I hear what you say here but the first statement is a bit of whataboutism. Yeah even premium products have issues. But that does not make issues fine. Just cause someone has an issue on a Bentley somewhere does not make it any worse or better for me when my Uniti Star locks up.
As for the second statement, when it comes to app design and usability there are known, well researched patterns out there. It is not something that, like a car, needs to be redesigned every time something is built from the ground up. While the app works perfectly fine in most conditions, things like small click targets on mobile devices that are smaller than the average finger is something mobile designers have stopped doing for a long time.
If you look at the other players out there with software interfaces like Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz, Roon etc, there is a general usability pattern pervasive in these apps. They have been researched and tested prolifically so Iâd say, just use them. Sometimes it is better to âstealâ a good design pattern than invent. These general patterns are not patented.
I havenât read the thread, only the beginning.
I have to say having had thunder and lightning forecast a lot lately my system was powered down for a week.
Upon powering back up and carrying out the firmware update, my system is sounding sublime and the best Iâve ever heard it!
Called provider, got a tech that was into gaming
Asked if he knew about DNLA and UPnp
Gave him remote access of my lap top ( connected to my network )
And 30 seconds later all my streaming issues where gone.
My conclusion is that Naim streamers are designed by a very smart team of people who follow engineering guide lines but our Internet providers donât and only care that our internet / tv / home phones work.
I also ran nDAC/XPSDR as front end before moving to 272 and now have an Atom. Over several updates, most recently the one on the Atom, often performed with trepidation, I have had no operational or other problems. Whatâs more, in the case of the 272, I effectively received several free SQ improvements. The Atom upgrade is too recent to evaluate fairly but the usability changes are worthwhile for me. More to the point, without all the forum hoohah I wouldnât have bothered posting here and just taken the improvements for granted. I suspect Iâm not alone and consequently that forum opinion is often a somewhat biased sample of usersâ experience and therefore a less than fully reliable guide to purchasing decisions.
On balance, I have to say that both old and new platform firmware updates have provided improved sound quality for me over the years. On a few occasions this has been a significant step up, and I canât recall one that Iâve ever thought was bad, although perhaps occasionally they were just a little different.
Earlier in this thread I made some comments on the accessibility issues of the Naim app. Also made mention of Roon as an example of good usability patterns.
For the sake of fairness I have to say that yesterday I had a look at Roon in terms of screen reader and keyboard accessibility and it is terrible. The Roon apps are completely unusable from the very first moment of opening for people with low or now vision as well as people who cannot use a mouse.
On this point, faults and all, Naim software is quite a ways ahead of Roon at the moment.
This is so true and my recent experience hasnât been great. I had an issue with a Chord DAC and Naim Amp humming. Emailed both companies Sunday night, Chord responded by 10am Monday and I still havenât heard from Naim.
The bubble of negativity doesnât spring out of nothing. It springs form people who have had issues with the products. So donât make it sound as if people are setting off to purposefully spew negativity about Naim.
I did read the comment properly and understood it. And that is why I was asking if you were comparing a cheap speaker with an expensive one. Even in terms of firmware stability I would expect a ÂŁ4k product to be superior to a ÂŁ200 one.
That comparison has nothing to with what I said. I commented on @james_n mentioning that âSonos and the like just workâ. And whereas I agree with his sentiment completely, my experience with Sonos has been that is DOESNâT just work.
What does that have to do with price tags of things?
On the whole the âoldâ Green-screen streamer platform seems very solid and stable, for what it does. I have a UQ2 and SU and neither have given me any hassle.
The app on the other hand is getting progressively worse, albeit in very small increments. Volume bar doesnât always appear. When the UQ2 was plugged out for a couple of months leaving only the SU, the room selection screen would still show. However itâs no way as infuriating at other apps; one nice thing is the lack of intrusive UI âtipsâ that other apps seem addicted to! Make it fast again and not glitchy and itâd give it 10/10 easily.
One thing I would love is to make ALL settings accessible from the app, like AV bypass, Digital out mode and Internal/External speaker selection. Given that some settings like max volume are adjustable in the app I canât see why the others couldnât be.
There can be hardware reasons why some things canât be now controlled from the app. They probably all could have been at the design stage, but if the relevant control interface isnât addressable from the app because it wasnât designed that way, then no amount of changes to the app will fix that now.
I wish I have a choice there. Been getting speaker pop which sounded a lot like phantom power and fear it would damage speakers, esp the tweeter so I had to update at the earliest opportunity.
The basic âDSPâ reconstruction filter has not changed since the Naim DAC days.
The tweaking is the code execution and memory reading/writing timing and the noise that put on the ground plane and powerlines.
This noise, despite being infinitesimally small can modulate clocks ana analogue electronic ground planes and powerlines and this changes the FR minutely.
Naim had started to manage this to the point they could almost control it like an eq through noise shaping as a consequence of carefully changing the timing of the code execution operands.
This was a few years ago not long after the current streamers were launched, and I have no reason to assume it is hugely different now.
This is a consequence/side effect of having a digital processing platform coupled to varying degrees to sensitive clocks and analogue ground and voltage planes on sensitive audio systems.
The new platforms use LVDS no help minimise electromagnetic noise from some digital processing and internal transmissionâŚ
I predict if we ever see a âStatementâ streamer it will have physically decoupled digital and analogue stages⌠a bit like pre and power amps.
