BeThere my internet supplier is send me a more up-to-date ADSL2+ modem/router to try.  In the meantime it’s back to the Panasonic phones.

Follow up:  The new ADSL2+ modem router has arrived and it works well.  The Siemens phones are now back in and working pretty well.  A few small problems with the firewall to sort out but other than that everything is good.

Follow up2:  The few small problems with the firewall turned into consistent router rebooting whenever the base station was connected to the network.

A little smaller than I expected, it looks rather good and it is the size of a slightly large paperback except it’s really thin and it’s light.

The screen is amazingly good for reading text from books or magazines but is less good for illustrations and is poor when looking at web pages via the beta internet surfing.

I’ve bought it to trial The Independent and The Daily Mail the newspapers of choice here (don’t ask!).  If the Kindle proves a successful replacement for the printed page, it will save at least 50% of our paper bill. It will also save the wait for the delivery when it’s late, as it has been far too many times recently.

All the newspapers and blogs give two weeks free trial so more after that.

I guess the other question is how does it compare to an Apple iPad or even a new iPhone for reading books. This will require time to tell.  At present it feels strange going back to a Monochrome screen.  I’ll give it a couple of weeks and report back.

Very conveniently I’m going to attend the Milan Top Audio show soon, which will give the ideal opportunity to try the Kindle as a traveling book.  It’s lighter and smaller that the sort of books I usually buy to read while journeying so it may be a real winner.

Radio Paradise (RP) is a commercial-free listener-supported radio station.  Listeners supporting the station during October are automatically entered into the draw to win the NaimUniti and n-SAT speakers.

More information and images here

Naim Label information

No more business for them from me.

Sound quality is generally rather good.  Good in a bandwidth limited, obviously live but solid sort of way, but one recording did sound as if it was made of a fluttery cassette.

I played it back from my HP2133 into a M-Audio Transit into my Behringer SRC2496 upsampling to 24/88 all feeding my Naim system.  Maybe a bit OTT but well worth the effort.

Thanks to John Atkinson, editor of Stereophile mag for bring this superb resource to my attention

Highly recommended

This by the way is not the way to do something for long-term use.  This is just as a quick test to see if it’s worth experimenting further and if the results are good the tranny will be mounted in a decent case suitably fused. This is not the type of experiment I suggest for anyone outside of a lab.  The mains is dangerous.

The listening results today are different to those at Malcolm’s last evening.  There it was pretty conclusive that the new supply confused the balance and lost some integration. It wasn’t bad at all, just not quite as well balanced as the original supply.  Shows that Cambridge put some time and effort into the whole package.

Today and in my system the results aren’t quite so clear cut.  There are elements of the same as last night but at the same time the system with the experimental tranny has more drive, is a bit more dramatic on the dynamics front and makes my foot tap more.

It’s really very track dependant: a couple of Paul Simon tracks definitely favoured the larger supply, a Springsteen just showed off the slight forwardness the supply delivered and sounded harsh. Another Springsteen – I’m on Fire – worked.

Would I recommend trying a supply if it were available on some try before buy deal – yes – but only if it were a no strings try before buy deal.  I’m sure that with the, very justified, success of the Cambridge DacMagic there will quite a few companies offering upgrade power supplies.

Finally it might be worth noting that the cost of the transformer delivered was around £35 so it might easily be a £100++ power supply if sold online and all neatly packaged.  Quite a investment for a budget DAC even if it’s a great budget DAC.

NaimUniti

Looking at quite a few products advertised and they still are ‘optically priced’.  They are still priced at, for example, 99.90 often the same price that they were with the higher VAT.

The 2% ish reduction isn’t enough to bring prices down to the next optical price so what has happened?  Some retailers still price in store at the ‘old’ price and take the hit at the till.  Good for them – I guess the loss of sales for not being quite as obviously competitive is cheaper than the cost of the many thousands of new price signs that they would need to print.  Too many retailers have just increased margins to compensate.

My ISP sent me new invoices and credit notes for pretty much every domain name and I owned last year changing the ongoing rate to 15% VAT.  It’s far too complicated: it’ll cost me far more in time to sort it out that the 2% difference that doesn’t affect me anyway as my business is VAT registered.

Overall personally it’s not going to save me enough money to outweigh the extra hassle and time I am wasting for my business.  Even if I wasn’t involved in my own business, would I really notice a reduction in my cost of living? I doubt it.

It is supposed to help stimulate demand, but how can a 2% reduction make a significant difference?

Finally if you don’t believe me have a look around the CD or DVD prices on Amazon UK and see if you can spot a lower price.  I reckon the real winners in this have been retailers – now making a couple of points more margin now.

This will probably be the only time I say this but on this but on the subject of UK VAT, I agree with Nicolas Sarkosy.

FT coverage

I started off running it in and using it connected via a Chord Prodac Prodigital coax cable from my Squeezebox 3.  It’s a great match for the SB3, delivering increased clarity and drive over the SB3′s line out. Sort of seems in the right price range for an upgrade to the SB3 as well.

Next was connecting it via USB to my HP Note 2133 to play internet radio.  Using Radio Paradise’s 128AAC stream as the primary source – a great souce of quality music with great sound – it sounded flat and boring.  What was surprising was just how easily it connected and Win XP recognised it straight away.  Really plug and play.

Adding a M-Audio Transit sound card connected via USB and then feeding the output from the Transit via a Chord Optichord optical cable into the Cambridge changed the sound quality completely: dynamics returned, life and energy returned and music was fun to listen to again. Internet radio can sound surprisingly good.

I do have an even better internet radio player but I’m not free to talk about that yet.

Two or more things to try with the Dacmagic yet: a larger power transformer and changing to ASIO drivers as these are supported by the Transit. Might even try the three filters sometime.  I reckon that there is loads more to get out of it if only I had enough time to experiment.

More on these another day.

So I’m hoping Windows 7 will be as stable and quick as XP but look good, feel good and not lock up as Vista does.

I have a HP 2133 Netbook on order on which to install Win 7.  More when DABS deliver.

As they ran in they had become a bit bloated in the mid-bass, reducing clarity and general intelligibility as well as reducing the speed that they are normally so good at.

My room has a tendency to thickness rather than leanness so careful positioning is always needed, but the Neats have required more effort than most. They are a true full-range loudspeaker so are capable of exciting most room modes and resonances.

The effort has been rewarded with a far better insight into music, the recordings and, most importantly, the performances.

I think there is still more to come with even more fine tuning but that will come with time and patience.

Interestingly, as the perfornce has improved from CD, Hard Disc and Vinyl, it has exposed the shortcomings on internet radio.  It’s not going to stop me listening to Radio Paradise as their choice of music is so good, but if only they had a 320k AAC feed…

It took about two hours in all to connect it to my Naim n-Vi and Panasonic Plasma via an Aten HDMI switcher and Chord Company HDMI cables.  Actually possibly the most time consuming elements were reprogramming the Harmony 895 remote control and the online upgrade the new player required.

WALL-E one of the FOC Blu-rays was initially quite dissapointing due to the apparantly poor black level.  The problem was caused by the settings on the BDP-S350: it wasn’t set to theater but normal.  This made a huge difference especially as the action moved on to the ship where the blacks weren’t being confused by the dusty conditions of Earth. With a good disc, Blu-ray – even with a budget player – is dramatically better then DVD even from a great DVD player.

I’m pretty shocked however by the differences between a good master  – WALL-E and a poor one – Bangkok Dangerous.  BK looked like an average DVD rather than a hi-def source.

A quick comparison between the Naim n-Vi playing a DVD and the Sony was interesting: the n-Vi was far superior in both sound and picture quality.

Today’s was a quick install, more detail when I have a chance to strip the whole system down and reinstall it optimally.

The images can now be accessed via the link to the old site in the links section.

There are product and people images for Audica, Chord, Castle Naim, The Naim Label and Naimnet.

If you are looking for a particular image to support a magazine or newspaper piece or a blog and you can’t find it just let me know.

Good music without too much talking and not that distracting for me anyway, as I don’t understand French

www.radiofrance.fr