RMAF 2012

Dali’s Show Debut

Jason Victor Serinus  |  Oct 14, 2012  |  First Published: Oct 15, 2012

Dali’s Thomas Knudsen may look a bit shy, but he was quite proud of the show debut of Dali’s Epicon 8 loudspeakers ($20,000/pair). Hidden from view were Naim’s NAC 172 streaming preamp ($2895), CD5i-2 ($1795), NAP 250-2 ($5995), and the UnitiServe SSD ($3995) network server with bit-perfect CD ripping capability.

COMMENTS
moncong's picture
Submitted by moncong on October 15, 2012 - 2:21am

Are they a pair of Chord Company Sarum speaker cables? Thanks for your kind reply.

Barnaby's picture
Submitted by Barnaby on October 16, 2012 - 7:47am

In the DALI room we were using Chord Company's Carnival speaker cable.

JohnnyR's picture
Submitted by JohnnyR on October 15, 2012 - 4:09am

Hidden from view was a simple set up consisting of a Pioneer amp ($200)  Sony CD Player($75) and Home Depot Zip Cord (45 cents per foot)........okay okay maybe not but what if it WAS instead and you didn't know and still thought it sounded amazing? Oops there I go bringing up DBT again.

volvic's picture
Submitted by volvic on October 15, 2012 - 6:50am

Good coverage JVS keep em coming.

JasonVSerinus's picture
Submitted by JasonVSerinus on October 16, 2012 - 8:19am

Much appreciated. And a LOT more is coming.

JohnnyR's picture
Submitted by JohnnyR on October 16, 2012 - 2:55pm

NON DBT talk is my guess

arve's picture
Submitted by arve on October 23, 2012 - 12:01pm

So, again, Naim's claims about Bit Perfection shows up here on Stereophile. The previous instance was in this story, where Stereophile wrote "Naim's ripping algorithm is clearly special, because the NDX-ripped version sounded so much better than the iTunes rip that no one bothered to ask for a second comparison."

I would very much like to see proof of these claims that Naim is bit accurate.  Here is a Reddit thread from earlier this year:

http://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/vkzzo/as_promised_test_rips_for_r_audiophile/

... where what is apparently Naim's US importer wanted to show off the ripping quality of the Naim.  Two things came to light in that thread:

  1. The rips differ between Naim and iTunes - systematically - one of the rips doubles up samples in some systematic fashion.  Here is the specific comment outlining exactly what the difference is.
  2. As a follow-up to that comment, a different Reddit user tried ripping between an AccurateRip-enabled ripper (XLD) and iTunes, and came up with those two rips being identical, indicating that iTunes too does perfect rips. Here is that specific comment

Now, this raises an issue:  If iTunes is identical to an AccurateRip, it means that iTunes is accurate, thus Naim can't be. 

The alternative proposal is that iTunes, and thus AccurateRip isn't, which is highly inconcievable, given that AccurateRip is basically just a giant online database of people ripping CD's, where one user's rip result is compared to the results of thousands of other users' rips, on different computers, using different CD readers and different software to perform the rip.  

Now, I am not going to spend $5000 on what is essentially a glorified NAS, which can otherwise be had for a few hundred dollars, in a very limited ecosystem, just to verify whether Naim's claims are accurate or not, but I would very much like to get a proper clarification and test from someone who can get free access to it. Why does Naim's rips differ from verifiably accurate rips, and why do they still claim it's bit perfect?

Can we get some comment from Naim, or a retraction of the claim?

JohnnyR's picture
Submitted by JohnnyR on October 26, 2012 - 9:02pm

Sorry but JA isn't in the business of providing proof. His main business is selling subscriptions of the magazine and blusterung his way through life and making excuses.

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