The DVD5 is, like most Naim products, more expensive than the majority of mass-produced Chinese/Japanese products.

It was always thus. For those that can afford Naim products the price is not the highest priority when choosing a product.

Back in the old days. When Linn were producing the steam-powered beam engines and Naim supplied the boilers to power the Linn whistles and bells (Kans and Bricks). It was no different. Quality cost(s) money.

There are always those with either the funds or the credit rating that will allow them to support such habits. I am not sure they can be called more discerning though.

Naim must inevitably be more than slightly worried by the AV tidal wave. The AV world is getting incredibly dominant in mainstream society. It now seems easier to buy film DVDs than music CDs in many shops. Who would have thought that most supermarkets would ever have DVD payers and racks of DVDs! I notice the latest DVDs cost almost as much as the players! Something must be wrong there!

I don't belong to the school of thought that says a firm must always expand to be successful.
It just makes it a bit more difficult to survive change if a firm remains small.

Unless they can continue to supply their constantly shifting customer base needs they will wither and die. Generation changes put new pressure on a firm if it doesn't adapt. As does changing technology. Just look at timekeeping for a technology that has changed competely beyond recognition. Or motorcycles.

Going back to the parallel thread on LP V CD/DVD. It's much more about signal to noise ratios.

I can clearly hear the difference between my LP12 and my relatively cheap CD/DVD players. I just prefer the convenience of CD/DVD over any acoustic advantage of the older format.

I hate rice crispies. I detest even the occasional clicks and pops. That's why my LP12 gathers dust and my modest record collection sits in storage. I have given up the struggle to enjoy LPs simply because of its deficiencies in the noise area. Not because of any greater efficiencies in the CD/DVD area.

I can still remember the first time I brought my CD63IISE home and plopped my first CD on. I was grinning like a kid! It was bliss! No clicks or pops for the first time in decades! I could finally enjoy the music without distractions. It took me ages to relax and enjoy really loud music without the feeling something would suddenly go BANG! As it often did with the Sondek.

Interestingly (or not) my tastes in music changed dramatically with the new format. It used to be said that owning a Linn made you able to listen to music that you wouldn't normally listen to. I would argue the converse. CD makes many other kinds of music approachable. It's just that I don't usually listen to classical orchestral music any more. It is simply too tiring on CD. But I'm still not willing to go back to listening to LPs.

Final thought: You can listen to some music a thousand times without losing interest. How many times can you watch a film?

Nime

[This message was edited by Nime on Sun 19 September 2004 at 9:57.]

quote:

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Originally posted by Nime:

Final thought: You can listen to some music a thousand times without losing interest. How many times can you watch a film?

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Well it depends on the film but I have discovered that DVD is great for Opera and live concerts where watching the performers is part of the whole experience.

Tom
Actively enjoying it all

On Nime's post:

I agree with the comments about scale and market forces applied to NAIM. It is interesting though to note the way this forum has grown over the last year or so.
I am not being snobbish here, I think it is great that there are so many new members joining.

The corrolary to this has been the introduction of first the "i" series and then the "x" series. In other words more affordable quality HiFi from NAIM is attracting folks.

It suggests that in spite of the alarming growth in DVD and the attendant rapid decrease in the price of players (they are now almost a throwaway item when they break, like cheap digital watches became) there is still a desire for basic stereo replay to be good, especially when it is available at a more accessible price.

Has the older more expensive range of NAIM kit suffered? Well yes and no. I suspect the trickle down of technology and proud statements that the new stuff contains some of the same elements as the expensive kit (CDS3 DAC's for example) nags a little at the proud owners of the expensive stuff who wonder if their kit is being "devalued" by the new stuff.
However NAIM is a happy victim of it's own success it seems. Note a thread complaining about the waiting time for delivery of CDX2's for example.

Now that is all high quality stereo, where the NAIM brand is strong. I don't see any point in NAIM trying to join the frantic cut throat DVD market beyond evolving and improving the AV2 which please note is all about audio reproduction which NAIM knows very well, and not about video which is a different animal.

Naim has enough on it's plate looking after it's HiFi stereo business which it should do as well as it can please.It is dangerous to dilute it by throwing money, time and energy at the video side, which could be better spent on the audio side.

BTW I do agree with the attractive features provided by DVD and both Movie and Music surround. I may on average spend about 3 to 6 hours a week of my leisure time on them, using Japanese kit which was very competitively priced, BUT I average 40 hours a week minimum listen to my NAIM HiFi stereo system.

regards
GEOFF

The boring old fart

I personally get sick of an album far faster than a good movie. I could watch the original Star Wars every day, I could watch shows like Friends every day, I could enjoy Lord of the Rings evry day.
Albums, well, only the best albums are enjoyable all over and over, and to me, only Metallica has met this test yet.

On the AV topic again. Let's forget about quality discussion of LP vs.CD. Unfortunatly we live in a society and a generation where quality does not matter enough anymore and hence any new format, no matter how much potential it has got, will never reach it's full potential because the mass market does not need it and producing it is too much work. Hence, some old LPs sound better than the lazy arse CDs.

On the AV and especially the video part, quality does matter especially to the market aimed at. The young guns like me. I apologize if I'm mistaken, but the DVD and HD generation is probably between 15 and 35 years of age.
With picture quality it is possible and often times quite easy to say if a picture actually is superior or not. Maimum sharpness is measurable as it is dependent on the number and distance of the receptors within your eyeball.
Problem is, that although Naim's DVD5 apaarently supplies awesome sound, the picture quality, although supposed to be very good, simply cannot compete with HD no matter how well it is done. 400 000 pixels compared to 2million will never be able to hold their own. Sorry, that's just the case.

Maybe Naim were wise enough to build the DVD5 so they can later just put in a BluRay laser or somehow update the thing to HD capabilities. If so, they will probably have had to make some sacrifices and if not, the DVD5 is simply out-of-date soon and if anybody seriously considers buying it to be able to have it updated to a new DVD9 format in 10 years, then don't.

I don't mind them making the DVD5 sound perfect, but as we probably all can agree on, sound experience is influenced also by the picture and in AV your main focus will always be the picture (concert DVDs, which are rarely the reference DVD and ususally simply lack quality anyway are different, but irrelevant for the real AV market).
So, if the picture is right and the amps and speakers are right, you will hardly hear a difference in the sound quality of DVDplayers. You will or might in a A/B test, but probably not in real life. Your AVR does the job there. Of course, that's presuming you are using a digital connection between the two and the AVR hence does the decoding work.

5.1 is standard now and will remain so for a while. 6.1 is the maximum you can get at the moment. There are no 7.1 discs available. Only receivers. And only just now the PL2x has been released which finally brings sound to a 7.1 setup but although sounds fantastic, fakes it just like PL2 does. So real 7.1 is not available yet and 8.1,9.1 or 10.1 is not going to be around for years, if at all needed then. You'd rather have a whole room simulator where you just enter the amount and position of speakers into your AVR and it calculates delays etc. and produces a kind of PL2x sound on all your speakers. But no media will be carrying such a signal.

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It's up and running now!!! www.ForumPictures.de.vu All new and beautiful!

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Maybe Naim were wise enough to build the DVD5 so they can later just put in a BluRay laser or somehow update the thing to HD capabilities. If so, they will probably have had to make some sacrifices and if not, the DVD5 is simply out-of-date soon and if anybody seriously considers buying it to be able to have it updated to a new DVD9 format in 10 years, then don't.

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Excuse me Alex, but yet once again you are trying to dictate what someone should or should not buy.

Just who on earth do you think you are?

Oh, I forgot... we are all stupid infantile idiotic insane sheep without minds of our own.

B-a-a-a b-a-a-a b-a-a-a?

Freedom of speech is the order of the day here.
As is the right to dispute the arguments presented as best we can.

While Alex is thrashing about getting himself into a complete lather he is at least making people think.

I happen to believe that's always good thing. Naim is remarkably relaxed about things here. There are very few taboo subjects beyond the moronic 4" nails in place of fuses threads.

If Alex irritates, Then look within. Not at Alex. Because, whether you like his arguments or not, Alex cares passionately about what he's doing. He is merely trying to convey that passion. One can learn much from such threads.
I can even remember a time when I cared that passionately about HiFi. Now I probably care more about the music instead.

Hifi is not a competitive sport. Even if discusson of it is. I recommend a step back from the keyboard and a moment's pause for thought. Before assuming a personal slight or attack.

Nime

quote:

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As Nyquist has proven, any signal can be perfectly reproduced if your frequency is twice the maximum frequency of your source. f(A)>= 2*f(max) .

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That's not quite what Nyquist proved: Nyquist proved that the maximum frequency that can be accurately reproduced in a sampled system, is half the sampling frequency. However to achieve that, you would need to have 'perfect' pre and post sampling filters: in other words filters that reject 100% of the stopband and pass 100% of the passband. The crossover point between the pass and stopbands would also have to be instantaneous (a 'brick-wall' filter). These filters tend to be rather difficult to make in reality.

What you tend to end up with, is a filter that rejects most of the stopband and has a gentle slope between pass and stopbands. As you know (I'm sure), any frequencies higher than the nyquist limit, will be aliased back down into the passband where they will interfere with the signals you really want.

quote:

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So it's quite easy to not lose any detail ...

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Really? I guess you've never tried it in practise.

quote:

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Now what I am saying, is as soon as all the analog parts are gone, there simply is no difference anymore.

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Correct. A one or nought is a one or nought - that's the beauty of digital signals. Sadly, you always seem to have to start and finish with an analogue signal, and that's where all the problems come in ...

quote:

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Originally posted by Patrick Dixon:

quote:

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Now what I am saying, is as soon as all the analog parts are gone, there simply is no difference anymore.

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Correct. A one or nought is a one or nought - that's the beauty of digital signals. Sadly, you always seem to have to start and finish with an analogue signal, and that's where all the problems come in ...

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An unfortunately the signal on a cd is not stored as 1 & 0 but as strings which need unpacking.

I have been reading this thread for ages and I think it is going off-topic [as some of the best threads do].

I think Alex B. is asking 'What is the best business decision for Naim.' The thread has been confused by arguments about LP vs CD sound.

I think of Linn who used to make mechanical devices [LP-12 + speakers] and then switched to electronics [amplifiers, CD-players]. The question with Linn [if you love the LP12] is 'Would the LP12 still be here if Linn had not produced multi-room ?'. Another question could be 'Would we not have a much better LP-12 if Linn had not produced multi-room ?'. There is no way of knowing but it's fun to speculate.

I don't know [if I did I could make lots on the stock-exchange].

The 'Alex B.' question seems to be ...
Can Naim survive without going AV ?
Are Naim doing it correctly ?
Will they produce super AV ?
Will having AV allow them to keep having super stereo audio ?

I know none of the answers to these questions and I don't think Naim will tell us their plans....

James H.

but no one here will honestly argue a turntabel has better timing!

No one will argue. Everybody knows the truth.

CD go from 20 to 20kHz and have a dynamic range of 96dB. DVD-Videos have same frequency range but dynamic range of 120dB. A DVD-A can even handle 140dB(!!!) and 0-96kHz and supports lossless compression! Dynamics of a LP are about 40dB and an absolute max. of 60dB!!!

You are talking about quantity, not quality.

Klavier 45dB
Klarinette 50dB
Horn 50dB
Posaune 50dB
Pauke 60dB
Orgel 45dB

Again: this has nothing to do with quality. Its plain quantity.

People love numbers, they love to compare quantity because quantity is obvious. People don't feel, they are not interested in really feel. But then they need to do strange things so that they can feel that they exist...

I am very glad that Naim care about quality! This is very important in my view.

Hey Alex, do you think that Jascha Heifetz' playing was cold?

- Jun

Alex,
the experimental setup was an av2, nap175, nap200, sim2 domino55, B&W 803, htm2 , linn wallspeakers, rotel rdv1060 and the dvd5 proto. We used the digital connection and component for the sim2. Than we swapped the cables.
And there was a very(!) noticeable difference. Test DVDs were Starwars epII, the corrs unpluggeg and some other sruff I can´t remember.

So I think that Naim goes right to approach the AV market as me and many others enjoy concerts, operas and films in a high quality. and for that I like to spend some money, because good reproduced music touches me every day again.

Those guys who think that DVDsound is crap should stop using those crappy cheap machines...

Cheers h.
(going to rome with my bunny tomorrow for a few days to enjoy reality)

My reference to DVD sound being "crappy" was to MOVIES. This is relative to music. And I have heard state of the art AV.

Personally I find the DVD concert sound to be hokey. A flute coming from the left rear channel, a guitar pluck from the front right, etc. etc. Obviously now I'm talking about DVD-A or SACD. But a typical concert DVD is even worse, all 5.1 speakers playing the same damn thing. This is not the way music is supposed to be played, imo. Otherwise the musicians would take places around the crowd so that you would effectively be in the middle. But who knows, maybe the next evolution of live music is "central immersion."

I cannot weigh in on the difference of the LP in relation to the cd as I have never heard a good LP setup (I'm a young'n). I trust those who are older, wiser, and have EXPERIENCE with the two formats. I have a cd player b/c it's convenient and cd's are easy to buy.

Lets just hope Naim does not make the same mistake that Linn did.

Mark Twain-
Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth.

quote:

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Originally posted by Jun Keller:

Hey Alex, do you think that Jascha Heifetz' playing was cold?

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He was useless on the trombone

Hmmm

Interesting thread/discussion.

Geoff P said:

quote:

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1) Naim does outstanding Stereo pre & power and CDP's They all sit in the Analog world which Naim is expert at.

2) I agree DVD replay will be around for a long time to come. They have just announced that over 200 million DVD's were sold worldwide. Other formats will come but once you've bought the DVD's you are going to want to keep playing them

3) When it comes to digital processing, and here I'm talking about the DSP process for both sound and picture, like the vast majority of others, Naim is using OTHER PEOPLES IC's. The same IC's are in DVD players from the likes of Denon which deliver is a serious way at less than 1/4tr of the proposed cost of the DVD5 and include DVD-A (full surround not just stereo) and SACD.

4)I have seen a DVD5 picture and heard the sound of a DVD5 through an all Naim surround system (AV2 included). It is good BUT it is not better than the progressive scan component ouput I get from my Denon 2900. On the sound front, again it was good but not in any noticeable way better for Movie sound than my non-AV2 processed system with Naim amping in it. In my case it's driven by a SONY AV processor. The combined cost of the Denon & Sony I mentioned was 1,200 GBP. That is really tough competition for the combined cost of the DVD5 & AV2. I know you are all going to say how great the DVD5 and AV2 can be but the competition eat's them on price-performance just because it comes so close to the same sound & picture quality that the difference is minimal.

5) I have to agree Alex has a point. The whole AV thing is a tough battleground where I think NAIM is in danger of spending too much development money for too little return. It needs the scale, speed of development and low cost volume manufacturing that the likes of Sony, Denon & Pioneer can acheive to fight in this market. I wish it were different but that's the way it is.

regards
GEOFF

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I think that Geoff sums it up nicely.

IMV the world of musical in-home entertainment and the technologies to reproduce it are changing rapidly, and as a commercial organisation Naim have to adapt with the times to effectively stay in business.

Their main focus is/has been always on quality; not just components used, but their careful inplementation to get the best results re sound, and now picture as they take steps into the AV/HT world.

Unfortunately or otherwise, this will always cost. There is no way a small specialist manufacturer can compete with large, 'mainstream' concerns on a price/value basis, unless you want/need/can afford the best possible performance available, in which case the price/value equation is probably acceptable.

Just as the sing-along-around-the-piano gave way to the wind-up gramophone, and then 78/s, 33 rpm LP's, CD's etc, there is no doubt the promised/forthcoming Blu-Ray HD capable media will be the latest 'kid on the block' as regards a high capacity media for storage of music/HT etc, and with a capacity of 50Gb, and costs of production similar to todays DVD's, I can't see it failing.

Colombia-Tristar have announced they will be releasing all their catalogue of movies on HD Blu-ray as of end 2005/beginning 2006. I see that Sony (owner of Colombia-Tristar) have also just bought MGM studios as well, for a sum around the $5.5 billion mark, which gives them unparalled access to a huge catalogue of movies to be released on HD Blu-ray disk.

Speaking for myself, the days when I could spend an entire evening just listening to LP's, or CD's re music, are severly curtailed, re time pressures for work etc - ones leisure hours are not what they were. Besides, there are now more competing media and hobbies in our lives re our personal entertainment. Count me a victim to the computer, and to movies just for a start as regards entertainment in the home. Oh, and did I forget to mention I actually PLAY a musical instrument - all this needs time, and these days an awful lot of us are somewhat time poor.

If I am in anyway a 'typical' customer for the likes of the smaller specialist 'quality' manufacturers such as Naim, then the market for 'just' 2 channel high quality stereo systems starts to look very small, and becomming smaller, so Naim HAVE to move/expand into multi-channel music/HT to ensure longer term survival IMHO. That doesn't necessarily mean abandoning quality 2 channel, but you can't make such items if you go broke trying to do so.

The difficulty that I see for Naim with the analogue versus the digital world, is that as Geoff points out, Naim use the same IC's etc as other manufacturers, and unlike analogue, it appears that the room in development/tweaking etc to make one component sound noticeably superior to another when playing with 1's and 0's is a hard road indeed.

Not to say it can't be done, or that they're not doing it already, but it does become even more expensive it would appear to get the results, as compared to what the best models of the top mainstream manufacturers can produce for significantly less cost given there much larger manufacturing volumes.

My HT 'hybrid' setup has seen a very recent change. Like Geoff, I was/am using Sony ES gear in combo with my 2 channel Naim setup for AV duties (9000ES series DVD, proc/preamp & separate power amp) until I had an ongoing reliability problem with the Sony power amp, which saw a replacement of the pre-power with the latest Sony flagship AV integrated amplifier, the ALL digital TADA9000ES.

It's only been a couple of weeks, but the sound is simply phenominal. Both for the price, but also in outright terms, it is very, very good.

IMV, the AV2/175 combo would likely still have an edge (haven't been able to do an exact AB demo, but heard both on the same day, and with the same material) - mainly in dialogue fullness/richness, and dynamics. But only just. As Geoff says, the difference in performance is minimal. A scene here, a scene there, one thinks 'hmm, yes the AV2 was a bit better on those Arrow hits in the beginning of Gladiator' or, 'yes, that slight inflection of dialogue here on this scene of xxx movie was slightly better' but it is really so good (TADA9000ES) that you quickly put away any objective analyzing and just find yourself caught up in the movie, not so much as a passive viewer, but an active participant, which is what should be happening, i.e. the suspension of disbelief. So the TADA9000ES is doing some very nice things right indeed.

And that's really the rub of it, with digital, v's analogue for companies like Naim and other specialists - it's just so much harder IMHO for them to 'tweak' the sound to significantly greater levels so as to justify the price. Especially when as has been mentioned, one is dealing with compressed lossy algorithmns re DD, DTS etc. Maybe the new HD disks will use lossless compression or better for sound, in which case I would think that would help the specialist 'quality' sound manufacturer like Naim immeasureably.

Finally, if cost didn't come into it, I'd go for an AV2. But one has to live in reality unfortunately. IN OZ terms, the AV2 is $7k, plus 175 $4k, and if one wants to do 7.1 (and if you're serious about surround sound, arguably the way to go) then one needs an additional 150 ($2.5K) so all up one is then looking at $13.5k, or approaching the cost of a new Honda Jazz ($16k)

And we still haven't budgeted for speakers, or a display. So it's easy to see the problem, and difficulty for Naim in this market place at the present time unfortunately, when the TADA9000ES comes in at AUS $6k - with onboard cutting edge DIGITAL AMPLIFICATION that provides 7.1, and supports up to 9.1, with sound quality to rival an AV2, plus build and finish arguably as good or better in some respects.

Lest I seem griping, I'm not, I appreciate what Naim are doing in AV and hope that eventually there may be an AV3 or similar, that would replace my present Naim 2 channel preamp and the Sony, to give a 'one box' solution, but until then, I simply cannot justify the price to go the Naim AV route, given the present minimal difference re results as compared to the affordable 'high end' of the mainstream manufacturers flagship products, given the standards of current software used in this medium, which would be a very limiting factor IMV.

Lets see what HD picture and sound brings to the party in the near future; personally it's then that I think we'll really see the difference that a sound specialist like Naim can bring to the table.

Best Regards

John...



This is my last upgrade.... after this my system will be finished...:-)

BEAUTIFULL!!!

A perfect summaration almost exactly of my point of view, although less drastic

What I would like to add, is as all digital amplifiers are not working properly yet (the preamp might but the poweramp still supplies a analog signal for the speakers) the market for awesome amplifiers is still going to be around for quite some time. That's where I see Naim come in. The sources are becoming more and more irrelevant as far as sound quality is concerned if you let the AVR do all the decoding and the conversions. The source will then only supply the pure signal. So I personally would say Naim should not get into the AV source market. I think that would be fatal, especially if they can't keep up to the changing market.
They should IMHO keep building surround preamps like the AV2, maybe not quite as expensive and especially maybe build either a 7.1 poweramp or an integrated AVR. Main has started to go mainstream by releasing lots of 5 series entry level gear.

So, they IMHO have two possibilities. Continue their highend road making outstanding amplifiers, maybe preamps and especially speakers and stop making AV sources or make sources too, but then release them within a year or two and not after 5 or more years. Of course the risk of being fast are lack of quality or the format going down. But that's the risk you have to take when moving to AV. The DVD5 will have a tough stand simply because it's too late. Release two or three years ago it would have been a huge success.
And we must not forget the problems they have had since announcing and releasing the demo model. Although officially shown it was far from finished and had lots of bugs. Naim seemed to have put it out now, so they just pop in before newer formats flood the market. And as seen in the past, the AV Naim products have seemingly always had quite serious issues when first released. The AV2 caused a lot of trouble for a lot of people. I personally can only state my trouble with my Axess speaker. I bought it quite early, and the punishment was, it was not shielded properly and hence I am using a copper and a steel sheet to protect my TV and still have a minimial humm in the speaker. Naim told me I could try with copper or steel sheets but did not really help me too much. Now they have learnt and built a proper or better shielding into the Axess, but are not willing to take back and redo the ones they didn't do right the first time round. If it's just a software update or something the dealers can do, they might be more supportive, but if it needs to be done directly they either charge or don't offer it. I'm a bit dissapointet about this.

So, they shoudl seriously think about what road to take. And please, either keep making best stereo components without raising the prices, or make multichannel poweramps with the same quality or dump the entry level stereo and keep the better gear and make AV additinally. But I cannot imagine them doing it all without having to pass the for most of us unnecessary expenses on to the buyer, us.

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It's up and running now!!! www.ForumPictures.de.vu All new and beautiful!

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BEAUTIFULL!!!
A perfect summaration almost exactly of my point of view, although less drastic
What I would like to add, is as all digital amplifiers are not working properly yet (the preamp might but the poweramp still supplies a analog signal for the speakers) the market for awesome amplifiers is still going to be around for quite some time. That's where I see Naim come in. The sources are becoming more and more irrelevant as far as sound quality is concerned if you let the AVR do all the decoding and the conversions. The source will then only supply the pure signal.

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That’s what they used to say about CD players Alex, they all sound the same. If you are using individual components in a system then each component will have an impact. Some greater than others.

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So I personally would say Naim should not get into the AV source market. I think that would be fatal, especially if they can't keep up to the changing market.

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Naim have always taken a system approach. That’s what they build the full gambit. I very much doubt that they’d give up producing the “sources” because they were too difficult.

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They should IMHO keep building surround preamps like the AV2, maybe not quite as expensive and especially maybe build either a 7.1 poweramp or an integrated AVR. Main has started to go mainstream by releasing lots of 5 series entry level gear.

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Naim have always made “affordable” equipment. In fact it’s only recently they’ve decided to enter the top end.

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So, they IMHO have two possibilities. Continue their highend road making outstanding amplifiers, maybe preamps and especially speakers and stop making AV sources or make sources too, but then release them within a year or two and not after 5 or more years.

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Why 2 years? How many manufacturers are still producing dedicated cd players? And that’s after over 20 years! There’s a lot of life left in CD, DVD and vinyl.

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Release two or three years ago it would have been a huge success.
And we must not forget the problems they have had since announcing and releasing the demo model. Although officially shown it was far from finished and had lots of bugs.

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You appear to know a lot about something you have never seen. You should always expect bugs in prototypes. That’s the whole point. I think it’s a particularly brave and forward way of thinking to release proto players to their best and most trusted dealers for feedback.

quote:

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Naim seemed to have put it out now, so they just pop in before newer formats flood the market. And as seen in the past, the AV Naim products have seemingly always had quite serious issues when first released. The AV2 caused a lot of trouble for a lot of people. I personally can only state my trouble with my Axess speaker. I bought it quite early, and the punishment was, it was not shielded properly and hence I am using a copper and a steel sheet to protect my TV and still have a minimial humm in the speaker. Naim told me I could try with copper or steel sheets but did not really help me too much. Now they have learnt and built a proper or better shielding into the Axess, but are not willing to take back and redo the ones they didn't do right the first time round. If it's just a software update or something the dealers can do, they might be more supportive, but if it needs to be done directly they either charge or don't offer it. I'm a bit dissapointet about this.

---

I’d be disappointed too.

quote:

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So, they shoudl seriously think about what road to take. And please, either keep making best stereo components without raising the prices, or make multichannel poweramps with the same quality or dump the entry level stereo and keep the better gear and make AV additinally. But I cannot imagine them doing it all without having to pass the for most of us unnecessary expenses on to the buyer, us.

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All this new technology is a real challenge for all audio companies. It’s about a journey and not a destination and it’s not all going to happen overnight. There are no perfect answers to perfect questions.

And those “unnecessary expenses” are what’s keeping this company profitable so it can supply you with the stuff “you” want in the future. There are many different people who get many different things from Naim, you are I are just two of them.

J

Article about Blu-ray v HD-DVD. It's a matter of perception

Tom
Actively enjoying it all

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A DVD-A can even handle 140dB(!!!) and 0-96kHz and supports lossless compression

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But 'handling' and actually achieving are two very different things.

Is there actually a DVD-A player that can achieve 140dB dynamic range at the analogue output?

I doubt it...like many things in audio and videoland it's often marketing aimed to mislead.

Andy.

I think there’s some truth in the comments Alex makes but I reckon the mass market will dictate that DVD’s/DVD players will be around for a long, long time.

Whether Naim should have troubled themselves with building a DVD player is another issue. I’m not so sure they should have done. Arcam have done it successfully, especially with their new DVD79 – good sound, top picture quality (prog scan + HDMI output) all for just under £1K.

Tag McLaren, on the other hand, went in at the other end with their £4K player and, although it was a superb machine, we all know what happened to them. I should imagine some of this was down to the fact that each of their £4K DVD players cost them considerably more than this to produce! However, regardless of this, there are only a small number of people prepared to pay £4K for a DVD player no matter how good it is.

Personally, I think Naim should concentrate on stereo but, at the same time, give their loyal customers access to multi channel in a way that’s inexpensive to all parties. How do they do this?

Firstly by accepting that they probably shouldn’t be producing expensive DVD players. Be realistic – a lot of Naim customers might pay £1K for a CD player and then £300-£500 on a decent DVD player. If Naim could produce a DVD player that plays CD’s as good as their £1K CD player and also produces picture quality to compare with the best £500 DVD players AND if such a player would cost no more than £1500-£1750 then fine – go ahead and build it – people will buy it because it gives them everything they want in one box (with the Naim logo on it). If SACD can be added on for a few hundred quid more then, again, go for it.

Secondly, whilst the AV2 is fine, why not offer a cheaper version which has no processing at all i.e. offer a pre-amp with a 6 channel input – this shouldn’t cost much more than a NAC112. Now, of course this wouldn’t allow the user to apply processing (DPLII etc) to analogue sources but I would imagine many Naimees could live without that. What it would do, however, is allow people to enjoy the occasional film and its DD/DTS soundtrack using the DVD players own decoder. Similarly, they could dip their toe in the SACD/DVD-A water - and that would have to be done using the player’s decoding anyway.

So, why not a 6 channel pre-amp? Copland do a product like this and Arcam have recently added such an option to one of their integrated amps. Obviously you would need to add power amps (at least a 2 channel one for 4.0/4.1 or a 3 channel amp for 5.0/5.1) but it would still be a lot cheaper than going for an AV2. I would have thought a grand tops for something like this and I reckon a lot of people would be tempted by this flexible option for a few hundred quid more than the standard pre-amp.

What else might be useful would be if Naim could come up with some small but good quality rear speakers – something like the Linn Local e.g. small, discrete but good. Keep the cost to £300, maybe a little more – no fancy finishes (black or white) but include a wall/ceiling mounting bracket with them.

I’d also urge Naim to stay out of the subwoofer market. There are already specialist companies out there who have been in the game for decades (REL early ‘80’s, Velodyne late 70’s) and I just can’t see Naim being able to produce anything better for the money. I mean, the fact is that if you are willing and able to spend a couple of grand on a sub then you can acquire a unit that plays as loud as you want with practically no distortion and even sets itself up to take room effects into consideration!

If Naim could come up with something pretty special for £1000 then fine but, even at that level, there are some very good subs on the market and, unlike with centre speakers, there is no tonal matching to take into account i.e. other than aesthetics and brand loyalty, there is (tailored sub/sat packages aside) no reason for anyone to match Naim speakers with a Naim subwoofer.

I think I’ve said enough.

Matt..

quote:
Is HDTV Really Coming to Europe?: Malcolm Steward wonders how soon it will be before we can wave goodbye to DVD and start watching truly high quality images on our TVs....
from here
http://www.thebaj.com/issue_latest.htm