Nice little you tube with Jason and O’Donnel (the cure?) settee at HQ
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Interesting that they chose to focus on adding extra boxes to your system after Naim have spent years developing lower box count systems, presumably catering for customer demands. Including the 222/250 used in the demo which has just one box upgrade option, and replaces a traditional Naim system that would have used between 4 and 7 boxes instead of 2 or 3.
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I remain unclear what the purpose of that was. Nice chat and presumably an attempt to find commonality between those who create and those who deliver. If anything, for me, it showed the opposite. Odd.
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Yes, it’s a bit strange. Jason is talking about space, definition and hifi stuff, yet Roger is saying that it’s the emotion that counts. It’s almost like two people having their own conversations while sitting in the same room. Roger saying about how his brother was into hifi, while he was into playing the instruments really shows that old hifi vs music dichotomy rather well.
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Interesting too that Roger didn’t say anything remotely like ‘wow, what a difference’. He noted it was better, but the question is whether it’s £6,250 better. Jason is a really good person, and years ago came to my house to fit new drivers in my SBLs. But when he’s performing his Naim thing, he’s always told the audience what the differences are, before they’ve decided for themselves. When I hear him present I pretty much know what he’ll say next, before he says it. The whole PS thing is basically what Naim have been saying for the last 40 years.
What they really need to do - in my opinion of course - is build things that don’t need add on power supplies in the first place, especially power supplies that cost as much as the thing they are powering. Why is is so great that things can be upgraded to get the best from them? Why can’t they sound their best when you first buy them?The whole add-on PS thing is really a bit boring.
Still, it’s got me listening to Blue Lines, and the music’s what it’s all about. And that’s just with my little Atom HE. No power supply upgrade required.
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Admit it, if Naim made one you’d crack eventually!
Linn and Chord seem to do OK using built in switching supplies, so clearly it can be done. I wonder how much further down the ‘low box count’ road Naim would go if they perceived that the demand was there.
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I noted Roger tapping his foot naturally to the non power supply version and then first hesitantly and then almost anxiously to the second. As a conversation it was weird but if you showed that to a body language expert I think they’d have some concerns about putting the video out.
I think he also noted some aspects which were clearer or more explicit sound wise but he didn’t ever explicitly describe them as better or the overall thing as better. Personal bias obviously but that mirrors my experience of Naim. The separates offer obvious differences but the more integrated stuff has always been where the real magic lies in terms of emotional communication, PRaT and coherence.
Wholly agree re: power supplies. There is a weird balance where the ridicule Naim attract elsewhere for their inevitably expensive upgrade path is matched by the almost cultish behaviour of buyers of the power supply.
As an outsider a rational mind would look at that video and the upgrade path and perhaps ask “so why have I paid thousands for something which an upgrade has just rendered redundant?”
Nowadays that kind of redundancy is a big thing and I’m not sure that Naim/Focal really gets that. More worryingly I get a sense of drift with stuff like video and marketing. No real identifiable ethos behind it any more.
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Interesting to hear that YouTube is second to BBC as a choice of viewing platform in the U.K.
I admit I stumbled on the Naim offering discussed here whilst looking for a county cricket feed, which is a great offering for cricket fans.
I liked the counterpoint between the two of them - and appreciate the nuances pointed out by @HungryHalibut, @ChrisSU and @mikehughescq. I just wish I could hear the difference between the setups demonstrated (tv feeding 52 etc.).
My take home from about the first two minutes of the film (which was all I watched) was that the gear is good anyway, and that power supplies are there if you want them, in order to take it to the max.
There are four episodes of this. My initial scepticism dissipated as they go on. Jason and Roger get much more relaxed and the conversation turns more to music than hifi. In the final episode they listen to bits of Roger’s not yet released new album, which got me listening to his solo music, which I like very much. It’s worth persevering.
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As per my earlier post, I remain unclear what the purpose was and thought it was a garbled, unfocused mess.
With all respect to Jason, his language was exactly that of a Naim dealer of my acquaintance who would spend much of a demo talking over the music and telling you what improvements he was hearing and you undoubtedly were too.
All “tell” not “show”.
The consequence of this was never better demonstrated than at a couple of Naim weekends when we were constantly told what improvements we were definitely hearing. One bloke would reluctantly nod in agreement and after each session the rest of us would look at each other, shrug and laugh. Were there differences? Undoubtedly. Were they as described or of the magnitude described? Not at all.
Here you have a musician with a self-admitted hearing issue saying he can hear but the one thing after each change i.e. more space. Jason talks “layers” and all sorts but all Roger can hear is “more space”.
I don’t think anyone is being done any favours here. Roger’s perspective is entirely garbled. On the one hand the extra space in the music makes him want to add to the track. On the other hand being in The Cure allegedly taught him to do the exact opposite. One note instead of ten etc.
Jason sounds like he thinks his sheer persistence in telling us and Roger what is being heard will suffice. Roger, in all honesty, seems to think all he can hear is more space. The talk of layers and lower noise floors passes him by.
One of the interesting and clearly inadvertent byproducts of this mish mash is that we’re sold high end audio on the basis that it recreates the live or studio sound “as the artist intended”. Here we have a musician openly saying that they would have done something different had they heard their music sound like this.
Clearly then, the assumption that what we hear is what the artist intended and that our systems ought to take us closer to that now looks at best something of a confused idea.
Naim/Focal really need to get back to stuff which says “Here is our new product. It does this. This is brilliant because…” and build a media presence from there.
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As a confirmed multi-boxer but without a power supply habit, I’ll leave it there thanks.
So is the fourth episode available yet?
ATB, J
Ah sorry, it’s episode 3. Silly me. It’s where Roger plays his new album and they swap the 250 for 350s. So there is more excitement to come.
Enjoyable little video’s which prove what many people already know but Roger didn’t, which help Roger get even more from his music and as an added bonus show what a thoroughly nice bloke he seems to be. A pleasant little interlude. Looking forward to episode 4.
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Yes, that oddoty struck me at the time. I wonder what he uses to monitor his recordings/mixes.
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Highlights neatly that home systems/speakers and studio systems/monitors have very different priorities.
I mix on Yamaha HS5s precisely because they’re difficult. Therefore when stuff sounds good on them it sounds good on everything. They absolutely don’t let me hear every last detail. I can use headphones for that to some extent but it’s amazing how many people think detail = high end audio.
I had a very quick search and couldn’t find any details of his studio sound system, but there was this pic on equipboard.com.
Maybe not very recent pic as his hair is longer and darker than on Naim videos. From it it appears he has a fairly typical home “studio”, and whilst I don’t recognise the speakers the ones visible are certainly not “main monitor” type, while the amp isn’t visible. From what he has said his focus would appear to be on capturing the emotion he puts into the music, and is presumably happy with that - but of course if the sound is constrained by the monitor system, or by his acknowledged hearing loss, there likely will indeed be greater information on the recording than he is hearing, whether spatial as he picked up on the Naim video, or textures etc, A system that uncovers that may get the listener to hear what they would hear if he were to play live for them through a decent sound system. The emotion that the musician can get through even when the system is constrained, but not necessarily all the sound that was created.
With the exception of the legacy 500 range, that is in fact what they’ve done. Power Supplies are either not an option or optional for all current Uniti, NC, and Stetement ranges.
As for the optional upgrades, again, “optional”. They could of course simply remove the PSU upgrades and say, “this is as good as a 332 is ever going to sound - it’s already at it’s best” and that would in fact be no different from any other manufacturer who doesn’t offer an optional upgrade. But it seems a bit pointless to do that.
It would be a bit like saying, “I’m a fatty and the bakery should stop selling cakes precisely because I’m likely to buy them.”