I would like to introduce my company, pARTicular contemporary design to you, which specializes in designing and building soundplatforms for audio, video and other mechanically sensitive equipment.

A customer of mine, registered as willster, wanted us to inform you about the new sound platform, that is specifically built to display naim equipment.
Current models available in the Naim configuration are BASIS, PARALLEL, TANDEM and NOVUS. For more information visit our website, www. particular.com.

Currently, we have no distribution in the UK, which might explain the fact that you have not seen our products. We are selling directly into the European market, as we haven't found a good match for distribution.

We just exhibited at the annual CES show in Las Vegas, where about 150 high-end manufacturers did display their new products catering to audiophiles and music lovers as well. We offered one of our products to Naim for their active display.

Naim USA requested to audition the custom naim soundplatform at their Colorado facility prior to the show to guarantee optimum performance with their gear.

The sonic improvement was so obvious that Naim authorized us to contact their dealers worldwide for the introduction of our soundplatforms as the best match for their gear. In addition, they used the NOVUS design in their active display at the show. According to Chris Costner and Chris West, Director of Marketing and Sales at naim USA, respectively, the response from Naim dealers and Naim distributors to NOVUS was overwhelming. They mentioned that there will be a picture on the naim USA site and a show report.

I have had the chance to visit other showrooms at the Alexis Park at the CES. I can assure you that Naim would get my vote for best sound at the show.

Please feel free to contact us if you should have any questions.

Sincerely,

Volkmar Drübbisch

Our American distributors picked the stands for the show, we had no input. We have not heard them in the UK. Naim USA think they are great. We have no problems with any manufacturer contacting our dealers but WE WOULD NOT SUGGEST THAT these stands are the "best match."

We do not mind any individual posting on the forum but company reps and the sales push from other companies direct on our site, posts will be removed. I have left offending post so that you can all clearly see the position.

[This message was edited by Paul Stephenson on WEDNESDAY 17 January 2001 at 10:14.]

It is not our intent to offend anyone at naim-uk, neither any
participating parties in the forum. We don't mind at all the removal of
our posted information, as we don't have any interest in not obeying
your rules, regulations and politics of posting notes. Hence, we
apologize.

In the contrary, it was our intent to inform Naim owners about
alternatives to other rack manufacturers. We thought it would be of
common interest to owners of Naim equipment, that naim USA ( as clearly
indicated) not only think that our sound platforms are great, but indeed
are a better match for naim gear. USA naim dealers think so as well. We
are more than happy to provide you with references.
We think that it is in the interest of the end user to potentially find
a sound platform that suits his /her equipment better. We wouldn't
otherwise understand the fact, that our customers make the effort to
compare our sound platforms with others. Their interest can be simply
described as making naim gear sound as good as possible, no matter if
they are living in Australia, UK, Singapore,...........

In addition, we are wandering how you can suggest that our sound
platforms are not the best match, as you haven't tried them.

We were hoping that you would at least give your company colleagues, USA
naim distributors, credit for their experience with our sound platforms,
as they put a lot of effort into making naim gear sound as good as
possible. A sound platform is an essential part in this equation.
In all honesty, do you really think they would make such a statement,
if they couldn't fully support it with their experience. Chris Costner,
Chris West, others of the naim staff, dealers and customers are very
critical if it comes to making naim sound better today than yesterday.

We would appreciate if you could post this complete reply.

We wish all naim owners and the naim UK team a healthy and interesting
year.

Sincerely,

Volkmar Drubbisch

[This message was edited by Mark Tucker on THURSDAY 18 January 2001 at 15:41.]

"best" (across the board) is a rather hard concept to grasp in the context of what i believe is our current level of understanding of the stands/equipment interaction - (i.e very little in my view). but i suppose you could just about accept this on the basis of some sort of empirical evidence from someone you trust. we wait to hear more...

there are quite a few candidates for "best" --- mana, hutter, isoblue (new kind on the block, sort of), QS, etc etc...

nevertheless, it will be very interesting to hear naim uk's views of just how good these "particular" stands are.

i have a dream.... i really wish that naim had the resources to make their own supports (or subcontract this), so that customers can take that as baseline. this MAY actually cut down the amount of exchanges on this issue to be about the same as on, say cables. however, what i find very attractive about naim is that they would only get involved in the stands business if they knew they had something genuinely better to offer.

enjoy...

ken

I'm going to mail them about a soundframe...

Arie

Almost every single thread seems to turn into a debate on stands, supports etc etc

Gone are the days of discussing the intrinsic values of the Naim philosophy it seems.

As a relative newbie I can't tell you how much I learned here in a very short space of time and I find it a real shame that it has come to this.

This place has become a marketing arena for stand manufacturers and what I think Paul S is saying here is that Naim aren't interested.

Who can blame him?

Personally speaking , and this is just my own opinion OK? I certainly wouldn't allow comments like "Don't buy an XPS buy more more Mana it gives much more of an improvement for your money" I don't care how sincere (or not) the person might be saying this kind of thing - it will harm Naims business in the long run and that can't be a good thing. Can it?

P

Lance

Arie

Chris West
Naim Audio North America

Arie

quote:

---

What goes wrong with the American people ? Using good racks but not Mana ?

---

Seems that you may finally be getting the point...there exist quite a few stand manufacturers out there, each of whose stands have strong and weak points.

We have had the luxury of trying (soon approaching) dozens of stands from different manufacturers, with significant variation even within their own ranges (BASE vs. StarBASE comes to mind). As with electronics, each designer starts with basic assumptions about mechanical environment, which can be invalidated by anomalies in the design of modern homes / vintage condominiums, etc.

Construction techniques and materials vary by region throughout the world, even within the same country (especially here). This variation in construction also affects the performance of loudspeakers as well as the listening room itself.

Therefore, no stand will perfectly work everywhere, which I'm sure every stand manufacturer knows. In the case of the U.S., Arie, this makes absolute recommendations functionally impossible.

Dave Dever, NANA

You opened my eyes about the question why Naim can't recommend of stands, although I think that maybe it was good if you could publish the tests you are doing (and Naim UK) because I don't think it is easy to trust in this issue customers who naturaly can't test (so I think) the racks in a serious way. I mean by that that a customer can't get 4 or 5 racks and test them at his home.

You'd also opened my eyes (although I'm not sure that in this issue they wern't open before) that one should relate carefully to the excitement
of Mana racks.
I always have the feeling that this excitement as apears in Naim forum is somehow excessive.

Arie