We had Fnac shops in my country as well, but yours seem pretty different! Here they never sold such Hi-Fi gear, those Kanta’s aren’t exactly cheap. I think here they didn’t sell speakers over 1’000 - 2’000€. So I wonder, what target do they look for? Does Fnac want to be a high-end retailer?
I know, the AI initials were a response to FR. And the wretched spelling “correction” changed my (supposedly numerous) reference to The Lake Isle of Innisfree. Technology, eh!
Roger
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In Paris and around, there are plenty of Fnac. But I think there’s only one with expensive gear, as in the picture. This Fnac is near Montparnasse, rue de Rennes.
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I caught a bird song
And I put it in my guitar.
A refrain of peace emerges
Which puts an end to my regrets.
I brought back green hills
A little of their wild perfumes.
I brought back colors of May
And put them in a bouquet.
I took on my travels
And your presence and your face.
And it’s like a gift from heaven
Because being alone I am in two.
AL? FR?
Seems they have it spot on, with you buying kit which Linn/Tiefenbrun have no long term interest in ensuring their products remain service viable, despite their latest untried and likely baloney, if real experience is anything to go by! Subs that can’t be repaired - sub par, simples!
Time to finishing serving those repeated cold dishes, criticising Naim while changing the menu - it could be tried on the Linn Forum…….rip!
Likely vey perceptive! With the issue of such a bewildering choice, which wasn’t available to those of us who have grown up with ‘hifi’ as a more specific medium.
Of course a thread like this will always attract the Naim leavers and bashers; same old, same old, of course. See you’ve called one out, i’ve just mentioned another.
On topic, trends have always existed, perhaps they are faster today? Aspirational hifi over the last few decades did then, potentially have more supporters in part, because against the previous generation or so, disposable income was greater.
How that plays out today, is as much connected which such a wider choice available, for everything. Cheap flights, latest fashion, latest electronic gizmos, no one has an old item, phones et al, remember the best ‘phone’ ever - Nokia (perhaps 6310i), which lasted a week, had easy hand free dialling….et al; to name but a few simpler choices!
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Personally I think hi-fi has an image problem. All teenagers and young adults love music just as much as we all did, so that’s not the problem, but as people have expressed on here lack of affordable housing or ability to move out of the bedroom at Mum and Dad’s surely has its impact. Couple that with the fact that hi-fi is seen as “nerdy” and uncool and you have a recipe for deteriorating sales.
There are alas perhaps many more ways for the young to spend their money now from mobile phones to fancy gaming rigs and lets face it going to gigs is 10X the cost it was when we were teens - so they must love music still.
I can’t help thinking that part of the problem is lack of exposure to great hi-fi. I’ve sat quite a few of my 19 year old daughter’s friends down and played them some music or a movie on my integrated projection based hi-fi and home cinema system and they have almost all shown signs of cogs turning and thinking about maybe wanting to acquire something better than they have now. Similarly the popularity of listening bars springing up is I think an opportunity to introduce young and cool people to quality audio in a relaxed environment. It amazes me that more manufacturers haven’t partnered with some of those places to demo their systems.
I’ve also never understood why audio manufacturers don’t band together to advertise in the music press, on music websites, on music related social media to “sell” the idea that great hi-fi enhances your life and makes nights in with friends so much more fun. Vinyl has raised awareness of the fun of listening to music with friends rather than on headphones alone, but the industry really needs to change its anorak image!
I agree that lifestyle products are going to inevitably be a large part of any future market, but I also think that people with vinyl, people who have been exposed to good hi-fi, people who like getting together with friends to spin records, people who have heard good systems in listening bars might be inclined to finally invest in hi-fi when in their thirties they get a decent job and buy that first house or flat. So I don’t think all hope is lost.
I do think that some hobbies do require a bit of nurtured introduction too. How many of us really gave a damn about single malt whisky at 20 - or even wine for that matter??? But I bet a significant proportion of the older readers on here do now, perhaps due to a whisky enthusiast friend influencing us, maybe due to advertising, maybe because it has a really cool image and appeals to a certain demographic. I don’t see why hi-fi is any different than whisky, wine, fishing, sports cars, fell walking, VR gaming, sailing or dare I say it flying with a PPL. You need disposable income for all those things, you often need to be led to them by friends and you need to “grow” into them. Why should hi-fi be any different?
Most people want to live exciting and fulfilling lives. Hi-Fi and home cinema systems have an enormous capacity to enrich life’s pleasure - but the industry needs to tell people that. I sometimes think they focus far too much on constantly competing on a brand against brand basis or by arguing my cable/turntable/amplifier etc is better than yours… The message needs to be great audio and cinema systems create joy in your life, create experiences and we need to make their advertising, design and pricing inclusive, sexy and appealing to younger people.
JonathanG
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Most kind, thank you for participating.
DG…
I think the emerging trend is the merging of sound and vision. This can be seen in the growing number of streamers which have screens). The other area where the 2 combine is the world of the music video - here there’s space for investments in soundbar technology. Sonos used to be a leader with tv audio plus music service streaming - in relatively compact formats suitable for smaller rooms & apartments. I fear the current range of Naim products are overall too old-fashioned in aesthetic design to attract younger buyers. Let’s not forget that B&O dominated cool hifi decades ago while others persisted in devices which looked like they were rebuilds from fighter airplanes.
Clearly not given that I was referring to your recall of the other matter. Your recall of that is 100% incorrect. Your recall of the thread is correct.
In other news, replacement of 2 valves was not a trauma in any sense. It was inconvenient having just purchased the amp and thus not had an opportunity to build up a small stock of replacements but inconvenience is not traumatising and from my perspective it remains the case that I’m enjoying 8 hours of music and/or TV on every day I can; will be building up a small stock of valves as soon as I can and will continue to explore the cause of the hum. Administrative minutiae in the scheme of things really.
Do please re-read the comment. Let’s focus on what was actually said rather than what you think was said.
“The assumption that only you really focus on music and that others need to be educated or taught to do that is exactly what steers young people away from such things. It’s distanced and arrogant and predicated on the assumption that only certain things count as culture and our job is to educate the plebs to our level of appreciation You don’t teach culture or appreciation. It’s part of you. Again, people and the industry need to meet people where they are and stop forever trying to shove them to where they want them to be. It hasn’t ever worked and it never will. People change all the time. If manufacturers don’t then they will die.”
See bolded words above.
The “you” here is not you. It’s the industry.
The “It’s” here is not you. It’s a reference to the approach of the industry.
The second “You” above was also a reference to the industry.
The phrase “people and the industry” is a further clue as to the nature of my response and who was being addressed.
Is it genuinely really that difficult to understand that a poster might use a post as a jumping off point to illustrate wider points and that doing so is only a personal attack if you want it to be so; are perhaps a tad thin skinned or, occasionally, things get lost in translation as this is a multi-lingual forum.
I am more than happy to apologise if you have seen my post as a personal attack. Absolutely not. I simply thought it symptomatic of wider issues i.e. things that a wider population in general and the industry in particular believe which are demonstrably off the mark.
Is the hum still there if you connect only the amp to the speakers, without source?
I read some discussions about it. If the response is yes, then it’s the amp problem, probably, most say, a transformer or capacitor.
Good post. I think my point was that, at this point, mere exposure isn’t enough. Some people will see something to pursue but most will not and the most are probably right because smaller minimalist and often portable systems are far better suited to modern life and often sound stunningly good.
I think there’s also a point about hi-fi being slightly different. If you are to pursue separates then the standard answer on forums is to get yourself a dealer. However, that’s an answer from people on a forum where knowledge is already a degree or more above the person in the street. We know what a good dealer looks like because we understand certain basic principles which are absolutely not within the knowledge of the man in the street and, more to the point, they don’t want to know this stuff.
I walked away from a Naim dealer who tried to sell me a 43” Pioneer plasma TV because dealers had job lots of that size. Didn’t want to discuss the fact my sight-impairment and room size meant 43” was of no use.
Walked away from a Naim dealer because they allowed their back pain to get in the way and mis-wired my system costing me a significant amount in repairs.
Walked away from a dealer because they wanted to talk to me when my child wasn’t around. The child was a threat not a future customer to be engaged.
Walked away from a Naim dealer who saw a mismatch between speakers and amp and whose solution to that was to try and sell me something unrelated and, when horrified to discover that sounded awful, decided that I needed a new more powerful amp rather than more efficient speakers.
Followed the guy who sat my child down in front of a TV; got some children’s TV up and then showed them what happened when they added a sound bar followed by separate speakers. Weirdly Mrs. H. loved that dealer too.
We like to believe the majority of dealers are great and have baseline standards. It might just be the case that it’s our knowledge which is key. What those dealers look like to new costumers tells a different story. People want a system which looks good and sounds good. They don’t want to acquire new knowledge. They fear that getting a good deal from a dealer is about having a baseline of knowledge they simply don’t have or want and fear getting bamboozled into something they neither want nor need. Having taken such friends into dealers I actually think their fears are pretty well founded. There are some fantastic dealers out there but they’re fantastic for us. They’re not that for new customers with zero knowledge. The inability of dealers to simplify complexity or cut through BS to get the customer what they actually want rather than sell them stuff they never knew they wanted is astonishing.
I’m sure most here know the basics of system matching. New customers don’t. Add in newer stuff like room correction and why would people not go for Sonos et al.
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Separate thread already going on for that. I think it best if we keep it that way. 
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That post was legendary … but it did highlight the problem with multiple boxes how to identify the issue
If my memory is right - it turned out to be a CD issue , which was interesting as most of us thought getting rid of all the equipment and getting a Nova was the way to go .
Most likely I will return to a Nova next year (if I move)
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Yes and looking at houses in estate agents details you usually never see any kind of sound system at all. It doesn’t fit with the aesthetics.
For the same reason, you need to turn all your books the wrong way round on the bookcase.
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Books?.??
We looked at some new houses being built near us last summer out of interest. Although they were four and five bed houses, the rooms were so small. It was interesting that none of the bedrooms had any wardrobes in them.
Glad our house is from the seventies.
DG…
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One from the 20s or 30s is even better.
But yes if you are making a hifi analogy
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Not quite. It was not so much a CD issue as a source and taste issue. The XPS2 was tested and fine. Dealer thought there might be something amiss with the op amps within the CDX2 but having brought it in house for listening before making a decision on sending it back to Naim multiple staff could hear no issue. Having worked through the issues which did exist with faulty cables; a broken 200 etc. the only conclusion left was that my hearing/tastes had changed and I could no longer live with what the CDX2 did.
Took a while to move to find and move to another source, plus DAC and, more recently, to replace the remaining 4 boxes of Naim with the integrated amp but there’s not a second of that I’ve regretted.
The thread neatly illustrated that the issue is not always what you think but it was accidentally useful in highlighting the very best of a forum and a number of people who were just lovely. The other side of that was that it left a number of posters looking a tad silly for their inability to read the start of the thread and thus suggesting stuff long since exhausted or which plainly made no sense. A number of posters also revealed themselves as very confident in their knowledge and expertise but absolutely intolerant of anyone who dared to query, challenge or point out obvious logical deficits. All live within 
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