Just listened on Qobuz for a few seconds - yes very flat indeed.
My listening patterns are quite different to years ago.
I donāt often use the LP12 currently which is a shame. Iām hoping that will change, there are a few practical reasons including access to the LP12 location which could be better.
Iād say currently the system is used 95% of the time for stereo audio to accompany video from an old projector, but if Iām watching alone a heck of a lot of that is music videos on YouTube or similar. I think I find it harder to relax these days and my mind drifts more when listening to audio alone. I doubt I listen to vinyl even 1% of the time, and I havenāt even opened several recent purchases. So maybe 4% of the time itād be streaming from local storage/NAS or Qobuz on the main system. CDs are virtually never played but thatās been the case for a long time.
Separately, I stream a lot in the study generally as background music but a bit like audio in the car it can be very enjoyable even if youāre using far cheaper audio devices.
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I understand much better now.
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Another reason may be evolution of musical tastes over the years, as in the last few years Iāve listened to a lot of female fronted symphonic metal bands which get played quite loud. Some tracks sound very good indeed but I think a lot of these albums are quite compressed and sound muddled when thereās a lot going on. Iām not sure the sound changed for the better after upgrading the bearing from Cirkus as well as a few other changes but itās really hard to say as the room is different with more reflective services. I also have a nagging feeling the old Linn phono stage may not be helping. Maybe itās me of course.
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Alley_Cat, that all sounds a little sad, as if you are falling out of love with music. I hope all is ok with youā¦ and perhaps your musical mojo will return?
I perhaps had a similar periodā¦ I sold up much of my hifi audio equipment and down sized and simplifiedā¦ and fell in love againā¦
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Thanks for your kind thoughts Simon, life has just been hectic for several years in so many ways and I donāt think I often simply sit down and relax listening to audio only in the way I used to years ago.
I must admit that automatic YouTube music video selections are fantastic for finding similar bands/styles youāve never heard of which is good, though perhaps a lot of the material I listen to now seems better suited to a video format than stereo listening - Iāve always loved music videos though.
I was only thinking the other day that I often struggle to know what to play on the Nova - all those albums/singles from my youth I thought Iād never tire of have suddenly become decidedly tedious, maybe just overplayed and starting to look dated/of their time.
Maybe itās mainly due to digital/streaming being far too easy to change tracks compared to vinyl, I donāt really know, but I donāt think Iāve been entirely happy with the system for many years despite some upgrades which would look good on paper.
I think I posted a thread about āstarting from scratchā a while back, and it would be interesting to do so. The new classic range has killed a few upgrade options for me unless I buy secondhand but I have other priorities currently. Part of the issue is also my tendency to hang on to older equipment as even if it isnāt up to modern standards it was comparatively expensive at the time and probably provided more enjoyment in a simpler setup.
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Maybe try to give your lp12 a new life, better phono, better location, and have once a week a real lp listening session, with no remote and distractions ?
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The first step will be a bit of decluttering to allow me to actually get to the LP12 without tripping on something 
Phono stages are tricky to demo these days I find, but that would be quite important to do.
Maybe the Linn Linto (I think it was around Ā£1000 decades ago) is doing a fair job and something else is awry.
Difficult to go back to passive speakers when you have an active system without feeling youāre missing something but I also wonder about the SBLs - they can sound brilliant or poor depending on the material. The best speakers Iāve heard in years (unintentionally) were Sonus Faber Olympica Nova I standmounters powered by an Atom - just in the showroom not a dem room, they just sounded ārightā for everything I briefly tried on them.
Would also love to test 282 vs 252 which was my upgrade plan until it was discontinued, I even got a Supercap DR. So many reviews suggest the 252 just allows the music to fall into place naturally whereas the 282 to me has always seemed rather forward/exciting but lacking in refinement.
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I switched from the Linn Linto to a Lejonklou Entity 1.1, and I could not be happier.
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Yes agree - I have made a couple of mistakes in my haste to download and not selecting my Sublime discount. Flagged it up with Qobuz and although youāll never ever get cash back from them they will offer a free album - which if you chose the one youāve been putting off buying because it was too expensive - was a nice benefit from my own stupidity.
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I would still try that, perhaps a dealer has a used 252. To my ears that was one of the best NACs in terms of musical enjoyment Naim has made. In retrospect I preferred it overall to my later 552 DR. Sure placement and setup is fussy with the 252 ā¦ I guess you are paying for greater ease in doing this with the 552ā¦ which in my experience wasnāt fussy at allā¦ the 252 DR is an absolute joyā¦ use it with fast well timed, smear free through the cross over frequency(ies) speakers and it will likely be a delightā¦ at poor lofi hyper compressed as well as outstanding finessed productionsā¦ in my books a real quality hifi system should straddle both extremes. I guess what I am saying is that is a very nuanced and subtle preamp thatās letās the audio breath without highlighting, exaggeration and embellishment, but as a consequence it needs revealing smear free aka fast speakers to appreciate these subtleties and allow whatever production quality to be enjoyable.
So if that itch is thereā¦ I would scratch itā¦ and being a Naim you know it will be serviceable for many years to come.
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I know this sounds drastic @Alley_Cat, but it might be worth getting your hearing checked. Iād fallen out of love with music and, exactly as you describe, found things sounding compressed and muddled when there seemed to be a lot going on. I went to an audiologist and found I wasnāt hearing some of the higher frequencies.
I picked up some hearing aids recently and everything sounds as good as it previously did. A Ā£2K upgrade to my system that sounds more like a Ā£5 or 6K one.
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My experience with vinyl is much the same though I wouldnāt let the LP12 off the hook - though Iāll start by saying that I donāt know of a nicer sounding turntable. I just gradually used mine less and less because it just wasnāt anything like as good as what was coming out of the CD player. Frankly, the LP12 was disappointing and coloured and was incapable of keeping time. Once I had realised this last point, I realised that the fairly modest Nakamichi cassette player I had then kept time better than the LP12 and didnāt keep wimping out of crescendos in classical music. The LP12 slows down under load - and I think always has.
Nor have these always been top of the line CD or DVD players that have outperformed it. I first noticed CD was better with a Sony CDP555. Those numbers might get someoneās hopes up on a Naim forum, but believe me thatās not the case. LOL. Later Pioneer players I used, which had a Burr Brown DAC very similar to the PCM1795, were more obviously better in spite of some flaws in the execution (these were the same decks that Max Townshend used to put a linear power supply in front of). Way ahead of these, what I use now is a decently powerful PC running J River or, preferably, Tunebrowser - though itās not quite so convenient. This is the best front end Iāve ever had and, across 40+ years of Sondek ownership, have never got so much from the source as I do today. The rest of the system is also far better than it was 15 or 20 years ago but I still feel sure that if I put an LP12 in front of it I would be back to being underwhelmed. I would like to see if more can be squeezed from vinyl but I donāt think itās going to come from Linn who are taking some odd directions and appear to be utterly clueless about turntable design - even after having had 50 years to examine the problem. Iām sad to say this, but if you want to hear the structure of music, and the inventiveness, the LP12 is not the platform to do it from. And, for the moment at least, vinyl has been surpassed.
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Vinyl was surpassed a long time ago. The vinyl sound is more of an artefact than any digital recorded and digital played sound. The normal caveats apply re transferring to the media of vinyl or cd and multiple re issues/ remixes, but otherwise it holds true.
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Vinyl playing is like a ritual though rather than the final word in SQā¦ like brewing a pot of tea properly. The process of slowing down and selecting the vinyl side / track to play no doubt heightens the sense of anticipation and enjoyment for someā¦
Different courses, different horsesā¦.
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Oh, absolutely. I have a P3, a P8 and an lp12 which all get used. I like the ritual and I even like the sound, but neutral or of the best clarity it āaint. The question as always with a subjective process is which do we prefer. I can only answer in that digital is played 80% perhaps more towards 90% of my listening. I jokingly say that my P8 is almost as good as digital, but it isnāt really a joke. The best that vinyl can do is emulate digital from a digital recording.
I might agree that some analogue can sound better because digitalised remixs may expose deficiencies, but I wonder how much analogue, non digitally re mixed content is actually out there?
I agree, and I miss it. The whole sense of occasion has been lost, as has the wind-down to being properly relaxed and having actual time to yourself.
You presuppose that going through analogue is going to always be better. I think if something is going to go through some nondescript kit Iād probably rather it were in digital form. The digital signalās ruggedness may well be part of what has made it so succesful. Of course thereās that promise of no loss of information, which can sometimes be true.
Sure, SOTA analogue is going to be better or more ideal, Iād guess, but stick that on vinyl and youāve lost what you were hoping to hang onto.
Thatās a very good point, and of course there are simple things such as ear wax which could be problematic.
Came across this article which is interesting and suggests it may not be simply degeneration of our hearing apparatus but that the older brain may find it difficult to filter out specific sounds/pitches:
I certainly find restaurants and bars with lots of loud background noise quite irritating.
I may well do that, but Iām probably not in a position to do so currently (or at least without the wrath of SWMBO), just far too many other priorities to sort out unfortunately, and typically I saw a reasonably priced one somewhere quite recently. Cheers.
The other thing of course is that the higher up the chain itās become progressively harder to demo many items at home as only a few dealers may have them and even a demo at the dealership will require a long journey.