I was wondering if I had become psychic or just loosing it, but last evening & this morning I had a feeling that the Big Reveal & Muso-2 had a touch of deja vu.
I just picked up a hifi mag that was delivered last month (July) & see they are reviewing Naim Muso 2nd Generation in next months issue.
OK, no need for the men with white coats just yet.
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My experience of engineers is that they give me a design and ask me to build it. At which point I often had to redesign what they had come up with on paper to make it work in the real world. But that was nothing to do with electronics.
…but I’m sure there are plenty of engineers out there who are better than that!!
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I think that is relevant for architects… engineers need to realise an architected approach to turn it into reality.
The key thing is the design… re engineered implies to me a significantly different way of resolving a problem or delivering a specific requirement through implementation… if there was a problem with Qb, for that to be meaningful it should say what problems or implementation requirements were it addressed, such as the Wifi module has been re engineered to provide greater interoperability with EasyMesh networks, or the DAC reconstruction filter re engineered from IIR to FIR to provide greater transient performance (for a price point) etc … otherwise if it is simply ‘better’ then it’s a new design or even re design if starting from scratch.
To be honest I am fairly sure it was a re design… but the term ‘engineering’ is used to give it some sort of gravitas in the marketing spiel.
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If the QB2 has digital out then it would have been a nice upgrade for a 272 to 372
To me, and most people I imagine, a redesign results in something that looks different on the outside, whereas re-engineered means it has different bits on the inside. At the end of the days it’s just marketing bollocks anyway and really doesn’t matter.
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Exactly marketing spiel… genuine engineering is a design and implementation discipline and approach to deliver a specific solution or outcome using specific disciplines and methods.
Marginally less irritating than the term ‘re-imagined’ which is gaining traction in consumer marketing land for a re design.
the next will be probably a big deal: classic series updated for pre and amps. It will be interesting.
re-re-imagined has been used by.the former Microsoft boss many times.
Re-Engineered… I imagine all new products must be “re-engineered” to some degree to make sure the changes will work…
it seems that there are some technical upgrades from what i read. sorry, it’s in french, but it’s easy to see the upgrades.
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!
the SN2 and XS2 were also not broken…
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I think what you are talking about might technically be restyling rather than redesign - but marketing play fast and loose with words anyway!
We all want Naim to be successful. New customers need to be attracted to the brand, which means targeting a younger audience, hence the development of, what some describe as, lifestyle products. To be successful Naim need to continue to produce great products and extend the product breadth into lifestyle products i.e. MuSo and Qb.
Naim will also need to change a traditional technical, SQ and reputation-led marketing message to one more in tune with the higher volume lifestyle audio products, and adapt the marketing messages accordingly to suit this product range and a rather different audience. These messages also need to be at least as attractive and compelling to this larger audience as the competiton’s advertising spiel, even if the language is rather more flowery and less precise.
Which I feel is exactly what Naim is doing. It grates when a particular marketing message aimed at a certain audience is received by another audience, hence the comments in this thread and raised eyebrows at some of the recent product launch antics.
Personally, I am happy to cut Naim some slack here and would encourage them to market the hell out of the newer product lines and product revisions. As long as no lies are told and nobody is knowingly misled, I say go for it. Get the money in to invest in R & D for the products most on this forum and Naim traditionalists are mainly interested in.
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I’ve a friend locally who started with a couple of muso qb, has been through a 272 and is now about to get a 500 to go with his 552 and nd555. I have seen one or two other people do similar (if not to the same extent) on here and Facebook forums. So having muso as entry level seems to work to some extent
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Tim, that will be music to Naim’s ears, and bang on strategy, I suspect.
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He’s been a terrible influence on me, too 
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That is because you have the capacity to ‘re-imagine’ your hifi!
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Great news
If price stays close
I hope to get the older for peanuts
If I had more money than sense that’s definitely not true anymore! 
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Nicely summarised Nigel. I’ve owned Naim kit in various forms over the last 30 years and just find the new announcements nothing to get excited about and no incentive to invest money back into the brand. The factory visit last year was revealing - the passion that exists at Naim and the capability of the engineering teams just seems to be a bit wasted. Trevor Wilson left a great legacy with the new streamers and i hope the new MD will be able to do the same with new developments that are hopefully in the pipeline…