A bit of both I guess.
I’ve emailed the Naim beta email and asked to join.
A bit of both I guess.
I’ve emailed the Naim beta email and asked to join.
Ok - that’s the procedure to get into it.
Essentially it is about using (and by that implicitly, and to a point explicitly testing) the non-released beta version in a closed user group.
You test the software under your own conditions to see how it performs. Feedback on any issues, when the arise providing as much info as possible if it’s repeatable and supply logs to help them diagnose. The wider the group the longer it takes to collate it all but it does give a much bigger taster of the user community and how each uses the units and this can help show up issues that get missed. I think it’s grown massively since this firmware cockup which is good as I think before it was too small a group with limited use cases.
Any chance Naim can check the ‘share’ button on the app…oops sorry wrong thread.
I’ve just sent this message to Naim Support. Don’t know if anyone else has experienced the ‘late pause’ issue or whether or not it’s relevant, but just for the tape:
Hi,
As requested on the Naim Forum, I’m reporting issues with random reboots whilst music is playing. I’m on latest software. I’ve not had any problems previously, but last night I experienced 2 reboots in an hour. Both times it occurred after I had paused a track within a few seconds of it finishing, then later pressed play to continue and this command coincided with the reboot - possible cause?
I’ve also recently had issues with the same aspect of pausing late in a track, aiming to rewind using the slider on the running time bar and it hasn’t been able to follow the command and instead, jumped to another track on the album. I mention, just in case there’s some kind of causal link?
Thanks,
Kevin
I would not be very surprised if rewinding very late in a track were problematic in systems that support gapless replay, but I have never tried it in my system.
If the software starts pre-loading the new track at the end of the current one (to provide a smooth transition), then strange things could happen, if a control function does not know/consider about such a “special state”.
So, it may be plausibel to see problems in this phase, which don’t appear otherwise.
(Without knowing the implementation here, but there might be buffered, counter, indexes and pointer involved, which might not point where other functions expect them to. Speculation here, but seen such behavior on other systems I could take a deeper look at.)
Aha! I just tried this on my NDX2. I paused a song with 2 seconds to go. When I hit play, it showed as playing, but just hung there. Hitting the pause button did nothing. I could not get it to play again. Had to hit the next song in the queue to resume. A bug!
At least it didn’t reboot
@Richard.Dane any new information about the release date of firmware v3.6.0? How is Naim doing with the Beta?
Any chance Naim will implement a digital equalizer option to a future firmware update of the Unitis (and Streamers)? Just a little bit of digital adjustment in both directions. Lossless. I would really appreciate that.
Nothing new to report - it’s still Beta at the moment and I can’t give updates on that here.
As for a digital EQ option, I think only Naim could comment on that.
Thanks Richard for your promt reply!
So please Naim, if you can hear me , implement a digital EQ option into a future firmware update of the Unitis and Streamers. You would make a lot of users very happy here!
While I don’t use it myself on Roon, Roon allows quite finely controlled DSP of the stream sent to, for example, the Unitis. Maybe that could give you what you want?
I’m not using Roon. I’m just streaming my music directly and I’m fine with that… but thanks for the advice.
I would welcome the integration of a digital EQ option a lot. I think it’s just a philosophy thing of Naim, there is no technical reason why it’s not implemented yet.
I would be very happy if they would think about it resp. discuss the option in one of their meetings and give us feedback here in the forum afterwards. There should always be a few customers who drive their wishes forward, so I’ll give it a try.
Indeed, there is no technical reason.
But there is a very strong, sound quality related, reason.
So, not sure you’d really welcome such a feature.
Digital EQ takes a significant amount of processing power, meaning it inevitably generates “noise” and therefore compromises sound quality.
As @Kryptos suggested, EQ has to applied upper in the streaming chain, on the server side.
It’s always easy to say it’s sound quality related (compromises the sound quality), therefore it’s not implemented… There are many examples out there which does show us that it can work pretty good - e.g. Linn Selekt, Lyngdorf TDAI-3400, just to name two in the same league of my Uniti Nova. There is pretty much processing power going on in these all-in-ones and they sound rivaling to my Nova. As a user you always can ignore it and not use it if it sounds worse to you. But for all those who like it, it’s there. I would still welcome the implementation in a future firmware update.
Yeah and no doubt with these devices they were designed from the start to incorporate it, not tacked on later with firmware. @Thomas 's comment about extra processing does not come across as an easy excuse when I read it. It’s a design decision and may even dictate what kind of processing CPU and memory is installed. Given though that only Naim can answer if this assumption is true and whether this is on the roadmap.
It does beg the question though why the Nova won in your selection process, knowing that the alternatives were a better fit?
Nobody said the alternatives were a better fit, did I?
There are more aspects than just sound quality that contribute to a decision-making process (e.g. design, feature-set, usability, remote control and app, future-proofness via software/firmware updates, customers support, etc.) and according to these the Nova was the overall better product for me. Nevertheless, if it’s possible with the hardware in the Unitis and Streamers and without sacrificing the sound quality, a Digital EQ would be an enrichment for Naim’s products.
Well I had to ask
Just then again a mention that Roon will, aside from a number of other extra nice things, give your Nova the full functionality you seek.
Yeah native support saves effort and money but I too was driven to Roon by things in the application I could not do, like combining sources etc. Now, looking back, I am extremely happy with the combination and glad I did it. As it can be tested free of charge why not give it a go? Can always stop if Naim puts in native support…
What I very much doubt there is a “lossless digital eq”. If you transform the signal in the “digital domain”, the only truly “lossless” (in the sense of “1:1 identical” and “reversible”) thing you can usually do it using powers of 2, and only if you don’t cut any information. What you can do is heavy “up-sampling” and trying to mitigate the loss to be non-audible. (E.g.: uplift a 48kHz/16bit signal into a 192kHz/24bit format (which is lossless) and then apply the EQ here. I think that’s what happening at “digital mastering”. It still will NOT be the original signal - which is the whole point of using an EQ - but most people might not be able to hear the “digital processing” on most systems. Then again, with an original 384/32 bit signal, there won’t be any room in the pipe of these systems to perform such a “trick”.)
And I guess, adding such functionality in the “analog domain” (post-DAC) will need dedicated hardware.
Exactly. Roon does this, though they upsample to 64bit float for additional headroom,