My listening area currently only accommodates space for me to have my gear placed horizontally on top of a low cabinet with shelves and doors underneath. Currently this system is comprised of a Supernait 2 and a turntable, but I am wondering if it would be possible to put any additional gear out of sight in the closed cabinet below. Obviously I’m concerned with the potential for heat damaging the components. Currently the gear that would go in the closed cabinet would be an Ultrarendu with power supply plus a Chord Qutest Dac. Potential additions down the road could include a HiCap DR and/or Stageline phono stage.
Thanks. Before I go down this road does a HiCap and Stageline put out any appreciable heat? I wouldn’t put an amp in there, but I was hoping these other devices would run fairly cool.
HiCap and Stageline run quite cool, so you should have no concerns there. I have a 552, 552PS, SuperLine, Supercap, 250 and HiCap all inside a custom built cabinet. There are gaps at the bottom and the back, so there’s reasonable air circulation without the need for fans, and I leave the doors open when I’m listening.
In the Naim universe, the only component that generates significant heat is the power amp. With your Supernait on top of the cabinet, that ought not to be a problem.
I can’t comment on the Ultrarendu or the Qutest, however I’d expect the manuals to mention any concerns about running temperature, ventilation, minimum air gaps, etc.
Most domestic audio visual cabinets have a flimsy back board that can easily be taken out.
Well, the ones I have used did. This allowed air to circulate and made cable dressing much easier…
This is two doors designed so I can completely open them up, as there has always been talk that placing units in a cupboard is deleterious to sound quality, in the event I didn’t find this.
In the cupboard I use a standard HiFi floor unit, a wall unit and a turntable shelf.
The ventilation can come from leaving carpet off the floorboards, but this lost too much heat in the winter so during the hottest summer days I run a couple of fans from the USB ports on my Oppo to cool my 300dr.
My old Quadraspire rack has wooden doors (they don’t make them like this any more, sadly). The key to managing the heat is that the back is completely open and I would do this to any cupboard I was using to hold my kit. Although, as said only Naim power amps run a bit warm but even then not really hot. Not sure about the Uniti Star.
The PSU to my Trilogy 933 headphone amp is pretty toasty though.
My Naim is actually on an open shelf, but I have some other equipment inside a cupboard. Including a tube phono preamp and an access point which runs quite hot. In the bottom shelf there’s slits for air circulation. Invisible (unless you lie on the floor), yet effective. Never had an issue.
I guess you could easily do something similar by drilling holes in the bottom for that purpose.
I have my amps (non-Naim) inside a cabinet. Ventilation is afforded by louvre front doors (my modification), and I installed a couple of low speed extractor fans at the rear, with a thermostat to control them. The fans tend to come on only in hot weather or if I play loud for an extended period. The thermostat sensor sits atop the amp that gets warmest, set for 45C.
When I had a TT and children were young I used a rack inside a cabinet, with solid doors. At that time just one amp which had heatsink fins at the rear, sitting at bottom of the rack. CD player above and TT on top. I had cut a large hole in rear panel of the cabinet, and had about a 4cm gap to wall behind. It never seemed overly warm within the cabinet, and gave no problems.
I’m running my Naim setup consisting of a NDX5 XS streamer, NAC82 pre-amp, NAP250 power supply, HiCap, CD3.5 CDX with the whole lot housed in a (supposedly) antique Chinese cabinet (yes, a senior management decision).
The back of the cabinet has had a series of large vents made to provide airflow.
Nevertheless, the NDX5 XS doesn’t seem to like the heat generated at times and so I leave that switched off when not in use (it’s a pc on steroids afterall) and ensure that the cabinet doors are left ajar at all times and fully open when playing.
After nearly 10 years the original Naim gear is unaffected by being housed in a cabinet and sounds great working into my ProAc Response 2.5s. The NDX5 XS streamer’s sound and it’s overall performance seems to my ears to be unaffected by being switched off when not in use and then back on for each listening session.
Hope that helps a little.
Digital electronics often run hot, sometimes even when in standby, so you may want to keep a careful eye on them. This certainly includes some Chord DACs, although I couldn’t say if it would apply the the Qutest. Power amps, on the other hand, tend to warm up when you make them work hard.
As long as there is some space around the boxes for air circulation it’s not often a problem, but it might be an idea to add some ventilation to the cabinet if you can.
A computer, yes, but I suspect nowhere near as powerful as many a PCs when it was released, let alone today, either in processing capability, speed or ram. I think most likely it is more a very modest one but designed to minimise electrical noise as far as possible within its size and budget, and to remain stable in use.
