I doubt the hifi racks rack is an engineered product. Essentially it is made out of commercial grade kitchen worktop. Nice though it is.
The fraim, like all naim stuff is engineered. I.e. designed, built,tested and operated in a joined up way. But, like all things engineered, you gave to pay. Whether it is worth it, is up to you.
Me, I use a hifi rack rack, and am more than happy with mine.
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I had Hifi racks before Fraim. Absolutely no comparison. The former is basically a slab of wood with some legs stuck on and some spikes screwed in to the legs. The Fraim is top class precision engineering out of R&D which significantly improves the performance of Naim electronics.
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Thanks Dave - is there a significant benefit of the full fraim over the fraim lite? I guess there must be a point where the price of the systems justifies the better of the 2 versions
Hi Mike - I’ve not tried the Lite but I suspect it’s one of those where if you go Lite to save a bit of cash you’ll probably end up mucking around buying cups and balls and getting glaziers to make glass shelves to be like the proper Fraim so my advice, budget permitting, would be to be done with it and get the Fraim. You then can rest easily knowing you have the best support for your electronics with out ever needing to go further. Until you add more boxes and shelves that is!
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Fraim is much better - the glass and isolators, the shelves themselves, the decoupling base. Even adding glass doesn’t get you all the way. Your system easily justifies the full Fraim. Think of it as equivalent to a box upgrade and not just a stand.
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Thanks - I get it. Its like speaker cable, people buy separates hifi and then connect speakers with bell wire or a £2.99 B&Q powerblock. Its all about incremental improvements that combine to give you a sound you enjoy listening to.
Is there a recommended maximum no of shelves for a Fraim rack? At the moment, I would need 4 including the base level - 1 - LP12, 2 NAN-N 272, 3 - NAP 250DR and 4 - Cor6 & Phono stage. If I add a separate AMP (282) this would go to 6 or if I add a Power Supply for 272 5…Both upgrades would take it to 7 but that will be a few years away yet…
Base plus six standard levels is the maximum recommended. With that many, you really want two lower stacks.
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Does the base include a level to put equipment on or is literally just the base?
Yes it does.
Here’s mine, base and 5 levels. I think this is more than enough and it would look better as two stacks really, it’s on the cusp of overwhelming the room. I certainly wouldn’t want to go to the maximum of a base with 6 levels.
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Thanks - That’s very nice - and helpful. It would be the same in my room - anything taht size or bigger would dominate the room…
You could potentially save a shelf by moving the Core away from the main system as it doesn’t need to be on the Fraim and pop the phono stage on the floor?
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The Core could sit in the cabinet under the TV, the system is fully hard wired with ethernet cable
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I have 6, and 6 is too many. 4 was a neat little stack, 6 dominates the corner of the room too much. Next step is to swap one level for a base and have 2 x 3. The view is that separating power supplies from the other boxes is also v beneficial. Search for brain & brawn, How should I stack my boxes etc. Plenty of coverage on here.
Fraims anyway win by looking the part, over the alternatives.
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I’m new to the world of audio furniture…how does the rack affect the working of the units? I get that TT isolation is critical given that a turntable is essentially a vibration detection machine, but what are the physics affecting solid state electronics?
Microphonics, microphony, or microphonism describes the phenomenon wherein certain components in electronic devices transform mechanical vibrations into an undesired electrical signal (noise
Copied from the net…but that’s what the Fraim helps deal with
Snake oil, smoke & mirrors, confirmation bias… take your pick. I used to doubt it but the test is that when you get one, they do the job and do it extremely well.
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I saw that on the website and I absolutely love the look of the Fraim. If I had the money I would buy one just for the looks. Has anyone (Naim?) released any measurements to support the performance of this type of thing? I just tapped (hard) on the case of my Nova whilst playing and could not get it to induce any kind of microphonic affect through my speakers. I also tried it with nothing playing and the speakers didn’t flinch. My turntable on the other hand…
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I am going to borrow a fraim from my dealer and try it out. I used to use a cheap piece of mdd furniture and moving to dedicated rack definitely improved the sound. It wasn’t mind blowing, but it was different. Then upgraded speaker cables, interconnects etc. They are all small incremental improvements that come together to be greater than the sum of the parts.
Until you’ve tried a like for like test yourself, with your kit in your setting, you will never know for sure…
These topics warrant consideration of your sensitive and expensive electronics as part of a complete system. Naim engineered the Fraim racking system as a logical extension of the electronics, designed to control noise and create the most stable and consistent environment to allow the electronics to perform at the peak of their designed performance.
Over the years I’ve gone the whole gamut of furniture from a basic Ikea cupboard, Hutter Racktime, Isoblue (which does look nice and is very simple, miss it a bit) to a full Fraim setup which I purchased brand new.
I didn’t buy it purely for performance reasons and wasn’t expecting it to really be a big part in the system as a whole but the reality is, when the time is taken to set it up correctly, check as you go and get everything tight and level, that it allows the equipment to do what it’s designed to do and takes it as a whole to another level of enjoyment.
In my case I’ve scaled back on the box count in recent cycles of system and currently have a SN3 + NDX2 + Rega turntable up top.
Once you get to a point where you’ve invested in external power supplies for source and amplification, it’s worth factoring in additional isolation, commonly referred to as Brains and Brawn, and putting the power supplies on their own rack and the source and amplification on it’s own separate rack.
Fraim lite is a good compromise where you anticipate not needing to accommodate additional isolation of the power supplies or you have equipment that is inherently less sensitive, 5 Series, XS and Uniti ranges being good examples.
It is an investment as much as the electronics themselves.
The same applies to getting the AC power coming in as isolated as possible and ensuring the cabling is synergistic to the equipment it connects.
If your listening space can accommodate a Fraim rack I’m sure you’ll appreciate the benefits it brings to a system as a whole.
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