Naim Audio New Analogue?

if going dig with the phono pre, why not make it an upnp source? 

Christopher_M posted:

Your thread puzzles me, Bob.

With your 'new' olives and the red light Linn you seem one of the most contented guys here. Doesn't mean you can't ask about what's in the pipeline, Naim's analogue future directions though. I suppose

But there's lives to be lived, wives and girlfriends to be kissed, dogs to be walked, groceries to be got in for the weekend. And that grouting in the shower has never been good you must admit!

Best, Chris

 

To be honest I was getting a bit bored reading threads about the ND555 and about speakers and their placement.  I'm imobile for 80% of everyday because of a fractured heel and am spending a lot more time than I would or should on line and so was just trying to cure the boredom Christopher.

I would like absolutely nothing more than to go for a nice long walk, go shopping, do some DIY or anything that doesn't involve sitting or lying around but unfortunately  I can't.

Hook posted:

At this point, I’d settle for a Super Lumina 4-to-5 pin DIN (to connect SL/SC to preamp).

I had a 4-5 pin DIN Hiline between my NAC and Supercap/Superline with which I was very happy.

I was disappoined that Naim did not release a Superlumina variant due to issues they had with it so I tried another manufacturer’s 4-5 pin DIN and I was mega impressed with the music it produced. It definitely enhanced the Superline even further so I bought it.

Richard

Guinnless posted:

james n posted:

Guinnless posted:

I've never thought that amps combined with speakers are much cop for serious sound quality or for upgrades.  Engineering wise it compromises the speaker and amp.

I suspect ATC would disagree. Removing the passive crossover components between amp and voice coil and having amplifiers matched to the demands of the individual drivers seem to make a lot of sense to me.

James

That's what they sell so I'm sure they would disagree. 

As would I after an hour and a half spent listening to a 250DR-driven passive SCM19 in comparison with an active SCM 19 playing my music.  Notwithstanding the engineering compromises I found the latter gave me significantly more musical enjoyment, and by some margin.

Roger

Bob the Builder posted:

Mike Hughes posted:

Once you have DR what eise is there that would bring a power amp “bang up to date”?

 

Obviously thats that then... Calling all amp designers you better just shut up shop because Naim Audio DR cannot be bettered.

Believe it or not there are those of those that don't believe the DR is the be all and end all.

THIS “?” is a question mark. Do I have to explain its purpose publicly or would you care to do a bit of research? Sorry for confusing the issue by adding one on the end of that sentence too!

My response was a simple question. Your response was not a little arrogant and wholly misplaced. My question was not exactly unreasonable. The only upgrade Naim have felt significant in recent times for analogue kit is the DR upgrade so, it hardly seems unreasonable to pose the question as to what exactly this “bang up to date” analogue technology might be. 

The thread since has posed only digital solutions but you asked about analogue so what did you have in mind and why? 

If you’d read the punctuation and the post you may have pondered slightly before responding. You may have even noticed that nowher did I posit the idea that a DR upgrade is the be all and end all. Indeed if you had read any of my previous posts on the subject you might have even noticed that I think the benefits of DR are by no means clear cut. 

Care to town down your transmit button and see if the receive one is still working?

Mike Hughes posted:

Bob the Builder posted:

Mike Hughes posted:

Once you have DR what eise is there that would bring a power amp “bang up to date”?

 

Obviously thats that then... Calling all amp designers you better just shut up shop because Naim Audio DR cannot be bettered.

Believe it or not there are those of those that don't believe the DR is the be all and end all.

THIS “?” is a question mark. Do I have to explain its purpose publicly or would you care to do a bit of research? Sorry for confusing the issue by adding one on the end of that sentence too!

My response was a simple question. Your response was not a little arrogant and wholly misplaced. My question was not exactly unreasonable. The only upgrade Naim have felt significant in recent times for analogue kit is the DR upgrade so, it hardly seems unreasonable to pose the question as to what exactly this “bang up to date” analogue technology might be. 

The thread since has posed only digital solutions but you asked about analogue so what did you have in mind and why? 

If you’d read the punctuation and the post you may have pondered slightly before responding. You may have even noticed that nowher did I posit the idea that a DR upgrade is the be all and end all. Indeed if you had read any of my previous posts on the subject you might have even noticed that I think the benefits of DR are by no means clear cut. 

Care to town down your transmit button and see if the receive one is still working?

I have no idea what your saying Mike your obviously and another level intellectually and linguistically so I'll bow out of this particular exchange if you don't mind.

FangfossFlyer posted:

Hook posted:

At this point, I’d settle for a Super Lumina 4-to-5 pin DIN (to connect SL/SC to preamp).

I had a 4-5 pin DIN Hiline between my NAC and Supercap/Superline with which I was very happy.

I was disappoined that Naim did not release a Superlumina variant due to issues they had with it so I tried another manufacturer’s 4-5 pin DIN and I was mega impressed with the music it produced. It definitely enhanced the Superline even further so I bought it.

Richard

 

I keep hoping Naim will figure it out.  Did you go with Chord?

Looking at the trend of digitizing analogue input, I guess 272 could be the last cheap Naim box going full analogue.....

lhau posted:

Looking at the trend of digitizing analogue input, I guess 272 could be the last cheap Naim box going full analogue.....

I suspect that the main driver for digitising the analogue inputs on the Unitis is to allow Multiroom streaming of all sources, so a new x72 would presumably do the same if that’s the reason, but any new “pure” preamps wouldn’t get any value from it unless Naim found sonic advantages.

(I wonder why my IPAD auto-capitalises Multiroom.)

james n posted:

Guinnless posted:

I've never thought that amps combined with speakers are much cop for serious sound quality or for upgrades.  Engineering wise it compromises the speaker and amp.

I suspect ATC would disagree. Removing the passive crossover components between amp and voice coil and having amplifiers matched to the demands of the individual drivers seem to make a lot of sense to me.

James

I agree that is a good possible future direction with Naim without the current myriad of black boxes and cables... other than I just don’t get on with Focal speakers. I note how well some in the press comment on how well some Naim product works  when matched with ATC actives.. after all Stroud is only 68 Miles from Salisbury 

The passive multi driver speaker with crossover is such a compromise.. no matter how good the amp is you are compromising the result. Ideally you want one amp per driver. We shall see.

Eoink posted:

lhau posted:

Looking at the trend of digitizing analogue input, I guess 272 could be the last cheap Naim box going full analogue.....

I suspect that the main driver for digitising the analogue inputs on the Unitis is to allow Multiroom streaming of all sources, so a new x72 would presumably do the same if that’s the reason, but any new “pure” preamps wouldn’t get any value from it unless Naim found sonic advantages.

(I wonder why my IPAD auto-capitalises Multiroom.)

Or perhaps they find gain control in the digital domain a thing that they would go on?

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

james n posted:

Guinnless posted:

I've never thought that amps combined with speakers are much cop for serious sound quality or for upgrades.  Engineering wise it compromises the speaker and amp.

I suspect ATC would disagree. Removing the passive crossover components between amp and voice coil and having amplifiers matched to the demands of the individual drivers seem to make a lot of sense to me.

James

I agree that is a good possible future direction with Naim without the current myriad of black boxes and cables... other than I just don’t get on with Focal speakers. I note how well some in the press comment on how well some Naim product works  when matched with ATC actives.. after all Stroud is only 68 Miles from Salisbury 

The passive multi driver speaker with crossover is such a compromise.. no matter how good the amp is you are compromising the result. Ideally you want one amp per driver. We shall see.

Or perhaps a speaker that REQUIRES bi-amp or tri-amp......

I agree @SIMON-IN-SUFFOLK . And I think Naim's current active offering leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe not in terms of performance but in terms of limited scope and usefulness.

The scope for going active these days limits you to a tiny range of current and legacy speakers. So if you are keen on a Naim amplification chain (and why not? Naim make remarkably good power amps) your options may be limited to speakers you don't care for. Otherwise you can go outside the Naim family and, as you say, choose from a wider variety of current active speaker offerings but always wonder in the back of your mind whether the amps, matched for the drive units, would still be bettered by active Naim amps?

I've pondered this. And come to two conclusions.

1) Non Naim active speakers are pretty good. Many, like ATC and PMC don't compromise the speaker but supply external power amps with embedded active crossovers.

2) The crossover in a passive speaker is already a non Naim device. Given that the required bandwidth limitations have already been applied by a NAC preamp, inserting a similar non Naim active crossover between NAC and NAP shouldn't be a problem for the NAP or alter the Naim character of the amplification chain. To that end, there plenty of active crossovers on the market. Bryston, Accuphase etc. And they are all highly flexible in ways a SNAXO isn't.

If we are talking about Naim's analogue development, I'd rather see SNAXO rebooted as something flexible than new phono stages.

I’m another supporter of direct speaker drive - no matter how good a passive crossover is, direct drive is better.

But indeed, bi- and tri- amping with the listener’s choice of speakers (which are the most significant component in terms of the character of sound,) requires a flexible approach to the active crossover. There are already a number on the market, both digital and analog.

Analog ones that I have come across allow the user to alter the crossover frequencies - my ATC EC23 uses plug-in resistor arrays, sourced from ATC or readily made up at trivial cost by anyone who can solder. They can also allow adjustment of relative phase and level. However they have fixed slopes. I think Naim are missing a trick with the SNAXO: if they were to at least make it user-tailorable as my ATC one is, it would lend itself to much wider use, though only if the speakers don’t need other tailoring. Better still would be to engage with several manufacturs of quality speakers capable uf being bi- or tri- anped to provide the informatio needed to set up for each one.

Digital ones have great flexibility in terms of crossover points, slopes, phase (time delay), as well as individual level, and also allow other DSP functions while at it, enabling tailoring to any non-linearities of drivers, and can even be used to provide some degree of room correction. They are not difficult to set up (though non-technical people might think otherwise), and analog purists would baulk at the idea - though as the included ADC and DACs are matched it is rather different from normal considerations of replay of digitised music (much as in the Atom & Nova, and Linn’s Urika). Maybe Naim should consider going this route -but perhaps it is too far out of their tech field.

Although if already an analogue signal, you don’t want to really convert back into digital again, take the discrete data stream through some sort of convolution process and then convert back to digital... you are starting to throw info away by doing this... you can look at it a bit like going through lossy transcoding. Converting between analogue to discrete and from discrete back to analogue is necessarily a compromise and lossy in the limit..

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Although if already an analogue signal, you don’t want to really convert back into digital again, take the discrete data stream through some sort of convolution process and then convert back to digital... you are starting to throw info away by doing this... you can look at it a bit like going through lossy transcoding. Converting between analogue to discrete and from discrete back to analogue is necessarily a compromise and lossy in the limit..

I’m not quite understanding you: you seem to be saying that the conversion will be lossy -  how is the conversion to digital and back to analogue different from that used in the recording and playback process? (Of course dependent upon the quality of the ADC and DACs,, but with the advantage that they can be matched.)

Whether or not the DSP process in a digital active XO is detrimental to sound quality is another matter - and I suspect it is a matter of the balance between artefacts caused by DSP vs the benefit of optimum tailoring to the speakers.

Because the process of converting continuous signals to discrete data streams and vice versa is in exact ... it creates distortion and noise. If you did this say 100 times it would be probably quite noticeable on casual listen... if done one or a couple of times the impact is significantly less to possibly being undetectable based on the precision and quality of the ADC, DAC and  analogue filtering , and the DAC would at least need to match your main signal DAC and filter .... but we are in the space of precision audio.

For the process to be seamless and lossless, one would need to have an infinitely small sample time, with the sample pulse having infinite power... obviously this is impossible so a compromise is created.. ... so if you are wanting to perform digital sample convolution (multiplying samples together to filter etc) then you want to ideally do it before you reconstruct into your final analogue signal so as to keep compromises to a minimum.

I did wonder if I could add a DAC to the Nova and see if it improved SQ...I tried the new Qute and DAVE into 252/300. They all sounded pretty much like a Nova give and take a bit. So that was digital Core music file to Nova.....to analog.....to Chord. Did not work for probably all the reasons Simon mentioned. I was just trying to cut corners...never works.

Gazza posted:

I did wonder if I could add a DAC to the Nova and see if it improved SQ...I tried the new Qute and DAVE into 252/300. They all sounded pretty much like a Nova give and take a bit. So that was digital Core music file to Nova.....to analog.....to Chord. Did not work for probably all the reasons Simon mentioned. I was just trying to cut corners...never works.

I’m curious: what did you use as an ADC to feed the analog signal from Nova to Dave or Qutest? Neither have an analog input (and I don’t think Nova has a digital output?).

Regardless, if the Nova has already convrted the original digital to analog using its own DAC, using another DAC later can’t retrieve any more information lost at that stage, no matter how good the second DAC. Indeed, if you were sourcing from Core, why use Nova at all if you want to try a different DAC into another preamp/amp?

Sorry got that wrong....it would have been Core to Dave to a Nova......which then took it through an ADC to its DAC etc. Just trying to see if it sounded better......no it did not. Did not cost me anything, but of fun with my dealer.

Just to be clear I was trying to get around buying an expensive Naim preamp with 5 or 6 inputs.....when I will only use one. We tried the above, then tried a Dave direct into a NAp 300 which I use with my Nova....none worked. But the couple of hours was interesting.....I know some on the forum will say that was obvious......without ever having tried, particularly on a Nova. Dealer was happy to try.....so why not.

Gazza posted:

Sorry got that wrong....it would have been Core to Dave to a Nova......which then took it through an ADC to its DAC etc. Just trying to see if it sounded better......no it did not. Did not cost me anything, but of fun with my dealer.

You have this marvellous DAC convert the source lossless data, only to have it digitized again by the Nova, which then use Nova's DAC algorithm to convert back to Analogue.

You are in effect compressing a lossless Digital file then play it with Nova DAC  Algorithm.... I would say your Nova has done a marvellous job of digitizing if you can't detect a deterioration of sound quality......

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Because the process of converting continuous signals to discrete data streams and vice versa is in exact ... it creates distortion and noise. If you did this say 100 times it would be probably quite noticeable on casual listen... if done one or a couple of times the impact is significantly less to possibly being undetectable based on the precision and quality of the ADC, DAC and  analogue filtering , and the DAC would at least need to match your main signal DAC and filter .... but we are in the space of precision audio.

For the process to be seamless and lossless, one would need to have an infinitely small sample time, with the sample pulse having infinite power... obviously this is impossible so a compromise is created.. ... so if you are wanting to perform digital sample convolution (multiplying samples together to filter etc) then you want to ideally do it before you reconstruct into your final analogue signal so as to keep compromises to a minimum.

And of course adding  analog circuitry and including filters also has a detrimental effect, as well as limiting the flexibility of matching accurately to different speaker characteristics. Whether one is better than the other in people’s systems will depend on the implementation, and whether the additional potential advantages of the digital approach in terms of flexibility and some degree of room correction provide an improvement in sound that might outweigh any negative effect.

One obvious possibility if starting with a digital signal is apply the crossover DSP before the DAC, though I would baulk at the cost of three Daves... But maybe 3 Hugos to get a better active XO. Food for thought for Chord, perhaps!

Innocent Bystander posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Because the process of converting continuous signals to discrete data streams and vice versa is in exact ... it creates distortion and noise. If you did this say 100 times it would be probably quite noticeable on casual listen... if done one or a couple of times the impact is significantly less to possibly being undetectable based on the precision and quality of the ADC, DAC and  analogue filtering , and the DAC would at least need to match your main signal DAC and filter .... but we are in the space of precision audio.

For the process to be seamless and lossless, one would need to have an infinitely small sample time, with the sample pulse having infinite power... obviously this is impossible so a compromise is created.. ... so if you are wanting to perform digital sample convolution (multiplying samples together to filter etc) then you want to ideally do it before you reconstruct into your final analogue signal so as to keep compromises to a minimum.

And of course adding  analog circuitry and including filters also has a detrimental effect, as well as limiting the flexibility of matching accurately to different speaker characteristics. Whether one is better than the other in people’s systems will depend on the implementation, and whether the additional potential advantages of the digital approach in terms of flexibility and some degree of room correction provide an improvement in sound that might outweigh any negative effect.

One obvious possibility if starting with a digital signal is apply the crossover DSP before the DAC, though I would baulk at the cost of three Daves... But maybe 3 Hugos to get a better active XO. Food for thought for Chord, perhaps!

If the DSP or FPGA is fast enough, there is no reason why a single unit can't output 6 channels for triam. Using 3 will only introduce additional timing error between the different units required by the drivers......

lhau posted:

Innocent Bystander posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Because the process of converting continuous signals to discrete data streams and vice versa is in exact ... it creates distortion and noise. If you did this say 100 times it would be probably quite noticeable on casual listen... if done one or a couple of times the impact is significantly less to possibly being undetectable based on the precision and quality of the ADC, DAC and  analogue filtering , and the DAC would at least need to match your main signal DAC and filter .... but we are in the space of precision audio.

For the process to be seamless and lossless, one would need to have an infinitely small sample time, with the sample pulse having infinite power... obviously this is impossible so a compromise is created.. ... so if you are wanting to perform digital sample convolution (multiplying samples together to filter etc) then you want to ideally do it before you reconstruct into your final analogue signal so as to keep compromises to a minimum.

And of course adding  analog circuitry and including filters also has a detrimental effect, as well as limiting the flexibility of matching accurately to different speaker characteristics. Whether one is better than the other in people’s systems will depend on the implementation, and whether the additional potential advantages of the digital approach in terms of flexibility and some degree of room correction provide an improvement in sound that might outweigh any negative effect.

One obvious possibility if starting with a digital signal is apply the crossover DSP before the DAC, though I would baulk at the cost of three Daves... But maybe 3 Hugos to get a better active XO. Food for thought for Chord, perhaps!

If the DSP or FPGA is fast enough, there is no reason why a single unit can't output 6 channels for triam. Using 3 will only introduce additional timing error between the different units required by the drivers......

Not quite sure whatbyou mean?

i was thinking split the digital stream into 3 x stereo channels, split by bass, mid and treble, and each of those three fed to a stereo DAC. If I’m understanding you correctly,  you mean the best approach would be to design the DSP into the heart of the DAC process itself, outputting the three stereo band-split analog signals from that?  That in effect is what I was thinking when suggesting that Chord could consider doing something like that. (That of course is not to exclude Naim from doing likewise!)