More 'Audiophile' bullsh*t
Discussion
911hope said:
SteveKTMer said:
Not necessarily. In those days people who bought Naim often bought everything from Naim, and if they didn't they were buying from a Naim dealer who would recommend suitable alternative speakers, cable etc. In my mind, Naim were far ahead of most other manufacturers at the time for sound quality. Their amps weren't intended to be part of a general 'min-n-match' Hi-Fi shop, they were created as part of a Naim system.
I've got friends with old olive Naim kit, as have I, and I've never heard of an amp self destructing. Do they ? Who knows. But they sound absolutely amazing. I remember auditioning Naim against Linn and thinking the Linn was thin and one dimensional compared to the Naim, so they definitely had a good design.
An amp that oscillates (destroys itself and possibly the speakers) is a bad design, that hasn't handle certain speaker loads. Impedance,phase angle.I've got friends with old olive Naim kit, as have I, and I've never heard of an amp self destructing. Do they ? Who knows. But they sound absolutely amazing. I remember auditioning Naim against Linn and thinking the Linn was thin and one dimensional compared to the Naim, so they definitely had a good design.
The maker should have checked against all anticipated loads at all frequencies and with difficult music scenarios, and made sure the design was complete.
They did.
Naim in those days wasn't a sweet shop manufacturer, 6 of those and half a dozen of these, not that they are now really. The amplifiers were designed to be built into systems with certain parameters, this was Naim, not Sony or NAD.
SteveKTMer said:
It didn't.
They did.
Naim in those days wasn't a sweet shop manufacturer, 6 of those and half a dozen of these, not that they are now really. The amplifiers were designed to be built into systems with certain parameters, this was Naim, not Sony or NAD.
"The amplifiers were designed to be built into systems with certain parameters" - fair enough, but hardly the best way to go about a design, although obviously their intention was to lock customers into their 'ecosystem'.They did.
Naim in those days wasn't a sweet shop manufacturer, 6 of those and half a dozen of these, not that they are now really. The amplifiers were designed to be built into systems with certain parameters, this was Naim, not Sony or NAD.
I believe that one of the key reasons Naim survived throughout the 70's and 80's was because so many HiFi publications lauded their (and other British) products, when in many cases there were equal (and often better) products from US and Japanese manufacturers which were often given bad rep in the very same press.
I think most of us recognise that the real allure of the hobby for extreme-audiophiles is the delicious research and eventual acquisition of a new shiny toy, even if it provides no measurable improvement to the auditory experience.
I am sure psychologist could have a field day exploring the minds of someone who buys £200 burned-in cables
I am sure psychologist could have a field day exploring the minds of someone who buys £200 burned-in cables
TonyRPH said:
I believe that one of the key reasons Naim survived throughout the 70's and 80's was because so many HiFi publications lauded their (and other British) products, when in many cases there were equal (and often better) products from US and Japanese manufacturers which were often given bad rep in the very same press.
You are very correct about the press bias towards the British at that time. I have a friend who had a quad pre-amp /Poweramp combination, from the 80s (still sought after as vintage kit and thought to be much better than Japanese stuff or NAD at the time.He had acquired the idea that it wasn't working properly, so I offered to analyses it for him (as I had the technical skills and access to al the best measuring kit).
In the mean time, I loaned him a NAD integrated amp to use.
What did I learn about the quad stuff?
Distortion at least 10x higher than the NAD
Distortion highly variable across frequencies.
Could not deliver rated power at low frequencies.
Impossible to get flat frequency response, no matter what weird pre-amp settings were used.
High noise floor.
And many more..
Try a more telling test like IMD and the deficiencies are obvious.
So thinking there were various possible problems, I looked up the spec and it matched perfectly.
So the press had talked up this product that was miles worse than the much cheaper competition.
Returning the on-spec quad and asking what he thought of the NAD, he said it was ok but not as good as the quad. That's brainwashing for you.
MickTravis665321 said:
I think most of us recognise that the real allure of the hobby for extreme-audiophiles is the delicious research and eventual acquisition of a new shiny toy, even if it provides no measurable improvement to the auditory experience.
I think that's a key component of every hobby! TonyRPH said:
SteveKTMer said:
It didn't.
They did.
Naim in those days wasn't a sweet shop manufacturer, 6 of those and half a dozen of these, not that they are now really. The amplifiers were designed to be built into systems with certain parameters, this was Naim, not Sony or NAD.
"The amplifiers were designed to be built into systems with certain parameters" - fair enough, but hardly the best way to go about a design, although obviously their intention was to lock customers into their 'ecosystem'.They did.
Naim in those days wasn't a sweet shop manufacturer, 6 of those and half a dozen of these, not that they are now really. The amplifiers were designed to be built into systems with certain parameters, this was Naim, not Sony or NAD.
I believe that one of the key reasons Naim survived throughout the 70's and 80's was because so many HiFi publications lauded their (and other British) products, when in many cases there were equal (and often better) products from US and Japanese manufacturers which were often given bad rep in the very same press.
Years ago I had a business which used various Philips and Analogue Devices parts, transmitting multiplexed audio over distance, and a colleague built a device to check the quality of the audio being extracted from CDs. If you want to look for poor audio then most early CD players were much worse than expected and interpolation was the only way to make them sound at least OK. I've now got some very nice Chord kit and Mr Watts has I think done for digital audio what Julian did for amplifiers.
SteveKTMer said:
I'm not sure they wanted to lock you into their parts or eco system, Julian Vereker and later Steve Sells had very strong ideas about why their designs sounded good and I spent a long time, too much time, 25 or so years ago auditioning kit and I had to agree, that with my music, the Naim amplifiers sounded a lot better than others of the same period. I'm not sure I heard much from the US but the Japanese amplifiers always sounded too thin to me and lacked punch, so maybe the high slew rate design was beneficial.
Years ago I had a business which used various Philips and Analogue Devices parts, transmitting multiplexed audio over distance, and a colleague built a device to check the quality of the audio being extracted from CDs. If you want to look for poor audio then most early CD players were much worse than expected and interpolation was the only way to make them sound at least OK. I've now got some very nice Chord kit and Mr Watts has I think done for digital audio what Julian did for amplifiers.
Are you talking about the raw digital data extracted from CD, or after conversion to analogue. (DAC).Years ago I had a business which used various Philips and Analogue Devices parts, transmitting multiplexed audio over distance, and a colleague built a device to check the quality of the audio being extracted from CDs. If you want to look for poor audio then most early CD players were much worse than expected and interpolation was the only way to make them sound at least OK. I've now got some very nice Chord kit and Mr Watts has I think done for digital audio what Julian did for amplifiers.
Digital storage and transmission can and should be perfect. Early DACs did have somewhat imperfect interpolation filters and probably many other deficiencies.
Nyquist's sampling rate theory relies perfect interpolation filters.(which is impossible).
I remember in the 80s seeing a marrantz cd player with 4x oversampling filter, which the salesman
Translates to 4x better.
Now that is BS.
SteveKTMer said:
I'm not sure they wanted to lock you into their parts or eco system, Julian Vereker and later Steve Sells had very strong ideas about why their designs sounded good and I spent a long time, too much time, 25 or so years ago auditioning kit and I had to agree, that with my music, the Naim amplifiers sounded a lot better than others of the same period. I'm not sure I heard much from the US but the Japanese amplifiers always sounded too thin to me and lacked punch, so maybe the high slew rate design was beneficial.
I believe it was the other way around - the US and Japanese amps (Japanese in particular) had massively fast slew rates.Naim couldn't achieve high slew rates because the transistors they used were too slow. Ironically, the early Naim designs lack any bandwidth limiting, and it is this that led to the instability issues.
SteveKTMer said:
Years ago I had a business which used various Philips and Analogue Devices parts, transmitting multiplexed audio over distance, and a colleague built a device to check the quality of the audio being extracted from CDs. If you want to look for poor audio then most early CD players were much worse than expected and interpolation was the only way to make them sound at least OK. I've now got some very nice Chord kit and Mr Watts has I think done for digital audio what Julian did for amplifiers.
I'd be interested to know which CD players you refer to in your statement "most CD players" as the Achilles heel with early CD players was not the player itself, but the high output levels (2vRMS) which overloaded many amplifiers on the market at the time (in particular Naim, with it's quirky DIN standard input sensitivity). It was this which led to the 'grungy' sound so many complained about.This issue is what led to the introduction of inline attenuators which made a big difference.
Those of use who designed and built our own amps / preamps back in the day incorporated attenuation on the CD input.
I will agree that the very earliest players which used the TDA1540 DAC chip certainly were not the best, however I seem to recall a comparison between an early Meridian player (I think it was) to a fairly modern player (this being mid 2000's) and the early player acquitted itself quite well!
Sound like there are lots of design quirks with Naim products, back in their hay day.
For device slew rate..if it were slow enough to limit the bandwidth below 20kHz, then it would sound less bright than it should (wrong). To some that makes it sound heavier, which might make it appeal to some.
As for tendency to oscillate, the is no excuse.
As for oversensitive input, this only matters if the front-end is clipped before it can be mitigated with the volume control. This distortion would apply on the peaks generally with bass content and would sound poor.
So the Japanese join the contest, with better engineering skills, develop low distortion, flat freq response products, which sound correct. Great except that it's a subjective thing. Perception beats actual performance, in most cases.
What is amazing is that people will accept fragility from high end brands.
For device slew rate..if it were slow enough to limit the bandwidth below 20kHz, then it would sound less bright than it should (wrong). To some that makes it sound heavier, which might make it appeal to some.
As for tendency to oscillate, the is no excuse.
As for oversensitive input, this only matters if the front-end is clipped before it can be mitigated with the volume control. This distortion would apply on the peaks generally with bass content and would sound poor.
So the Japanese join the contest, with better engineering skills, develop low distortion, flat freq response products, which sound correct. Great except that it's a subjective thing. Perception beats actual performance, in most cases.
What is amazing is that people will accept fragility from high end brands.
The slagging off of Naim will always go on, but from my own viewpoint, until the last few years I’d never heard a Japanese amp that got me rocking. No, I certainly didn’t hear them all, nowhere near, but I often give up once a pattern has formed.
Measuring amps like they’re a piece of scientific equipment is, in my opinion, a mistake. Ok, the Quad above was obviously lacking, but there was no mention of what it sounded to the person testing it.
I don’t really gel with the post-Vereker Naim stuff, preferring the music produced by my fatally flawed, ridiculous olive boxes. Some friends have recently ditched their latest Naim gear and gone over to Accuphase amps. They sound wonderful, even the cheapest integrated. When people start to prefer a sub-£10k integrated to £100k+ of pre amp, power amps and power supplies, there’s something wrong. (Or right!?)
At the few hifi shows I’ve been to, I’m always drawn to the rooms with something like a Rega CD player, a sub-£5k integrated, and a dinky pair of floorstanders. They just do it for me, and I really don’t need to measure anything except the grin on my face.
Measuring amps like they’re a piece of scientific equipment is, in my opinion, a mistake. Ok, the Quad above was obviously lacking, but there was no mention of what it sounded to the person testing it.
I don’t really gel with the post-Vereker Naim stuff, preferring the music produced by my fatally flawed, ridiculous olive boxes. Some friends have recently ditched their latest Naim gear and gone over to Accuphase amps. They sound wonderful, even the cheapest integrated. When people start to prefer a sub-£10k integrated to £100k+ of pre amp, power amps and power supplies, there’s something wrong. (Or right!?)
At the few hifi shows I’ve been to, I’m always drawn to the rooms with something like a Rega CD player, a sub-£5k integrated, and a dinky pair of floorstanders. They just do it for me, and I really don’t need to measure anything except the grin on my face.
You either regard an amp as wanting to be a black box with a linear transfer function which can be measured scientifically and any deviations from linear regarded as 'bad' and wanting to be minimised, or you take the view that you want to hear a certain sound, the musicians record something, your amp does something to it, your speakers inter-act with that and the end result is what matters.
I can understand both camps, what I struggle with is people getting overly excited about certain amps without thinking about them as amp + speaker combinations, because ISTM, the amp on its own is not something you can actually listen to.
I can understand both camps, what I struggle with is people getting overly excited about certain amps without thinking about them as amp + speaker combinations, because ISTM, the amp on its own is not something you can actually listen to.
OutInTheShed said:
<stuff>
My belief is that the electronics should be as neutral as possible.Source / preamps should sound the same regardless of interconnects.
Amplifiers should sound the same regardless of load and speaker cable. (early class D amplifiers were notoriously bad in this respect)
That just leaves the room and the speakers having the maximum influence over the sound - and it's so much easier to achieve the 'right' sound this way.
The less variables there are, the easy it is.
However when you start introducing electronics where the sound is heavily influenced by a cable, spikes, isolation platforms (turntables excepted), then finding the optimum sound becomes a nightmare.
Optimum sound being what, exactly? And don’t say that it’s what the band or recording engineer intended, because only a tiny number of people know what that was.
If you see a favourite local band perform at two venues I can guarantee there’ll be differences in the sound but, hopefully you’d enjoy both gigs. There’ll be more variables between the two venues, rather than fewer, but enjoyment will be the name of the game.
You just need to enjoy the sound of the music, and that’s that.
If you see a favourite local band perform at two venues I can guarantee there’ll be differences in the sound but, hopefully you’d enjoy both gigs. There’ll be more variables between the two venues, rather than fewer, but enjoyment will be the name of the game.
You just need to enjoy the sound of the music, and that’s that.
Tony1963 said:
Optimum sound being what, exactly? And don’t say that it’s what the band or recording engineer intended, because only a tiny number of people know what that was.
By 'optimum sound' - I meant when the system sounds how I like it, and no particular aspect of the sound I hear irritates me.I know when this has been achieved, because I'm happy listening to a wide variety of genres and recordings, regardless of quality.
It's not about recreating a live sound, or the sound that engineer intended blah, blah. That's just horses
t.Tony1963 said:
If you see a favourite local band perform at two venues I can guarantee there’ll be differences in the sound but, hopefully you’d enjoy both gigs. There’ll be more variables between the two venues, rather than fewer, but enjoyment will be the name of the game.
I would have thought that anyone with half a brain would realise that it's impossible for two venues to sound the same.Also, aside from the venue itself, there are many other factors which will influence the sound of a live performance, not least of all how many people are present in said venue.
Tony1963 said:
You just need to enjoy the sound of the music, and that’s that.
Which is my aim - see above re: 'optimum sound'911hope said:
Returning the on-spec quad and asking what he thought of the NAD, he said it was ok but not as good as the quad. That's brainwashing for you.
To be fair, whilst I'm no sycophantic Quad fanatic, some of the old NAD amplifiers were pretty ropey in both design and sound terms. Their chief benefit was that you could use them to run in up to 6 pairs of loudspeakers at once if you needed to (and I did, on more than one occasion!).Deranged Rover said:
To be fair, whilst I'm no sycophantic Quad fanatic, some of the old NAD amplifiers were pretty ropey in both design and sound terms. Their chief benefit was that you could use them to run in up to 6 pairs of loudspeakers at once if you needed to (and I did, on more than one occasion!).
I’ve seen a couple of recent reports on the classic NAD 3020 that says it’s awful, completely lifeless. Yet it sold by the truckload. Tony1963 said:
I’ve seen a couple of recent reports on the classic NAD 3020 that says it’s awful, completely lifeless. Yet it sold by the truckload.
I've repaired a couple of them - the 3020 and 3020i - when I connected them up in my system, I was left wondering what all the fuss was about.I think it was another case of the HiFi press bulling up a product and creating a 'must have' culture.
I have owned other NAD products (and still own a 2200 power amp) and the 1000 preamp I had was ok, and even better after a few mods (I brought it up to 1000S spec) and a few other mods. Interestingly, the 1000 preamp is very similar to the preamp section of the 3020i - so I guess the power amp section of the 3020i was the weak point.
The CD players weren't bad, but a tape deck and tuner I had the opportunity to audition (mid 80's) were well below par, and the tape deck in particular was no match for the budget Technics deck I owned at the time.
911hope said:
Are you talking about the raw digital data extracted from CD, or after conversion to analogue. (DAC).
This. It didn't extract all the data and what is did extract was often mixed with random digital noise. The early DACs did try to deal with this but most of them weren't very successful, hence the usual tinny, zingy sibilance that people often objected to with early CD systems. It did get better quite quickly.4x better was salesman nonsense.
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