Apart from the magnetic field, with a full classic Naim system, a single stack would be approx. 1.5-2.5 meters high. So you want to split it anyways, and if you do anyway, the brain/brawn separation seems to make most sense.
Plus, isn’t there also the question of vibration isolation? Though do PSes vibrate (more than heads)?
Unfortunately not everyone has the luxury of space. A living room is often full of compromises and choices. Whilst Full Fraim and Acoustically prepared rooms may be idea, that’s not the case for many. E.g. in my case I have three shelves that are double width, with 5 boxes to spread out, but when placed on a shelf, they are only about 3-4cm apart. So I just wanted to understand what is the theory around brain/brawn, what is the problem that this layout purports to resolve, what is leaking, where is it leaking, and are there other alternative ways to achieve the same where air-gaps are limited.
So how might you block this, other than distance? What is “materials based magnetic shielding”?
I understand that not everyone has the space. I was just offering a possible explanation for why this is what Naim recommends: with a full system one stack won’t work well anyway, so improve vibration and interference isolation by spacing out - however big or small the improvement may be. If the space is not there, compromises are needed. Certainly more separation won’t be worse than less, whatever can be done.
There are certainly a lot of people on the forum who reported that higher Fraim levels, and empty levels in between, improved things for them. I haven’t tried, I have non-Fraim brains and brawns, with 6 cm between each unit. And that’s what it is, I can’t go higher and two Fraims are too wide.
So I guess this sort of highlights this topic - if a shelf gap can improve SQ, what can you do if you don’t have that spare shelf. Is there something you can place between to have the same effect, and if so what.
I suppose for the vibration you can do the usual things. For the magnetic fields it seems not so much.
You need another ferromagnetic metal. Of which aluminium as used in Naim cases is not.
Hi, you seem to have plenty of good answers… including the Naim cases are not ferrous… and indeed if they were could interfere with the audio circuitry… and the EM field decays with the inverse square of distance (1/d2). so bottom line keep physical space around devices.
Naim mount the transformers in mostly the same places in classic products to help reduce interfering EM coupling… and in the horizontal plane keep sensitive circuitry as far away as possible in the case to aid decoupling.
Many thanks everyone for joining in the discussion. I looked up Full Fraim, and it said:
So as already suggested that might indicate some leak from a toroid transformer, but resolved here using spacing. And as others have said, a ferromagnetic metal could be used for shielding if spacing cannot be achieved. Therefore I guess that means a steel sheet may have the same impact as distance. If it were that simple, then presumably you would think that they would make that part of a Full Fraim design, but perhaps using steel would introduce other issues
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