Just wondering is Naim starting to use this technology to improve circuits for the future??
Ha ha. Itâs all about the spec sheet these days!!
1 Like
A trusted technician and good friend, who has done the official Naim servicing for decades, a couple of days ago told me he had thoroughly studied a NAP 500 while fixing it.
âI think Naimâs designing staff is the best in the worldâ he said. âI donât think it can be done better than thisâ.
3 Likes
Thanks for your postâŚI find information like this really interesting.
1 Like
Well if it couldnât be done better it wouldnât break and need fixing.
Anything can be designed better, even after 20yrs we are still making improvements to our designs (which currently have 99.999997% availability and uptime). Itâs just part of the design lifecycle as âcontinuous improvementâ
Sorry, we?
the company I work for
What Iâm saying is I would never be naive enough to say that something âcouldnât be done better than thisâ
Well, I appreciate your maturity. That said, I still think my naĂŻve friend (donât forget the two small points on the i - itâs French, dude) has good ears and some technical prowess.
1 Like
Presumably he hasnât seen inside a Statement!
1 Like
Thereâs AI and then thereâs AI! Public access generative AI (ChatGPT, Google, Claude etc) could be good for finding technical information (e.g. semiconductor advances), and possibly information about competitorsâ products (e.g. what theyâve put on the Internet including anything leaked unintentionally), but anything beyond I would have thought is unlikely to be of value, and it may be unwise to feed with confidential Naim design information. However, a dedicated (and wholly owned) AI might be different as conceivably it could be possible to train it with all the knowledge and tapable experience within Naim records and staff, together with all the published technical information around electronic design, and then use it as a tool to propose changes or new circuits or new layouts or whatever. Whether the result would sound any better would of course require building and testing. My gut feeling is that it would be too large a thing for a small company not otself specialising in AI to set up - and if there were off the shelf amp and/or streamer design AIs that could be bought then the results wouldnât be Naim!
If I found out AI was involved in the design of music machines and I had the choice of buying or not Iâd give it a miss, Feed up with it, seems to be ruining everything imo. I cannot even watch YouTube without AI crap polluting my viewing experience. Unfortunately Iâm sure it will arrive if itâs not already here.
Think I should copyright this saying
âMade by Humansâ
ironically, I just ChatGPT is AI involved in design of Home. Audio equipment. Looks like the race is already lost, itâs cheaper to Us AI, gee I wounded if we will see that win on the price label
âQuoted ChatGPTâ
That said â brands like Naim (which youâre into) still rely heavily on human listening tests and traditional design philosophy. Theyâre not handing the âsound signatureâ over to AI.
I know what you mean about crap AI on YouTube and whilst I do use it for work, itâs a slippery and annoying bugger.
But I donât mind if Naim used AI to come up with new ideas since Iâm sure their engineers will use their own ears to decide if any AI designs have merit.
1 Like
AI in hifi audio design seems partly illogical to me.
AI is great for optimizing or designing in resilience etc but often a less optimal circuit design can sound better. Iâm sure if you gave the circuit design and build of a Kondo Ongaku to an AI engine it would improve the design no end but would it sound the same?
On the other hand it could be used to model heat patterns and component toil for extending lifespans etc
I think you have a pointâŚsound qualiy is the final arbiter and the way the brain interprets itâŚit may be difficult for AI to actually conceptualise this âŚ. sufficientlyâŚbut time will tellâŚI guess when we reach singularity..we may find outâŚpossibly by 2035 god help us!
When my dealer received the then only Statement in Italy, I helped to carry the three flight cases downstairs - it took four of us - and install the amps. I have never seen it inside but I still think the Statement is an audio engineering masterpiece and something I would buy if it made any sense.
1 Like