting in "improved" sound then good. 

On wires generally my position has always been that different cables can fine tune the sound but it's rarely if ever night and day.   I say that in the knowledge that there is a strongly held view on other fora backed up by a fair bit of scientific evidence that a wire cannot influence the sound at all, but equally there are those who believe wires make a far greater difference.  

All that said aren't we heading for all wireless some time soon?

Regards,

Lindsay

Hi Sister E.,
It's no so much a question of being able to design the cables, rather it's a question of designing the electronics to provide balanced inputs & outputs.  

Studio recording equipment uses balanced connections explicitly to reduce contamination from other cables & sources of electrical noise.  Phono cartridge and microphone signals are both so low that they are the most sensitive in this respect. It is for this reason that my phono stage also has balanced connections.

Naim just seems a bit behind the times on this.  To be fair though, backwards compatibility is an issue; the electronics would need both balanced & unbalanced connections to work with all the legacy equipment out there today.  However, this is precisely what more of the high end manufacturers are providing, especially those with a pro-recording studio background.

Hi Lindsay,
re cables don't make a night & day difference, I've lost count of the number of Naim Forum posters who have claimed that using a Naim Super Lumina or Chord Music interconnect is equivalent to upgrading a Naim black box.  As Naim's electronics become progressively quieter & more revealing with DR technology etc., then the need for quieter signal transmission paths will become more evident.  Hence this thread; are we at the tipping point where a balanced electrical architecture is the right way to go?

Best regards, FT

Of course the only real advantage of balanced connections is that you galvanically isolate the ground, so  relative ground potential differences don't contaminate the audio signal. 

Now Naim have spent a huge amount of effort and developed incredible preamps around star earthing and unbalanced signal routing.. so it will be interesting if and when they adopt balanced audio transmission which has its own considerations.

Perhaps when we see this, we will eventually see a new breed of NACs from Naim.

Simon

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Of course the only real advantage of balanced connections is that you galvanically isolate the ground, so  relative ground potential differences don't contaminate the audio signal. 

Now Naim have spent a huge amount of effort and developed incredible preamps around star earthing and unbalanced signal routing.. so it will be interesting if and when they adopt balanced audio transmission which has its own considerations.

Perhaps when we see this, we will eventually see a new breed of NACs from Naim.

Simon

Isn't the Statement the first step on the ladder to balanced electronics? Just asking.

Could be, I don't know much about the innards of the Statement NAC.. i.e. Whether it's a balanced preamp, or single ended, but with balanced interfaces which is usually a compromise.

arent we at the point where it should be digital and fibre?

jon honeyball posted:

arent we at the point where it should be digital and fibre?

Fair point. Can digital totally supersede analogue in the reproductive process or is it a technical/economic compromise? 

Again I'm not an expert so I'm just posing the question. 

Interesting question Jon
If we start with a digital source, then where is the optimum point for converting to analogue in order to drive the speaker cone/panel?

1. In the speaker itself, according to the likes of Linn & Meridian, so long as you can isolate the electronics from speaker induced vibration? 
2. Combine the DAC & power amp in a separate box at the rear or under each speaker, again to isolate the electronic from vibration, perhaps?

It gets a fair bit trickier when your source is analogue though, as you have to convert from A to D, which is much harder to do well than D to A.  Keeping it analogue avoids the cost and complexity of both an A to D converter and a D to A converter.  With Naim's current top D to A converter costing over £9k when powered by a 555PS, a Naim version of a Devialet solution could be slightly expensive for most of us...

Given the above, Jon, what would you like to see?

Best regards, FT

There are currently 3 basic types of audio connectors used: XLR (balanced), DIN (we all know about the shared earth and how good this thing is) and RCA (probably the worst of them all due to a fact that negative has to be split at one end and combined again at the other).

In a domestic environment cable runs tend to be rather short. Using balanced XLR connections tend to offer little, if any, benefit.
Once cable runs start to be long or the environment is noisy (eg a stage) balanced connections are the only way to go.

So perhaps, just hypotetically, Naim do know what they are up to with DIN? 

Adam - all that makes sense. 

If longer balanced cables do the job then a long balanced XLR would likely still be way cheaper than a short ultra precious interconnect. I use long and short xlrs in PA rigs. Radio Moscow never gets a look in

The benefit of balanced does tend to be on longer cable runs, for example, perhaps, with active speakers, or withpower amps sited beside near the speakers to minimise speaker cable length, or where the interconnec unavoidably runs for some distance alongside mains cables.

My own amp has both balanced and single-ended inputs (switchable). My DAC, which feeds the power amp directly, also has both balanced and single ended outputs. I haven't done so yet, but I do intend some time to try balanced. I am hoping balanced is the same, then allowing me to switch between the two inputs on the power amp to select music replay or other sources (musical instruments).

But is it a balanced differential sliding bias ?  ( which my Karan uses, but none the wiser what that means, and if it's even better ) .

"Balanced differential sliding bias" is not a term I've come across, but sounds like something to do with an amplifier's ineternal electronic biasing, and not balanced signal inputs (or output in a preamp). No doubt someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but it also sounds a bit like marketing-speak rather than an electronic engineering term...

Agreed, but it does sound rather cool though, don't you think?

Best regards, FT