Naim have done well to get the sound they do out of the cd5si with so little on display. A fitting implementation of their final cd player.
I take it the DAC is on this hidden board?
Yes.
It’s always neat and logically laid out inside the Naim kit - A sign of good engineering, quality control and consistency in performance. I was quite surprised to see the inside of a very expensive US made amp - wires everywhere, push on spade connectors - not good. Certainly not what you’d expect given the attention paid to the fit and finish of the exterior and the price !
I got quite close to buying a Quad ( valve) headphone amp at the start if the year.
My dealer asked if I wanted to see inside.
What a mess. Really. It was his way of telling me they’d temporarily stopped shipping from China? They apparently had some quality issues. Yep, I could see that.
1 Like
And yet lots of audiophiles get excited at the sight of point to point wiring!
… if it’s well made. Like most things it’s more about how it’s done.
Oh dear!
I agree although I do prefer turret board construction as at least there is some enforced order! :0)
4 Likes
Why ‘Oh dear’?
At least one of those caps looks a little off?
Do you mean the big black ones that are made that way? :0)
They’re made like that? Wow. Looked like they’d been crushed
Have you ever seen the inside of a Mares/Lyra Connoisseur phono stage (not sure if a link to their website is ok here)? The PCB serves mostly as a placeholder for the parts, many are connected with their own leads.
Did you have anything to do with it, Darran? It seems it was professionally done!
They seem to show double stacked boards, not sure from the images I have seen whether one of these are pcbs? Certainly most manufacturers like pcbs not least because of ease of build, but also for the consistency it offers.
I have certainly built valve based projects with small component count using component leads through drilled tufnol boards as ‘tracks’ between components.
I agree. It looks like it wasn’t oriented correctly before they tightened it down. That caused the crease in the cap. Probably not good for the cap.
Capacitor Manhattan!