I believe our hifi world (circa 1970) was born at a time of great technological development. Cheap components flooding in from Japan. Lot’s of home based industry start-up’s. Little legal restrictions on what you could do and sell, all of which gave us a huge choice of different equipment and prices. I still remember buying electronic magazines and then going to a local shop in the town where I could buy all the components individually and then solder them to a printed circuit board!
It was a very ‘entrepreneurial’ time in our history and if you were good at what you did you could sell it quite easily. If you read the hifi magazines there was new equipment coming out almost every week. Most was just home built dross but occasionally something really hit the mark. Ivor with his ‘my turntable sounds better’ and Julian with his amps he sold to a radio station.
The hifi enthusiasts lived off this era for about 30 years. The hifi manufacturer however, found themselves coming under more and more restrictions, greater costs to bring something to market, employing more staff to meet the issues surrounding the business (not necessarily the manufacture), competing with a local European/International markets, even heavier restrictions and even more costs. For the hifi enthusiast this only brought less choice and increased prices.
Couple all of this with a shrinking market of changing attitudes, technological advancements in high volume manufacturing, the erosion between the sound quality of something that costs £100,000, £10,000 and something that costs £100 and it’s not surprising that the industry finds itself at a turning point!
So am I. I was in manufacturing for forty five years and that particular motto got you a long way down the road for a long time but what happens when your rivals ‘quality’ matches yours. The customer then looks at price!
To solve Naim’s problems you need two heads. Don’t forget that the Naim and Focal owners are more venture capitalists than music lovers, so the ‘bean counters’ will rule their world. With the other head engaged you have to solve how you maintain profitability, market position and customer loyalty? Not an easy combination as they don’t sit well together.
In my world of manufacturing, when these situations arise, we’d often try a ‘reverse engineering’ approach. Decide where you want to ‘be’ and then design what you need to get there. Sounds simple but the trick is always to think ‘outside the box’! The traditional manufacturing approach will no longer cut it. It’s the ‘how’ that holds the secret. How can I remove transportation cost, how can I eliminate mistakes, remove over-production issues, reduce waiting times, stop staff over processing things, limit staff motion, reduce item defects and masses of expensive inventory, etc, etc. This is the basic ‘bread and butter’ of modern manufacturing nowadays. If you can’t produce an amplifier for the same core cost as you could in the 1970’s, then there’s probably something wrong with your manufacturing model.
As I have mentionned a few times on this forum, I have really soured on high end audio. Including, but certainly not limited to Naim.
I just don’t see the model of producing overbuilt and overspecced, not to mention over priced boxes to be sustainable in this day and age. I spent a lot of money on this hobby, only to learn some hard lessons.
The differences for sound quality in expensive and budget gear is minimal. Diminishing returns really kick in quickly. External power supplies are a cool idea, but did not equate to better sound quality in my experience. Cables, don’t even get me started on expensive cables.
I went down the rabbit hole of cables. I told myself they were better, and even convinced myself for a while.
I am really happy to be off of the high end merry go round. I still very much like posting here. I find the people on this forum interesting and knowledgeable about a great many things. I like to talk F1, photography and movies, to name a few, with others on this forum.
Although I criticise Naim and other high end brands, I would never tell someone what to buy, or not buy. I will give people my personal experience, but the choices they make are their own.
Below is what I posted on the Superline thread, but perhaps relevant here as well.
“Okay with trepidation but here goes. I think there’s a consensus on the forum that the Superline provides a richer musical experience than that which it has replaced - the NVC TT. I believe the Superline a superb product.
I would suggest, not based on my listening but on reading various commentaries, and on discussing with 2 dealers of whom I have the uppermost respect, that the direction Naim has taken with their phono stage is a microcosm of where they’ve gone with the New Classic stuff generally, and that is they’ve turned against musicality, rhythm and groove for a performance more focused on resolution and analytics i.e turning away from typical Naim. In particular one said dealer when we were discussing the virtues of NDX2/555 vs 333/300 said in many ways the difference is nuanced, but for the ultimate musical performance the NDX2 was considerably more engaging.
As I say I say all this with trepidation, I’ve owned Naim now for 21 years in one configuration or other, it has never been anything other than the very best audio performance and I know various folk who work for or are associated with the Company and greatly respect them. I’m not suggesting, like some, that the end is nigh, and probably the current course of direction is in response to current market and prevailing economic conditions but I wonder if for the first time in 50+ years with NVC TT and NC they’ve taken a wrong turn?”
Lindsay, AFAIK the NVC TT was never intended to be a replacement for the Superline. It’s a great sounding Mm/Mc stage that more user friendly and also less potentially costly than the SL.
Yeah that’s fine Richard, but with so many high end Naim users having equally high end TTs it seems a shame that Naim no longer have a phonostage at that point in the market. But the times they change…….it’s all good I guess!
This is where we’re left scratching our heads - even the Finance guys should be looking a the axing of the entry level OC stuff compared to the likes of Rega, etc. and be wondering wether that’s the right move. Moving upmarket is going to eliminate a lot of revenue-producing customers both now and for the future. Unless market research says that the Muso/Qb is where its at.
Gotta hook 'em young and early. Like cigarettes and McDonalds
All very true. The hi-fi scene now bears little resemblance to those days in the 70’s and 80’s. As does the world in general. Compared to those times I honestly think that not many people these days have much interest in quality music reproduction in the home. The iPod generations are happy to listen to MP3’s on their ‘phones and I doubt that many of them have any idea at all of what is actually possible in terms of sound quality if one buys suitable equipment. But more to the point, I doubt if they even care.
To be honest I’m not sure I’d care much about expensive hifi if I was growing up today. All my kids/grandkids have EarPods (as do I) and the sound quality is, I think, exceptional. I have an £89 pair of ‘Amazon’ purchased active speakers in the garden room that I think betters my old 135/Kan combination.
I suspect our grandkids will be laughing about us watching 2D television, bothering to go to live concerts and wondering why we all went to work?
That’s the price we all have to pay for progress I suppose!
They are Edifier R1010BT’s. Plug them in and just stream music to them. I did find that wall mounting them on rather springy wall brackets seems to make them sing for some reason. I can’t comment on any of the other Edifier models but I now have a pair of these in the kitchen and another pair in my workshop. I see the price has actually gone down. Now only £79.
I don’t know how they do it? Is it because the electronics are so simple and basic that they produce an uncoloured and undistorted sound?
Thanks @Geko - they look to be remarkably well made and finished for such an incredibly low price. Looking at that picture I would have said they retailed at £500 or even more! Now just need to find an excuse to buy a pair!
Not only do they look good but they have the uncanny ability to unravel complex pieces of music with relative ease. Due to their size they are never going to be the last word in bass extension but it’s still beautifully expressive and just makes musical sense. I don’t think I’ve ever heard speakers work ‘off axis’ like these things do.
I went to a dem many years ago (could have been Rega or Naim?) where they showed you what happened when you fed a top of the range turntable through relatively low quality amps and speakers vs. a cheap turntable through several thousands of pounds worth of amps and speakers. I needn’t tell you which combination won, and by a country mile!
The digital music we listen to today is pretty high quality therefore feeding them through, even a half reasonable amp/speaker, seems to work wonders. A bit like that dem I went to 35 years ago!
Yes. Back then the magazines were always championing such systems, and rightly so. Full LP12 into Tandy Realistic amp and Videoton Minimax II speakers was a classic entry point into getting an LP12. Once you had an LP12 you felt you’d made it into the big time, even if the rest of the system was rock bottom!
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