The BIG fight against noise in the audio setup

Thereā€™s a reason that ā€˜adviceā€™ was in a PM and therefore not available for a reality check.

Prepare for way more noise to come. Happy shielding :sun_with_face:





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Iā€™ll just stop listening to music and go back to my amateur radio hobby. Now thatā€™s a hobby where you can really chase the noise!

I saw the latest from Naimā€¦ hereā€™s where an upgraded power supply makes sense. Space constraints of the chassis limit how to build the PSU. There are probably some significant compromises there; as subtle as this may be to the listener. Instead of letting consumers hack-around these design constraints they just saidā€¦ Hereā€™s a big toroid linear in a matching box now give us your money. It will certainly give you that last little bit of performance from the compromise they made with the small chassis. They could have done a double height chassis for less than the upgrade but then would have shrunk the potential customer base with the added cost. And, again, this upgrade is going on a part of the system with analog signal paths.

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I get the upgrades I used to have just above entry level naim pre amp. But they do charge a lot of money :moneybag:
All of my kit is 2nd hand or ex demo etc and I actually bought a 4th hand, 3rd party high cap equivalent, given how much it weighed it was certainly full of copper.:relaxed:

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Adding weight to a system is probably more important than linear power supplies :stuck_out_tongue:

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Brings this to mind :grinning:

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Thereā€™s a guy on the Naim forum where the description of his network setup (with IIRC three daisy-chained EtherRegen switches, and thatā€™s the most harmless of it) is longer than your first post. Heā€™s convinced by it though

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Some people claim different SQ between different Fritzbox models

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Though if the flatcap had come in a form factor that did not fit any Naim rack, people would have gone ballistic. Itā€™s just convenience really to put it into the same box as everything else (and probably cheaper for Naim overall, nothing wrong with that)

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Format is ok but it did cost a lot :slightly_smiling_face:

That is absolutely true, they are not cheap (you know that I know all about that :rofl:) and arguably the flatcap was OTT. Though we had that discussion a lot on the Naim forum and I see it ā€œholisticallyā€ - itā€™s not only about the parts one buys, but the price includes the research, design, and overall keeping a small specialist company alive where people can dedicate themselves to these things.

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Thereā€™s another on Stereonet with multiple cascaded switches and Ā£1500 Vertere ethernet cables.

Swears blind he hears massive improvements, only, like most of his kind he eschews blind comparisons. Wonā€™t entertain offers of blind testing because after disconnecting anything his system take DAYS to ā€œsettleā€ again afterwards.

As good as sent me veiled threats via PM that my participation in discussions around ethernet wouldnā€™t end well for me.

Strangely, heā€™s the one who packed up his toys and went homeā€¦

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I find the charge of Ā£500 for a mains lead a bit much let alone the PSUā€™s.

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Pre takeover by Focal, Naim said there is no benefit from using anything than the basic supplied mains lead. After the takeover, hey but this Ā£Ā£Ā£Ā£ mains lead itā€™s amazing.

Similarly with relatively cheap, but stiff as f+ck, NAC A5 speaker cable.
ā€œWhat the hell is this bl++dy stuff?ā€ as poetically expressed by Mrs H.

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I find Naimā€™s hand-waving justifications hard to swallow. Benchmark Media produced the AHB2 power amp with vanishingly low noise and distortion levels with a built-in switcher.

The AHB2 has now been dethroned as the lowest noise, lowest distortion amp on the planet by the new Topping LA90 which employs an external SMPS. Furthermore, the Topping is a Class AB design. Fully balanced too, with hybrid XLR/TRS sockets.

Who says SMPS have to be noisy?

Nowhere near the power output of my bridged mono AHB2s, so I wonā€™t be ditching them any time soon. Nonetheless, spectacular performance for the money. A pair in bridged mono will give 90W/channel/8 ohm or 192 W/channel/4 ohms for $1600/Ā£1800.

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Vielen Dank fĆ¼r die Ɯbersetzung. Ich habe mehr Deutsch vergessen, als ich mich erinnern kann!

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Thatā€™s what I call user burn-in. Itā€™s real. Itā€™s the user deciding, days later after adjusting to anything unpleasant, that its pleasant now.

This I actually believe but there is an easier solution. Stop letting the ISP supplied garbage do any L2 switching. Isolate to traffic that only goes to / from the Internet. Donā€™t even let it see broadcast traffic from your private network.

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I donā€™t know about the builtin switch but the Fritzbox is actually not ISP supplied garbage, my 6920 6690 is pretty great for what I need at least

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I have been suggesting this for years, not for SQ reasons though.

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Yup, thatā€™s been my fight with ISPs over the ages. Comcast makes it annoyingly hard to replace their rental all-in-one modem/routers by the simple modems that they are legally required to accept since they meet the DOCSIS standards. Spent days of frustration on that just before Christmas at our East Coast place. Finally Iā€™m where I want to be, the most basic cable/fiber modems connected to routers I select and manage to do NAT and everything else needed in ways I understand.

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