Heathrow show.....

Class.

that's cost yer!

 

IF naim was generating texture, it was either on a fag break when I listened or immersed in top end? But then I'm deaf

 

I use my brain and ears to make conclusions - consequently I am often at odds with the crowd. I dont require the correlations of others or of mags for self justification in general. However informed and constructive opinions are always welcome. I am in fact not the only one on this thread to say that they sounded harsh, which makes your comment seem a bit bizarre anyway.

If I say naim is harsh and strident that is because to me that is how they sound after well considered experience. Otherwise I would say "others have said...". You do seem to have jumped to some conclusions to suit your point of view in the absence of actual evidence about whether I had real experience of naim or not.

Waida - we are in agreement. Thats at least three of us now!

 

It wasn't any where as harsh as I've heard the sl2's before, and it did even have a smidgen of bass, didn't quite pull it together, but then neither did the TT in the SOM' rrom and that was £10K I believe?

 

The lumley turntable? The SOM room was the second worst room. Those godawful rockports. So synthetic sounding. How much was the SOM system worth?

 

Too much hehe!!!

 

Yeah about 200k I bet - do you know that jeffries guy wadia? I have had some experience at SOM.

 

Hi,

Okay.

I value most an absence of hints at the mechanical nature of the reproduction and recording, that is I value a natural tone, a "tonale gestalt" of instruments that is coherent, that is all parts of the instrument sound have a consistent signature of sound and the instrument appears together and both micro and macrodynamics and preferably no extra shaprness or grit added.

Due to being a nativ (saxon dialect) german speaker with english as third or fourth language I value very well above average vocal inteligibility.

Finally I value for better or worse a presentation of the spatial charateristics of the recording with a reasonable acoustical size for orchestra ranks or individual instruments in a jazz combo and at least a good hint of the size of the original recording venue and please without recourse to loads of acoustic treatment turning listening rooms into anechonic chambers.

I find that most speaker systems are inapropriate and irreconciably opposed to these goals usually presenting instrumental tonal range discombulated and inaproriate in size, distorting the venues acoustics and in most cases sounding too mumbeling and if not way too forward for my taste.

It might be worth if I comment on some well known speakers and how they impressed me....

1) Quad 63 - Like it a lot, BUT it lacks the ability to play low enough and loud enough for classical music, nice small jazz ensemble speaker, needs a lot of rearwave absorbtion to sound good though and size of ensembles is on the small side.

2) BBC LS3/5 - excellent in their intended role (in-wall of gear mounted extreme nearfield use in mobile recording vans and space challenged studios), sub-par on vocal intelligibility when used as freestanding hifi speaker with longer listening distance, image pint sized and in general all instruments sound like miniatures.

3) Avant Gard Duo & Trio - excellent on dynamics (fades to okay/satisfactory in the bass), okay on coherence and image presentation, but in most setups too artificial, as if the speakers are trying too hard.

4) Wilson Audio Watt Puppy 2/3 (that is old versions, not current), good coherence, dynamics and excellent treatment of space, original tweeter simply takes your ears off ever so often, modded with a tdx version of the tweeter (just get a recone kit) very nice, coherence could be better. Later versions started to progressively sound more mechnical, overtly detailed and non of these combo's ever went really low, but on balance one of my commercial favourites, hence my liking for Hyperion also. Other Larger Wilsons keep the charater of the WP's well, in their respective generations, but by the time MAXX, X-1 et al appeared Wilson had already moved to a more "High End HiFi" sound, rather than the more literal, less effect ladden studio versions.

5) Big format Coaxials like Tannoy, Urei/Altec etc in their various guises (be it Tannoy System 215, Tannoy Dreadnaught, Urei 803/813/823 or Aletc 604's in a soffit mounted 620 Cab with Mastering labs X-Over), these are mostly excellent, macro & microdynamics, image size, lack of mechanical artifacts, sadly the coherence could be better, but they are my other favourite commercially available systems, Tannoy probably ahead of Urei/Altec, make mine a pair of GRF Autograph with Monitor Red Drivers I think or a pair of original Dreadnaughts.

6) I always felt that active naim amplified 'bariks where great fun and excellent to listen to rock music (prerequisite Linn LP-12 also part of the system), but with purely acoustic music the whole system (and passive 'bariks with other amps) where literally miles of anything approaching realism. Great fun with the right music though.

I think that maybe more than much other verbiage illustrated what I am after.

Ciao T

 

That's no excuse for such ill advised comments WM. If you are deaf then it's best to keep quiet I'd imagine. Did you check out the ICE section ? especially the C2!

 

Hi,

I think the speakers are more at fault, the system also sounded a bit odd with CD.

The Turntable however looked and behaved decidedly odd, that you can take home.

Ciao T

 

Hi,

Not really, I concluded this on the following:

1) Claims Single Ended Operation.
2) Claims OTL Operation.
3) Modest heat rejection (relatively speaking).
4) No output valves on display.

I guess it might still be possible, maybe they use some industrial vales (these metal ceramic dudes) of a type that has enough perveance for that job (would have to be well past 6S33 levels though).

Ciao T

 

Its kind of funny, but I found a number of the rooms castigated by the above self appointed experts to be quite enjoyable. Shows you how much notice you should take of what you read on forums.

 

Ah so your ears ARE different to everyone elses then.

FWIW , then only other really scathing remarks I could find with regards to being harsh and in your face were aimed at PMC on this occasion, not Naim.

Chris was mildly critical of a slight edge but then he listens to speakers that roll off at 14khz and deplores more modern forms of music anyway, so his comments are easy to understand when taken in context.

Actually the Merlin loudspeakers were making quite possibly the worst sound at the show IMHO. But having heard them at WM's I know they are capable of so much more.

 

Come on which ones? Dish it !

 

What, the experts or the rooms?

 

Rooms of course. There aren't any experts on these forums anyway, you need to join up to Stereophile for that.

 

Enjoyed :- Naim, 47labs, Kings audio, Dali, Notts Analogue, Definitive to name a few.

Hated:- too long a list to metion, but I will put a special word in for PMC specially for our most esteemed expert here.

 

Robbo, add Heed and that's a list of systems that played music despite some faults. This may be the problem.

 

Alex, as we do listen for different sections of the music, how did you feel the DCS sounded genuinely curious?

 

Went into the heed audio room three times, and three times no music was being played and the exhibitors were talking between themselves. so I gave up.

I would say though, that many of the systems I mentioned were flawed in some way, but at least I could hear music in them.