Naim Muso Qb2

Doesn’t seem to be much improvement sound wise, but now supports a load more (pointless IMO) Apps.

For the pleasure, i’m guessing around £900.

Yikes.

Jasons, the Qb2 has just been announced today. Are you saying you’ve already listened to it and compared against the original Qb?

One would assume that any improvements in sound would have been highlighted in the blurb like the gen2 Muso, non?

That aside, I’m in if there is a noticeable improvement over the gen1

It basically details similar improvements to those that were applied to the Mu-So big brother a few months ago (improved drivers etc…) so I guess it could be inferred that that would mean a similarly improved performance from the Qb.

I haven’t heard the new Qb2 yet though, so don’t take my word for it. Best to get a proper demo and judge for yourself.

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In case anyone is interested, What HiFi is reporting the recommended retail price as £749.

Best

David

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That sounds about right price wise to me - it needed a refresh to add the newer features of the new streaming platform.

Airplay 2, Tidal and Chromecast will give it the features customers buying such devices want. I assume wifi specs will be better too.

I’m thankful Naim have decided to keep optical/analogue in.

I also believe they need to continue to resist incorporating any smart assistants into these devices as they’d have to use a 3rd party I suspect, and these should be for music, not to tell the time or advise the weather. Plenty of cheap smart devices with poor speakers could be hooked up via analogue or bluetooth if desired and would remove that potentially audio performance affecting processing overhead to another device and leave the Muso to concentrate on proper music from other sources.

I‘ve placed my order :+1:

Roon Ready to.

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Yes - forgot to add that!

Does anyone know whether you can create a stereo pair? From the description it would seem not.

The Qb2 is already Stereo. But if you mean, can you run two units as a stereo pair, then no. Although you could run two Qb2s together in party mode as two stereo units.

Thanks, Richard. Yes, I did mean using two separate units, as I was thinking what a fabulous system that would be. Still…

You could if you had Roon. As you can group the two and apply Procedural EQ in the DSP engine to set one to have left channel only and the other to be right and all stay in sync using Roons RAAT protocol.

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You could if you had Roon. As you can group the two and apply Procedural EQ in the DSP engine to set one to have left channel only and the other to be right and all stay in sync using Roons RAAT protocol.

Very interesting. Thank you.

Hmhh; interesting point. There was a similar discussion on the “Home Theatre” area about 5.1 sound. (Which is of course a bit more of processing and synchronization than stereo).

I did (only) a quick web search, but it seems, also Apple (with the HomePod) and Google (with the Max) reserve the 2-devices-as-stereo feature so far to their own products for AirPlay/ChromeCast respectively. I.e. they add it “internally within the product”, so that it looks to the senders as a single “paired” device.
Does not seem to be a general feature available for either protocol. As do many other vendors, who build is such functions into their own (proprietary) products. (Sonos, Libratone, …)

I guess, stereo separation should not be so difficult to add, at least not much “processing” should be needed, if you already have devices playing “in sync”; either on the client side (you would just need the option on a stereo receiver to just select left/right channel and send music to 2 of those) or on the sender side (split stereo signal, and send each channel to a different receiver).

I don’t know/use Roon, but it seems it’s a very flexible software, which allows to do this.
On a very quick search, there’s an article indicating “Airfoil” tool could to a similar thing with Airplay, maybe not as direct as Roon.

So, were can we ask Naim to consider this as an option for the future product road-map?
(If they add it to their general multi-room setup (which I haven#t used yet, having only a single (stereo!) atom :wink: ) like “only play left/right on this device”, it would even work with external sources…)

Question:
Does the Muso (Qb) allow for a “balance” setting? (Atom does, on the audio options.)
Maybe you could simulate a stereo setup, by setting 1 Qb to “balance all left/right” each?

Its too expensive for what it is. Im sticking to my sonos.

Maybe listen to one when they are available before posting an opinion about it, unless sound quality is irrelevant to you.

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Anybody know is the wi-fi deactivated (or can it be deactivated) while the Qb2 is hardwired via Ethernet? Just wondering if I need to pull out the plug to get zero radio emissions (I have a Qb in the bedroom).

As far as I was aware, if you unplugged the unit from power, plugged it into your network and Then powered it up, it would use that instead of WiFi.

Not sure if it switches the WiFi off though.