Why do most other manufacturers not offer external power supplies?

Eloise posted:

fatcat posted:

Richard Dane posted:

 The cost to provide the upgrade option is relatively small from a production point of view, so why not offer it?  

Somebody who buys an Ndac (for example) and has no intention of upgrading to an external PSU is being short changed. They’re listening to an inferior product due to it’s upgradability.

No, your logic is flawed. 

Naim nDAC is (I think £2600). The power supply in that is built for a £2600 product. 

It can be upgraded with the XPS DR (£4000) or 555PS (£7000) but if these options didn’t exist the PSU built in to the £2600 nDAC wouldn’t be the equivalent of an XPS or 555PS - either there would be a single DAC at £7000 or three products at £2600, £6600 and £9600 with the expense involved of selling the old and buying the new when you want to upgrade!

So no, no one is being “short changed”. 

I| completely agree, Eloise.  I think that is exactly right.

I bought an nDAC when it first came out for around £2000 without an external power supply to replace a CD5 (which wasn't much less), and it was the biggest single SQ upgrade I have experienced.  I didn't feel short-changed Just because the power supply could have been better - on the contrary I was just glad that the NDAC was priced within my reach at the time.  If you built the nDAC with the best possibly (internal or external) power supply it would cost something more like £8,000 and I would have bought something else instead which would then have been sidelined when I decided to upgrade again. 

I have, as it happened, since upgraded the power supplies (to XPS and then 555), and I am happy about that too, and I was able to reuse the XPS for other purposes,    The two box strategy gives more flexibility in the upgrade path than one box solutions.  

Cyrus have had their PXR for nearly as long as Naim have had theirs

Tabby cat posted:

Cyrus have had their PXR for nearly as long as Naim have had theirs

Yes but Cyrus can barely fit anything into there boxes!????

Sim Audio follows a similar path to Naim with its better, Moon branded, sensitive electronics such as phono stages and pre-amps.  My Moon phono stage has its own internal power supply plus an external one which acts as an upgrade (though the Superline is of course ultimately superior ).  The better Moon phono stages are upgradable in exactly the same way, via a much bigger external power supply.

There's also plenty of suppliers offering upgraded power supplies to a whole range of mainstream and non-mainstream HiFi.

I was very much, and still quite fond, of Cyrus before I got into Naim, and they are also very much into high quality quality separate power supplies for some of their amp, pres and sources...  Cyrus also love their modularity and high end Cyrus holds its price well.. in some ways quite similar to Naim other than sound presentation which tends to be more crunchy and punchy than Naim.

I'd observe that India has just built the World's largest solar power plant in Kamuthi occupying 10 sq km. Why didn't it integrate it straight into Delhi? I guess for similar reasons to Naim, it's too big a real estate to fit in the city (large transformer) and its best to keep all those solar panels away from the pollution of the city (well, perhaps that bit is the other way around compared to the Naim philosophy!). 

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

I was very much, and still quite fond, of Cyrus before I got into Naim, and they are also very much into high quality quality separate power supplies for some of their amp, pres and sources...  Cyrus also love their modularity and high end Cyrus holds its price well.. in some ways quite similar to Naim other than sound presentation which tends to be more crunchy and punchy than Naim.

Me too Simon. I had a complete ‘9 box’ Cyrus set in the 90’s but always found it a bit thin sounding ultimately.

Still like the original Cyrus 2 design.

G

high current units /power stages, there is an good reason for external power supplies . but it is less clear when higher current rated psu are added to pre-amps and low current devices  .  Very few companies produce add on psus.  box collecting is out of favour 

I always found Naim equipment sounded great out of the box with the integrated transformer. Supernait, Nait XS and CDX2, pretty much trouncing their competition at the price point.

Adding Flatcap or HiCap was a remarkable and worthwhile upgrade, immediately noticeable and giving a darker, quieter background with a more textured and fuller feel to the bass whilst sweetening up the treble nicely.

I think the dealer is way off the mark on this one as it’s nice to have the choice. As my hearing detioriated I moved to amps with tone control but can say the power-supply route with Naim is excellent engineering.

While it’s not surprising that the Naim Forum support Naim in this it is true for most of us that we have not always owned Naim.

Having gone through various amps in my early days including Arcam, Mission and some lovely Exposure stuff I finally had The Big Dem. Looking for a long term strategy it was a three way choice between Naim, Exposure and Linn. I left with an 82/180. Clear winner for me, but also the fact that they were not dead end investments was important. Still amazes me how power supplies open up the sound of Naim products.

Happy to be short changed then...

Stu

the new uniti range don't have option for  additional  psu, this range is aimed at customers that want  one box solutions,   the future for naim is affordable    well done naim

I still wish the Core had an external PSU.. 

Chag -

audio1946 posted:

high current units /power stages, there is an good reason for external power supplies . but it is less clear when higher current rated psu are added to pre-amps and low current devices  .  Very few companies produce add on psus.  box collecting is out of favour 

 

  

You should try it, with low current demand circuits, the effect of lower impedance power supplies may be surprising, but it is there.  With mixed mode components (where there are digital and analogue circuits working together) then the reason for improvement when reducing the impedance of the PSU is entirely obvious even with devices that have low nominal continuous current demand (i.e. digital electronic subsystems often have very high transient current demand on clock edges).

I have worked with the designers of such systems and this is well known engineering practice (and it's confirmed by theory!).

You don’t need qualifications in electronics or been in the presence of people with electronics qualifications to realise powering a preamp from a dedicated power supply (internal or external) will be a damn sight better than powering it from a transformer in a power amp with a single smoothing cap and basic regulator.

The principle of separating the power supply from the pre amp is a good one but do they really need to be in individual boxes. Instead of a half width pre sat next to a hicap on a rack, why not build a compartmentalised full width unit with pre in one compartment, power in the other. I have a high end Yamaha DVD player, this is constructed with three steel separated compartments. One for analogue circuits, one for digital circuits and one for the 2 No. transformers (one transformer for analogue circuits, one for digital circuits.

Just think of the sonic improvements gained from eliminating the snaic.