At last I received my N-vi on Friday and after splitting my Fraim rack into two (with a new base shelf), the N-vi sits above a 250/2, XPS2 and Supercap on the right and CDS3, 252 on the left with two blank shelves below. I connected the N-vi to my 252 unity gain input using a lavender interconnect, plugged in my surrounds and centre speakers and a DVI to HDMI connection lead to a Pioneer plasma.

Switching on I watched the small screen on the N-vi as it powered up, very very nice, a big improvement on my former AV2.

I decided to skip the basic setup of speaker distance and level at this point, just so I could check out the picture quality, first chance to check out the drawer mechanism at close quarters. The motorised drawer is similar to most other dvd players and computer drives, but unlike most of them opening and closing with a lot of fuss, clanking and waving around, the N-vi's drawer was assuringly solid and smooth in action. Fleetingly I wondered how much classier the N-vi (and indeed the DVD5) might have been with a slot-action mechanism, but hey, no big deal. I loaded Ice Age into the drawer, which although a computer generated movie, it has vibrant colours and subtle detail which only the better players will reveal.

I was not disappointed, this was the reason why I wanted an N-vi so much. All my previous dvd players don't come even close to the picture quality, granted the previous players were not market leaders, but neither were they cheapies. The N-vi is similar to the DVD5 in this area and I felt happy in the previous decision to elect for a N-vi and not to add the DVD5 to my AV2/175 which have now moved onto a new home. Some astute readers here will say, wait a minute, you have two spare shelves in your Fraim set-up, why not just go for a DVD5? Well, those two shelves are reserved for a 500 upgrade in the future, and most importantly, my wife and I took the decision on the basis that the DVD5/AV2/175 set up occupies three levels of Fraim. When one has to share this AV setup with the main Naim music set up in one room, it starts to get a little unwieldly and dominating.

Ice Age seemed to have an almost 3D quality to it, the characters appeared correct in context to the background, you could feel there was space behind them, if you get my drift. Sharpness and definition was spot-on, which no doubt helps to give it this 3D quality and equally the detail in textures and outlining. You can see the hair in the fur, the leathery skins all seemed so much more real than on previous viewings. Marvellous, the picture quality is superb, bearing in mind we are talking dvd resolutions here, the picture has a high-definition quality about it.

So to the sound quality. initially with Ice Age and no speaker set up being carried out, it sounded good, no, very good. The different channels were clearly defined but blended together to give an accurate portrayl of the sound engineers mix on the disc. A couple of my personal test discs were brought out from the drawer, Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells II & III Live and The Eagles Hell Freezes Over (which has a great DTS soundtrack).

After the excitement and high of the inital swith-on and picture test, this is where I hit my first two lows. I wanted to go through the speaker setup procedure to give the above discs their just platform. The software on this thing still appears very buggy. Especially the communication between the remote and the unit. It is slow, which leads to impatience and key presses out of sequence with no apparent response, which leads to the software getting mixed up and eventual re-boot required. For examples, on a few ocassions I found a non-response to pressing the 'open' drawer button on the remote, pretty fundamental really. Setting speaker distances is so slow, holding the button down should clock up the 0.1m increments reasonably quickly, sometimes it does for a 0.3m total then refuses to go on and you have to resort to slow individual key presses. Same with speaker levels. Again, this is not a great big deal, but after the AV2 exemplary performance in this department, I have to admit to getting a little frustrated with it. OK, you generally only have to set up speaker distances once, but I did get the feeling that the remote was not always in total control of the box. Using the front panel on the box is much better response wise, but hey, what is the point in having a remote? I'm sure the software will improve with firmware updates, I'll be extremely blunt, they have to for a unit costing this much. One proviso I should add on the remote is that I installed the supplied batteries, which I assume had a reasonable amount of juice in them, but I will try a fresh set of batteries in due course.

The second big low, and this is serious. After listening more intently to each speaker during the set up procedure and returning from the levels test tone, I noticed a fairly high pitched continuous tone and a constant ticking sound coming from the front speakers (notably not the centre channel speaker). I suspected RF interference on the Naim interconnect to the 252, so I went rhough a few procedures to try and eliminate this. Checked lead positions, moved the N-vi from the 250 and XPS / Supercap power supplies below it, swapped power leads from my Graham's hydra to a seperate cable into the same socket, then into a completely different socket, changed the interconnect to a Chord one, tried a different non-unity gain input on the 252, basically everything i could think of. Still the tone and the ticking out of my NBL's. I then hooked up the NBL's directly to the N-vi's front left and right and low-and-behold it stopped. Re-connecting the NBL's to my 250 brought back the tone and ticking, this is happening with the N-vi on with no input and no disc in the drawer. So I concluded, something is feeding back into the connection with the main Naim set up. Putting my ear close to the N-vi's case I could her what I was hearing from the left and right speakers. It's definately the fan causing the ticking and I would guess it is the transformer causing the tone, which i could also hear close up. This was confirmed by powering up and down the N-vi a couple of times. When switched on the tone starts, when the fan starts the ticking is heard. And it is definately feeding back through the system via the interconnect, whilst not being heard in any of the N-vi's dedicated speaker channels. Muting the 252 it goes away, muting the N-vi has no effect. I have to say on day 2, this Sunday morning as i write this, the tone seems to have gone away, so either the transformer has bedded in nicely or I am getting cleaner mains supplied at this time of the day. The ticking though is clearly audible, it's extremly annoying and unacceptable. I can't do anything about it until after the Bank Holiday, but I suspect that I will be needing a replacement unit. Does anyone out there experience this with their N-vi hooked up to the main stereo system?

Despite the above, the ticking gets drowned out by the audio track once a disc is played and there appears to be no detrimental effect on the sound at noraml listening levels. So back to the music dvd's. I know i am going to find it hard to explain the differences between the audio quality of the N-vi against the AV2/175 combination. Suffice maybe to say, the latter wins by a clear margin, but that does not in any way detract from the highly enjoyable aural experience of the N-vi. I guess it's to be expected, otherwise the N-vi would make the DVD5/AV2/175 combination superfluous. The differences are quite subtle, I would liken it in qualitive terms to maybe the difference between a 200 and a 250, a bit more drive with a little more finesse. (By the way, I'm describing the difference, not a comparable sound to the 200/250). I will miss the AV2/175, but the N-vi is no slouch when it comes to dvd soundtracks and surround sound, for me it is wholly acceptable and highly enjoyable for movies and music dvd's, which is all I ask.

So, on the whole, do i like / love the N-vi, would I recommend it and are Naim onto a winner. Yes, yes and yes, wholeheartedly, with the only provisio that they need to work on the software / remote communications a little. If you have a seperate home cinema room then the DVD5/AV2/Amps-of-your-choice combination is superior (especially on the audio side), but an N-vi would certainly not disgrace the show and I would say this unit is on par at the very least with any other one-box solution, and probably miles better. As a bolt-on to a stereo system located in the same space as the Tv/plasma/screen, you will not find anything better in one very attractive box.

Unless anybody else has experienced the feedback issues that I have, I am sure this is an isolated case and can be sorted out with a replacement unit, although this will be a great inconvenience. But this is where Naim are renowned for their service and customer relations and I have complete confidence in it being done quickly and efficiently.

This was supposed to be a short introduction on my first couple of days with the N-vi, I'm sorry it seems to have turned out into a full-blown review. Then again, all experiences are worthy of forum space, good and bad, it may help someone else. I'll post more on my experiences of using the N-vi with Sky and other media boxes when I have played a little more with this beauty.

Regards

Allen

Hi Allen,

Thanks very much for your excellent review.

I am thinking of making exactly the same move as you in terms of downgrading my old AV set up and have already part sold my DVD5/AV2/145/200 (with 300 on fronts- part of two channel set up)system.

It's pretty much as I expected with very little loss in picture quality , but an expected shortfall in sound quality, which as you say is only to be expected considering the price .

As an only occasional DVD watcher (and the majority of those are music DVDs , which I prefer to listen to via my 2 channel set up), I could no longer justify having the old AV set up laying dormant for long periods and taking up 4 shelves on my two racks. I now plan to either go for the N-Vi or maybe a cheaper AV set up and spending the rest on upgrading my 2 channel set up, hopefully a 555PS .

I'm sure the problems you are currently experiencing will shortly be resolved by Naim and once again many thanks for your superb write up and the insight it gives us fellow Naimees.

Regards,

Rod

Just to echoe Rod's acknowledgement of a well written review.

Martin

Hi Allen,

I've just recieved my replacement n-Vi and (touch wood!) things seem a lot better, including a bugbear I had with my first box - the responsiveness of the box to the remote. I'm surprised as yours is freshly minted like mine, and mine works well. Can you check the firmware level, and I'll check mine?

Regarding the "open - no response" issue, I've found this at two levels. One is (IMHO) an MMI design decision. I'd like to be able to move to "Disc" by pressing open in any other mode and having the drawer open and the mode change. However that's not the way things work. You need to be in "Disc" mode before you can open the drawer.

The other is a bug in that sometimes the machine and I have a disagreement about whether a disc is loaded. It says "No disc", I know differently, and it will not open the drawer or play. I then need to softboot (standby via R/C) to sort it out. This error still exists on my new box, notably when moving from Disc to Digital 1 (satellite) and back to Disc modes.

As you say a lot of this is down to buggy software. When it's working the machine is very good indeed, all of which compounds the frustration when it misbehaves. The user experience could be so much better if only the software had been fully and properly QA'd.

I work in IT in the city and if I/my team deployed software that buggy in a trading environment I would be made keenly aware of the users displeasure! Hence my sometimes peeved comments about my n-Vi relationship on this forum. It's software, not rocket science ...

Duncan

Rod / Martin thanks for your kind words.

Rod, you're moving on some very decent equipment there, but it's like I said, the n-Vi is perfect for adding AV to a current stereo setup, even moreso where the n-Vi matches the case design / size of their other kit. I have to say it looks great on the rack next to my other boxes.

Duncan, I couldn't agree with you more. BTW what are the key presses to check the firmware version? Further to my previous post, I replaced the batteries in the remote with brand new duracells, just to make sure it wasn't the supplied batteries being under-powered. There is no change in the responsiveness.
I've since realised that the 'open' drawer only operates whilst in 'disc' mode. I've had exactly the same glitches as you describe. It's not very intuitive when the dvd does not auto-read when you close the drawer, you have to press 'play' even though you are in 'disc' mode. It gets worse ... I've found on most ocassions I cannot soft-reboot because there is no response from the red button on the remote. A few ocassions, even pressing the standby button on the box front panel does not work leaving me with no option other than to switch off at the back of the machine. Then there is an issue of the cursors not working when in a title menu of a dvd, so for instance, I cannot select audio options. Last night, I also had the issue of the machine refusing to move from Dig 2 (satellite) input to Disc mode. It's more frustrating that all of this doesn't happen 100% of the time, so you build up an expectation that things seem to be going alright, for it to be dashed by a re-occurance or something new going wrong.

I find it hard to understand that this software doesn't seem to have been built from the experiences found in their previous machines. The AV2 software works perfectly for the audio side of things. The DVD5 had alot of bugs when first released, but I understand that this has all been sorted now. Why couldn't the two be combined and tweaked specifically for the n-Vi. I really feel I'm testing beta, or even pre-beta release software at times.

Like you say, when it works it's great, and I still love this machine. I'm trying very hard not to taint my impression of the overall excellence of this piece of kit, and I'll remain patient (albeit somewhat frustrated) for software updates. Only Naim would receive this leeway from me, because I am confident they will get it sorted, any other manufacturer and I'd be asking for a refund.

regards

Allen

Allen,


Press and hold the prog key and the firmware version will be displayed on the status panel.

I have PIC: d00-75 and Menu: 2.6.6.163

As an aside, three days now, and just the one "no disc" incident to report. Night and day compared to the previous box.

Duncan

AllenB

Can you mail info@naim-audio.com

I have spoken to your dealer recently about this.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Adam Meredith,