What was the last bit of gear you bought in 2023?

Nice looking speakers. Friend of mine that introduced me to Naim loved his Linn speakers.

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Best of luck my transfer was reasonably easy you may need to do a little work with metadata.

In practice fibre cables are no different from copper Ethernet in that people generally are going to buy them ready terminated, so I don’t see that it’s any different really.

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The last new things that I bought were a Nait 50, an ARO (re-wired by Linn, not Naim), an Audio Technica 760SLC MM cartridge, a Simon Price cherry plinthed LP12, and a pair of Falcon LS3/5A speakers. I also have a Naim CD3 player (courtesy of Ian 2001), and James at TomTom is looking for a CB NAT (but they are like hen’s teeth).

My ‘second system’ is almost there!

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Thanks, I will copy from my Mini’s backup on external HDD and all my music was “reworked” with Tagscanner, so it should goes smoothly…

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Mind you when I said it was easy, my dealer did it for me. :smirk:

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…all the way from Edinburgh…

@duf666

Last minute shout from me concerning the transfer of your music to your new UnitiCore.

It used to be the case that Naim servers would only “see” metadata of files ripped locally by the server, (in WAV format).

Not sure whether that still applies if your files for transfer are in FLAC, but it may require that you transfer them to the “Downloads” folder, rather than “Music” to preserve your file info.

Sorry if I might be misleading you on this, but it might save you a load of hassle.

Any UnitiCore experts out there to advise?

Yes I know… I have tested the Core with a friend’s unit and he explained this to me.

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Yes!:grin:

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I tend to avoid shielded where possible. Cat6a is unshielded TP and certified up to 10g which makes it already very noise resistant to deliver that throughput. Generally I make my own off a 200m drum I have.

With shielded, you bond the potentially most noisy ground carrier to your streamer.

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I thought I recalled the same point. Does it depend on how the shield is terminated/fixed to the RJ45 connector? And if your environment happens to be exceptionally noisy, maybe shielded in that case is the lesser of two evils?

I’m pretty sure this issue is why I went CAT6a for my own Ethernet cables

Good to know.

Thanks

Well the shield is dedinitely required to aid noise rejection in Cat7 and 8 (which aren’t even ratified standards). But they have to support much higher frequencies and therefore data rates too. The shield is commoned at both ends of a metal RJ45 and a tester will confirm shield continuity on those.

That said it’s not gospel that the shield is bad. After all, each twisted pair also contains one ground. But those are twisted for noise rejection; a shield isn’t. Do I really want to connect that particular ground on my switch to my streamer? I feel like I don’t. But if someone swears by a shielded one as introducing less noise to their streamer I’m not going to tell them their wrong. They aren’t spending my money after all and maybe if I compared I’d agree. But I barely have enough hours on my days as it is.

A shielded Cat7/8 to a LAN port on a wall is another matter entirely though. Behind the wall it will almost certainly be Cat6/a and the wall port ungrounded. So in that scenario a shield would only be drained at one end (the streamer) and that’s good. As such I use 6a on runs where a streamer connects to a switch and 7e on runs where a streamer connects direct to a wall as it invariably threads through a jumble of other cables.

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Thanks for taking the time to write your rationale out, very much appreciated

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my NAIT2 returned yesterday following it’s 30th birthday present, the AV Options Ultimate Upgrade. Before I sent it in my NC trio showed it a clean pair of heels … now not so much.

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I just received an Acoustical Systems SMARTTractor cartridge alignment tool. This is far more accurate than the Dr. Feickert and Clearaudio alignment gauges I have. With the level of cartridges I’m using (Lyra Atlas Lambda SL and Mono) I decided it was time to step up my tool game.

In the U.S. these are about $800, but I got mine from MCRU in the UK for about 60% of that, delivered in just a few days to me in the U.S. Midwest.

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Nice to be appreciated ?!

Hello, JMC, I have heard of this AV Options Ultimate Upgrade, but my understanding is that it’s a modification carried out somewhere in the US of A. I have a virtually unused, very late model Nait 2, which I would love to have ‘upgraded’ in this way.

Are you in the US, or can a UK dealer arrange this?

And dare I ask if it made a big hole in your wallet.