Chord GroundARAY - brilliant or bollocks?

Very true, but know that at some point a line will be drawn…

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Well, I guess that is part of my frustration, not being able to discuss complementary Chord products whilst others can freely promote other competing products on the Naim forum.

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Mike, those products are ones where discussion is banned here for reasons I gave earlier (unauthorised modifications to Naim equipment). Sorry your find that frustrating but it’s a cardinal rule of the forum.

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I’m personally much in favour of sticking to the Naim standard stuff. It gives me peace of mind. I’ve recently reverted from a fancy cable back to a standard lavender interlink and it was simply better to my ears.

But then, I might be a full Naim adept.

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I can appreciate how difficult this must be for Naim and Richard. I remember Vitus thread running for quite some time and even being screenshot on a dealers website when it was removed.

The forum is also a pretty welcoming place and there are clearly a lot of people who enjoy posting here.

Yet I don’t think you want the situation where only people with all Naim kit are welcome. (Not that I am suggesting that this is the case or even might be the case) My speakers and amplification are all Naim but my digital front end is not.
I think if I felt I could not recommend the products I use as an option on threads looking for streamers et cetera the forum would lose a lot of its relevance.

A delicate and difficult balance, I don’t envy you @Richard.Dane but I think in respect of hi-fi products that are not Naim you have been more than fair over the years.

.sjb

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Absolutely, Naim has been very liberal – the Morgana thread is a good example for that. And I think that makes the Forum attractive – it’s an open place for discussion and advice. To be honest, on occasion, I would have been stricter than @Richard.Dane. That is when it is not a balanced discussion of Naim and other brands, but just “rubbishing” Naim. That’s disrespectful not only towards Naim but also those here that use the products that are rubbished – the promotion of dCS and Vitus come to mind, for instance. The discussion of Chord DACs has remained more respectful, I think.

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Who wrote that?
:heart:

Speaker cables made of chorizo?
:heart:

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Thank you sjb and ntd.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but I agree that purposely promoting other brands by rubbishing Naim is pretty distasteful. I would hope that most are smart enough to recognise that and judge accordingly. Certainly any evidence of shilling or promoting on this forum where there’s an interest in doing so is viewed very dimly by the moderators - if that’s what you’re here for then don’t expect to last very long as a member.

However, Naim have no particular issue with other brands and their products, and have full confidence in their own abilities and wares, so are happy for people to discuss them as part and parcel of Naim ownership. The main issue here is where a thread becomes a surrogate forum for a particular brand to the exclusion of Naim and all else, and here there is particular temptation to promote beyond what is reasonable or fair to Naim on their own forum.

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Reminds me of a mate of mine used to be a tv engineer, he visited a customers house and found a small sausage stuck in the aerial socket of customers telly. The customer told him they could only get a picture if they held their finger in the socket but that made it difficult to see the screen, so…

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Agree. It also shows strong confidence in Naim products.

Just seen Richard beat me to it!

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While i fully understand why Naim doesn’t want these forums to turn into other brands’ pseudo-fora, i do feel that it’s a bit asking for trouble with such broadly defined subforums:

Hi-Fi Corner
The main room for general hifi and audio related discussion. The emphasis is of course on Naim Audio, but we welcome discussion of any and all hifi, regardless of age or brand.

Referring to the forum rules or relying on the forum populace’ ability to see the invisible boundaries might not be enough to keep things focused on Naim products in the long run. After all, there are only a handful of Naim products to discuss, and there is a whole world of competing brands and products out there.

As @anon23154165 explained well i think, as an example the Chord Electronics thread seems largely fueled by the lack of standalone DAC’s in Naim’s current product line-up. And one thing easily leads to another, when discussing their DAC’s it’s a small step to talk about their matching power amps.

In the end, to keep things more clear and honest for all parties on these forums, it would perhaps be better to make the equipment (Hi-Fi Corner / Streaming) subforums Naim-specific. There are many other internet forums out there for all kinds of generic hifi and brand discussions.

Just my subjective opinion ofcourse.

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Just for the record. I’ve never rubbished any Naim products and often recommend them to others.

I also feel Naim have been fair with allowing these discussions. I was a Naim user for 6 years and enjoyed my time with them and would be happy to buy a separate streamer / DAC from them if they were to ever consider making them.

Another separate point. Type in “Qutest M Scaler” into google and you end up with the Naim website near the top of page one (4th down from the ads) due to that thread. This in itself can also bring in non-Naim users and open their eyes to other alternatives. @litemotiv raises a good point above as well.

Anyway, all the best all.

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Peter Aczel of The Audio Critic, you’ll find it by googling for the first paragraph of text, or so

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Perhaps the origin of the term “sausage fingers”

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Thanks, not heard of him before (but I dont read HiFi press much these days) some interesting views especially his belief in the Loudspeaker as opposed to Source first in the system heirachy.
Anyway, not wanting to divert the topic
:heart:

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I vote for locking this topic. It’s not going anywhere.

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If you don’t like it, don’t contribute. I won’t have my thread no platformed.

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However a lot of members write that chord dacs are so much better vs internal Naim dacs. So it’s a bit annoying I feel.
But I agree that the original reason is the lack of standalone Naim dacs.

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The Chord are specialized DAC’s so in terms of pure DAC performance they could be better than the slightly more standard Burr-Brown DAC’s used in Naim equipment. Part of that is subjective ofcourse, but objectively there is probably more advanced stuff going on in the Chords.

A bit of a silly comparison to make, but if you only compare the Burr-Brown 1704 that is used in the NDS 555:

To one of the FPGA chips used by Chord:

Then you can see they are entirely different beasts.

But ofcourse size doesn’t say everything, it’s difficult to compare the two since they are based on different technologies.

People will generally be most inclined i think to endorse the product they personally own…

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