Thank you, I am fortunate that it is my basement, so I can listen loud and not disturb my family. I did soundproof the room and adding room treatment from Vicoustic.
My room is small. Toe-in makes my speaker disappeared and sound stage wider and larger… the music just flows. With a small room, Toe-in makes big difference to avoid frist reflection from the wall. I also put up room treatment to lessen the first reaction but Toe-in is still further improving music flow and add transparency to the soundstage significantly.
The side wall panels are actually Vicoustic absorptive panels with stone print. They are thin, light and very easy to install mostly with 3M removalable type.
My room is small and speakers are placed near the wall, therefore, side wall treatment is very important. Interestingly, I did the treatment step by step, one thing at a time. So I learnt a bit about my room acoustic and room sound. Side wall treatments made wider soundstage. The bass traps improved transparency. Diffuser in the middle improved central focus and image size.
I have small children at home and my wife will not let me listen at the volume that I would like…so dedicated room is required. Having said that my daughter loves this room as she often comes down to listen to Nat King Cole with me.
we had a house rabbit and it liked nibbling cables… took out 2 answerphones and a pairof headphones.
Since that I’ve trunked all cables - white and screwed into skirting boards. Looks far neater than any dangling cables whatever they may be!
I just found this thread. Wow, most of you guys are a fanatical bunch of Naim loyalists. I guess that’s not too surprising being on a Naim forum, but don’t you feel you might be missing out on better gear? Or is Naim considered the highest level of achievement? Don’t you audition anything else or is the Naim catalog the only option when shopping for something new?
I think you will find that the loyalists here are looking to get great music. For me, when I got Naim, I got the music, the PRAT that I was looking for. Its an experience that does not get old. You will find that folks here do experiment outside of the box, but come back to baseline in many cases.
For me, I stay with Naim because it fulfills my need for quality music reproduction. I have no doubt that there may be other gear out there that is “better” (whatever that may mean), but I am completely satisfied with my music reproduction, and with (very) few exceptions (only two I can think of) have been satisfied with the Naim products I have bought, and the music they reproduce.
My hobby is listening to music, and I have literally ZERO desire to gin up a hobby of sampling and listening to and purchasing hifi gear chasing some ephemeral audio ecstasy. To paraphrase and augment another recent post elsewhere on the forum: When you stop listening to the music and start listening to the sound, that way lies madness.
If Naim ceases to provide the desired end for me, then I will regrettably have to venture outside their world. (Although my second system in completely non-Naim, and I have an Oppo DVD player in my main system.)
I say regrettably because having given up the hobby of searching across brands for hifi when I discovered Naim, I really do not want to get back into that mode ever again. I will almost certainly be dead in 20 years (assuming I even have 20 minutes) and that is not how I want to spend my remaining time…too much music to listen to before I go.