I do get that, however it does impact the experience. In a bigger room I 'm not appreciating a throttled output . There are times I like a quieter presentation (most times actually), and there are times I want the Naim visceral experience. I think I’m best placed to choose the volume I listen to not a nanny preset. There must be loads of owners expecting 40w per chanel and only experiencing maybe 30w.
I agree that the dealer was a bit lax in prepping the Atom.
The max volume does not proportionally limit the available power through the whole volume range
Not my experience.
How do you know that it limited the available watts even at volumes far below the limit?
We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one. I know the Atom sounds better without the throttling back though my speakers and in my room.
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If the max volume is set at, say 80, and the volume indication is, say 50, the amp performs the same as setting max volume to 100 and volume to 40. Exactly the same SQ according to Naim and my ears. So setting a max volume below 100 should have no impact on SQ unless one wants to exceed that maximum.
Perhaps yours is faulty in some way.
You’re also asking a lot of the Atom to produce visceral room-filling sound at with inefficient speakers in such a large room.
Roger
It’s not faulty. You’re confusing sound quality with listening experience . The sound quality is the same it’s just that sometimes I to listen at, say 40, and sometimes I like to crank it up to 55 or so when the missus is out.
I’m well aware of the Atom’s limitations, I obviously have different listening tastes. The Atom with it’s throttling off works fine for me
That’s a completely different thing than limiting the watts output proportionally across the whole volume range. However, I won’t belabor this further, you made up your mind.
It’s not throttled. Setting max to 80 and and indicated vol to 50 performs identically as setting max to 100 and indicated vol to 40. It’s nothing to do with room size, listening tastes or anything else. But one can only relate the same thing so many times, so I’m out of this thread.
Roger
It’s all to do with overall loudness. Setting the max at 80 hobbles the amp. Not a difficult thing to hear. Nothing to do with sound quality, it just makes it quieter. If of course you only want quiet?
I’m with everyone else here. It really doesn’t throttle your Atom at all. It’s a volume control limit, not a power output limit.
I would have thought that if you set it to max 80, and set volume to 50 then reasonably that 50 should be identical to if the max volume was 100, i.e. all you are doing is curtailing the final 20 on the range? Otherwise I could understand why Fifty-Fifty would perceive a difference.
It doesn’t quite work like that. If you set the volume limit to 80%, then the range of the volume control goes from 0 to 80% instead of 0 to 100%. So 50% volume will be half way up in the 0 to 100% case and rather more than half in the 0 to 80% case.
Of course this doesn’t affect the maximum power output of the amplifier at all. I know that will be obvious to you, but not to the OP apparently.
Reading your post again, I probably misunderstood what you were saying. Yes 50% will sound the same loudness whatever the maximum volume setting is adjusted to.
This thread is now going nowhere I think. I’ve always described my issue as a lack of available volume. I do understand that it doesn’t actually affect the max power of the amp, but if it’s turned on then the net effect is the same. 50% now sounds about as loud as 95% did when I first switched on the amp.
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