Upgrade itch 272 / 555PS DR / 300 DR, SL

It looks like you could squeeze in 4 Fraim shelves in that space under the top shelf of that lovely unit. 2 side by side. Then with some creative thinking about dangling wires.
Cajole the other half to allow the speakers more into the room and closer together a bit.

If Fraim doesn’t meet WAF then one option to support better might be the Stillpioints component stand(s) and accesories.

I think @Mike_S and others are on the right track by suggesting some form of isolation feet. Your room looks great and like most of us, the listening area is not a separate, dedicated room.
Just a bit of a wild shot here as I don’t know the layout of your house, but in my case the electronics are in a separate cupboard and therefore not visible. Cables run under the floor and exit through the wall behind each speaker. The electronics sit on an Atacama 60 40 SE2 rack which is very good.

May not be an option at all for you but in my humble listening room it means that we have a 50” Oled on the wall with Kudos speakers either side, fire in between and no cables visible.
It would be a shame to spoil your room with a rack.

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Only if you’ve had a substantial tickle on the National Lottery!!

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I was at a dem of these (and audioquest bits) yesterday evening at a (whisper it) Linn dealer. I was rather impressed at what they do - but the gear should probably be off the floor to start with in some kind of stand.

A pre loved NDS would be a nice step up … and relatively economic combine that with an SL interconnect - and a 252 it will give a very rhythmic rich organic sound. This will give a 15% ish uplift … (the trouble is the 272 and 555ps is flippin good!) I understand your question fully as I was in the 272/555ps situation - its expensive to change to a separate naim preamp. If you can afford to the best thing to do is try and jump to the 552 … I did - it was expensive and it hurt financially - but I have never regretted it…its a tough one…

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Was it just the reference ones you heard Tim? Did what they bring equate to there cost in your opinion?

Hi popeye. tricky to answer that one, as my system is several levels above the Linn system that was used - the one used was a 10-12k system i am not familiar with Linn systems anyway but the speakers were £2k ish, plus streamer/pre/dac(?) and power. They started without anything and then added the lowest level of supports under the streamer/pre box only, then the mid level and then the top level (top level £950 per four IIRC). They then added the top level under the power amp as well. I thought there was a very clear difference - but I thought the starting point sounded fairly terrible compared to my home system. There was huge improvement from the various additions (don’t know total cost but the niagara 7000 power conditioner is £7k, the QS supports were £2k worth, then there were audio quest mains leads (two from conditioner to ) and interconnect and v expensive speaker cables - I am guessing £20k worth give or take £5k (yeah, I know not accurate)

I will be trying a set of the QS top level supports under my ND555 at some point - the QS rep (Alester - not sure of spelling) was the designer as well, apparently, and he said he had been to Naim last year and met Paul Stephenson, who reckoned they would make no difference to the ND555 and he (apparently) went very quiet. All anecdotal stuff but worth a try at some point - if it makes a notable improvement to my system the money would be well worth it. Chris Brooks (dealer) reckoned that the benefit varies but everything he tried out under has shown improvement. VFM can only be judged by your ears in your own room with your own kit of course!

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so it costs £900 for 4 Quadraspire QPlus Reference Isolation Feet.

and £880 for 4 Stillpoints Ultra SS Isolators.

Do these 2 things do the same thing using the same technology?

and which is better?

No idea, sorry!

They are both similar, in that I believe each one uses three points of isolation - being a hard ball between different materials. Which is key with these sort of devices.
The stillpoints I believe uses very hard metal balls encased within soft metal cups sandwiched between a top and larger hard metal cone. The qplus looks to use some hard metal base with soft brass cups holding hard metal balls within a wooden top.
Stillpoints USS also has a threaded insert, so can have a multitude of uses.

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The stillpoints use ceamic balls encased in aluminum ( I think) cups. Same as finite elemente cera.

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Quadraspire don’t offer a lot of info about those qplus feet. Other than that they try to emulate the principle of their racks, they don’t use balls - so I’m more thinking there isn’t any. More just the interfacing of different materials.
That £20+ charge over the USS you would expect super balls !!

Stillpoints

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More you have of ceramic balls, more the stillpoints are expensive. And more big is the stillpoint too, as in the pic.

Those big ones have 10 points of isolation in each one. Although Stillpoints don’t give a lot of info of what those are ?

I think Hifi plus had made a good review on them and explained all the details. Some years ago.

The cerabase bottom half uses a rubber O ring to clamp the two sections together to stop the ceramic balls from escaping. Does the stillpoints use a similar method ?

I don’t know but feel that stillpoints and cerabases ( or cerapucks) use very similar design.
A polish brand, Franc Audio, use also ceramic balls.

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What a load of balls! :wink:

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As we are on the toppic of balls and isolation … the 272 I found to be very sensitive to vibration - the board is mounted semi rigidly within the case. When i mounted it on a good hi fi rack it was far better - especially at moderate to hi-ish volume levels. I think HH uses the Fraim to good effect. I also suggest the use of powerlines on all of your boxes. You should be able to pick up a pre loved Fraim for a reasonable price. Some people are not keen … but i really rate the SL speaker cable - I am not so keen on the SL between 272 and power amp … for me that is expensive and has only a marginal benefit. Also check out the Cable maina thread … and improve your ethernet switch/cables etc… Of course you may have already done allot of this … the 272/555 is that good…it responds really well to careful setup. I also hope that the 272 may be updated in the not too distant future … in which case an update for you would be a breeze…when I was at the factory recently Naim were very noncommittal about the replacement…however, we did make it very apparent that an update is desired by quite a few forum members… so they were left in no doubt.

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