4.6 update SQ

I think the Nova was always a bit too good and the temptation to play around and ensure it and other devices sit below the new top line devices...

An option must be given to choose to upgrade and downgrade. New sound clearly has lots of showroom brightness, but it's lost the organic something Special, now it's just background music not toe tapping and singing music. Other downside is bass bloom which is dreadful, pulling speakers further out would just result in even less bass.

I never imagined Naim would turn into a tone controls type brand. Where has the Naimness gone.

When I was told a listening panel signed off the firmware I assumed trained Naim staff with a focus on the Naim sound, not joe public.

I bought and paid for a certain sound which i now do not have. 

jsaudio posted:

I have a NAC 272 and updated last week . Didn't realize it might affect SQ and so I installed SL interconnects at the same time. Overall SQ is better but not sure why. Update,SL or both. Was considering doing a factory reset but what settings will I lose and have to reset if I do ?

No-one has answered your question! If you do a factory reset, it resets everything to how it came out of the factory, but with the latest firmware of course. So you then have to reset things like tuner presets, favourites, room name, wifi settings if you are connecting your 272 with wifi, Bluetooth pairings,  how long the screen stays lit, does the screen show a clock during mute, which inputs are enabled,  stuff like that. It's a bit of a pain but not really an issue.

best

David

Bunny Colvin posted:

I took my NDX to 4.6, decided the bass went all wooly, went back to 4.4 then tried 4.6 again a second time followed but a factory reset and the result this time was better. But I have changed some other things (switch and messing around with two different servers on the NAS one transcoding to WAV one not) so probably a few too many variables to come to any firm conclusions other than I now think 4.6 sounds pretty much the same as 4.4 did. So far a lot of faffing around for little if any benefit but perhaps in time I will start to appreciate improvements if they exist. Seems like Naim have opened a can of worms... poor sods were just trying to make things better. I feel a bit sorry for them actually, there was a time they only had to make CD players, sell them and maybe a replace a few mechs to keep people happy. 

This update's primary purpose is to better integrate multiroom across platforms,  SQ fine tuning changes was something that could be added at the same time to 4.6.      Also any sound changes you may or may not hear & like or dislike are more related to your system & your ears, brain & expectations.  Seems like a few don't like it,  but most do.      

It’s an issue worthy of debate.

We buy our gear to suit our ears, our tastes, the rest of the system  and our rooms. Usually after a home demo to ensure all fits sonically (albeit with minor tweaks, such as speaker placement etc.)

To then find a key source has a different sonic signature is a tricky thing. We have to trust Naim’s judgement, but they don’t have access to our ears/room/kit. Though the Beta Test system is a pretty good way of experiencing a broad(ish) set of circumstances.

My experiences of the different firmware sonics for both NDX and Star have been completely positive, but I can understand others may be dismayed if a delicate balancing act has been knocked awry.

The idea of having user-selectable DSP profiles so that a user could chose more or less bright or whatever was discussed in another thread recently and I got a pretty dusty response from the esteemed Richard who said words to the effect why did I think I would be able to judge better than the golden ears in Naim (eg Roy) which was "right"? And that Naim had looked at providing room correction when designing the 272 but it affected the SQ so they left it out.

All of that is fine, but ignores completely the point that users have different systems, rooms, music preferences and ears! I don't care what Roy thinks is right in Naim's listening room. Ultimately while that is a good start, I want it to sound good to me in mine.

Of course quite a number of other brands are providing either room correction per se or switchable DSP settings (Quad for example) and even Naim have put some room setting adjustment in their low end products (muso). I expect Naim will discover it's a good idea one day too. In fact I can see a big market for Naim if they produced a one box upgrade that allowed you to do things to the digital stream, especially now that they have started the move to digitising analogue inputs on entry into the preamp.

best

David

Perhaps a current compromise, if it were at all feasible, would be to offer two versions of the update - one with the DSP mods and other updates, and one with the updates without the DSP alterations.

Nick Lees posted:

Perhaps a current compromise, if it were at all feasible, would be to offer two versions of the update - one with the DSP mods and other updates, and one with the updates without the DSP alterations.

To me that makes logical sense, but it will not happen as it would be taken as an acknowledgement of an issue.

The problem is that the functionality and SQ are tied together. Change functionality and SQ will very likely change, entailing a tweak to the DSP. So if you hold the DSP and add functionality, it will sound different to before the functional changes. 

As Nick Lees says  sonic signature is a tricky thing & we have to acknowledge that.    A while back in beta testing it got well divided with differing opinions,  most NDX'ers liked it but some NDS'ers didn't.   Whereas this rev was pretty well unanimously given the thumbs up especially when 272 got fine tuned.    The naysayers leave me wondering why they don't like it,  when the vast majority do ??? 

David N posted:

Alley Cat posted:

unlike the new Atom/Nova/Star - once you update those you're stuck until a newer version comes out.

Wow, is that the case? I might not have updated my firmware if I knew. How can rollback not be possible? Does the update download a chip and install it?

On the plus side, has anyone experienced improvement/s as a result of the upgrade? Sonically, functionally, integration, interface, etc?

There's another thread about 2.3.1 - a few Uniti series users found a very negative difference in SQ, myself included, but fair to say the majority didn't find it worse.  Factory reset didn;t help.

I e-mailed Naim and the reply was that it's not possible to downgrade and that it shouldn't affect SQ anyway.  If there is a way to downgrade it doesn't seem to be shared with the average user.  Not sure if beta software users would be able to divulge if they could go back and forth between current and beta firmwares.  I can't for the life of me see why the device could not downgrade using firmware on a USB memory stick for example.

Alley Cat posted:

Not sure if beta software users would be able to divulge if they could go back and forth between current and beta firmwares.  I

On Atom/Star/Nova - not older units where we know this is possible.

Updated my 272 to 4.6 on Monday and I like the change as others have mentioned the bass has altered and this is for the better for me as I use Proac Tab 10 and additional bass is always welcome

Dare I mention inky blackness, overall very impressed.

Thanks for your reply David. I will do a factory reset on my 272. (After I figure out how to do it)

It's easy. You use your remote, press the spanner or wrench key, scroll down to factory settings, select that, then scroll down to reset all settings, select that and then confirm by pressing the mute key on the remote. It takes a couple of minutes to complete.

best

David

David Hendon posted:

It's easy. You use your remote, press the spanner or wrench key, scroll down to factory settings, select that, then scroll down to reset all settings, select that and then confirm by pressing the mute key on the remote. It takes a couple of minutes to complete.

best

David

‘Play’ button on 272 keypad. If in doubt p20 of the user manual.

G

HiFiman posted:

Updated my 272 to 4.6 on Monday and I like the change as others have mentioned the bass has altered and this is for the better for me as I use Proac Tab 10 and additional bass is always welcome

Dare I mention inky blackness, overall very impressed.

Same here Hifiman - insofar as I also use ProAc Tablette, though in my case the 2000's. The Tabs tend to be slightly rolled off at the top end (a Good Thing for extended listening sessions) so a bit more verve and openness at the top end also welcome.

I completely get though why some may not have such a fortuitous combination of factors. It will be interesting to see if Naim put their collective heads above the parapet in terms of modifying SQ via firmware in future...! 

GraemeH posted:

David Hendon posted:

It's easy. You use your remote, press the spanner or wrench key, scroll down to factory settings, select that, then scroll down to reset all settings, select that and then confirm by pressing the mute key on the remote. It takes a couple of minutes to complete.

best

David

‘Play’ button on 272 keypad. If in doubt p20 of the user manual.

G

Ah ok. I was looking at my Unitilite when I checked this!

best

David

Obsydian posted:

I think the Nova was always a bit too good and the temptation to play around and ensure it and other devices sit below the new top line devices...

An option must be given to choose to upgrade and downgrade. New sound clearly has lots of showroom brightness, but it's lost the organic something Special, now it's just background music not toe tapping and singing music. Other downside is bass bloom which is dreadful, pulling speakers further out would just result in even less bass.

I never imagined Naim would turn into a tone controls type brand. Where has the Naimness gone.

When I was told a listening panel signed off the firmware I assumed trained Naim staff with a focus on the Naim sound, not joe public.

I bought and paid for a certain sound which i now do not have. 

 

do a factory reset and normally i will be better....some members pointed that in the thread” 4.6 update and upgrade sound quality?”. They were not pleased with the update but after the factory reset they were pleased....

French Rooster posted:

Obsydian posted:

I think the Nova was always a bit too good and the temptation to play around and ensure it and other devices sit below the new top line devices...

An option must be given to choose to upgrade and downgrade. New sound clearly has lots of showroom brightness, but it's lost the organic something Special, now it's just background music not toe tapping and singing music. Other downside is bass bloom which is dreadful, pulling speakers further out would just result in even less bass.

I never imagined Naim would turn into a tone controls type brand. Where has the Naimness gone.

When I was told a listening panel signed off the firmware I assumed trained Naim staff with a focus on the Naim sound, not joe public.

I bought and paid for a certain sound which i now do not have. 

 

do a factory reset and normally i will be better....some members pointed that in the thread” 4.6 update and upgrade sound quality?”. They were not pleased with the update but after the factory reset they were pleased....

My Nova SQ plummeted after 2.3.1.  Installed current firmware 2 days ago having been away, initialy thought it might have been better.

I've spent most of the day listening via streaming to Qobuz via Chromecast built-in, Roon from my Mac and audio from a NAS.  It's been completely underwhelming on everything I've played from digital sources/files, simply uninvolving and soulless.

My LP12 has been up for just under 24 hours and have just played a Pendragon album that was good last night but now sounds much better (assume Lingo and Linto must have warmed up).   This is odd given that the analogue input is digitised unless the digitisation is high quality and unaffected by the DSP.

French Rooster posted:

do a factory reset and normally i will be better....some members pointed that in the thread” 4.6 update and upgrade sound quality?”. They were not pleased with the update but after the factory reset they were pleased....

Forgot to mention - did that with 2.3.1 and no improvement.  Same with current firmware.

Alley Cat posted:

French Rooster posted:

do a factory reset and normally i will be better....some members pointed that in the thread” 4.6 update and upgrade sound quality?”. They were not pleased with the update but after the factory reset they were pleased....

Forgot to mention - did that with 2.3.1 and no improvement.  Same with current firmware.

Down the same straight after the update, no difference still mojoless

Mike-B posted:

Bunny Colvin posted:

I took my NDX to 4.6, decided the bass went all wooly, went back to 4.4 then tried 4.6 again a second time followed but a factory reset and the result this time was better. But I have changed some other things (switch and messing around with two different servers on the NAS one transcoding to WAV one not) so probably a few too many variables to come to any firm conclusions other than I now think 4.6 sounds pretty much the same as 4.4 did. So far a lot of faffing around for little if any benefit but perhaps in time I will start to appreciate improvements if they exist. Seems like Naim have opened a can of worms... poor sods were just trying to make things better. I feel a bit sorry for them actually, there was a time they only had to make CD players, sell them and maybe a replace a few mechs to keep people happy. 

This update's primary purpose is to better integrate multiroom across platforms,  SQ fine tuning changes was something that could be added at the same time to 4.6.      Also any sound changes you may or may not hear & like or dislike are more related to your system & your ears, brain & expectations.  Seems like a few don't like it,  but most do.      

It's hard to ascertain how many of those in favour are beta testers and even then at best say 12 positives (with at least 3 of those beta testers) and about 6 negatives.

Does the update appear more favourable to 272 users as the pre is also gaining something - even if indirectly?

G

The 272 got specific attention for 4.6

Nick Lees posted:

The 272 got specific attention for 4.6

A question I'd find interesting to know the answer to is whether or not the Uniti Atom/Nova/Star had any specific changes to the DSP or if it was only older models.  Something changed with 2.3.1 for Nova for me, and I don't htink it's that different with 2.6.9508 subsequently.

Assuming I'm not imagining it, and there was no change, then have I suddenly become weary of digital audio?