The latter.  (Of course - with me, nothing can ever be the simplest answer.)


I would guess "anything else," because all discs have plenty of room.  But I put the cover art in the same folder as the music, on the external FireWire HDD.  Didn't bother (of course) to read about where it should actually go.  Is having the cover art on the external drive with the music all right?  Should I try other placements?


Haven't tried playing unattended yet.  I am in the early stages of experimenting with settings, so getting rid of the UI would just require another step to call up the UI again when I wanted to change something.  But if I get special mode to work reasonably well, I will then play unattended.

So to tie things up in a fairly neat package:

- I went back to WASAPI and switched the Q1 settings between 14 and 1, but left alone Device Buffer Size (now at 512, then 4096) or SFS (now at 430, then at 2).  Now I cannot duplicate the problem regarding no sound after 5 or 6 seconds - it always plays through.  So who knows....

- After changing device buffer size from 256 (Q1=0 with no dropouts) to 512, I was able to use KS Special with no problem (Q1=14).  SFS as above.  Sounded far, far better than Adaptive mode or WASAPI - in another league as regards emotional impact and everything that goes into it, like nuance, detail, correct timbre, transient response....  This would be the only way I'd consider using XXHE unless for some reason it simply didn't work.

-- Well, maybe not so neat as all that.  With special mode, got very touchy when I added cover art, as often as not full of "static"/dropouts and unplayable.  Did even worse when I tried to play WAV rather than FLAC - never did achieve tolerable playback free of dropouts for even one second.  Adaptive mode worked for everything.  I like special mode better, but how to get it to work all the time in stable fashion?

So one possible explanation is that we are smarter than Chris C and everyone at Naim.  Let's dismiss that at the outset (for my own part at least, I can provide you all manner of evidence that Chris C and lots of people at Naim must certainly be much smarter than me .

So how can this work?  It must be something different between you and Naim.  One possibility is that the 20% represents the share of the cost per unit taken up by Naim's marketing budget, which they have in a big way and you do not.  This is not only the cost of ads themselves, but of the employees involved in marketing, their salaries and benefits, taxes paid on account of them, etc. 

These subscribers are a group of people who will pay $50 just to belong to a sub-group of an audio forum, so they obviously have disposable income and are highly interested in audio.  And no other manufacturers (competitors) will reach them, except for other manufacturers willing to discount.  So near-exclusive marketing access to this group, and without having to pay for ads or have more employees in the advertising department.  Maybe that is worth on average 20% of the cost of a Naim unit?

As you said, just making up my little stories right on the spot....

The difference with the model you describe is that on CA it's not Chris C's stuff that's discounted for subscribers.

However, as you said in a previous note, it must be presumed to cut into advertisers' views and thus the site's revenue from them, unless there will not be many subscriptions or the site is drawing lots of new viewers.

Actually in the USA we tend to get very concerned about equality, as much as if not more so than in Europe, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.  I think Chris C simply wanted to find a non-advertising way to make the site pay, since he is not selling products (or at least not a lot of them and not for high cost - hats for now, T-shirts and sweatshirts to come...).  But it can easily be construed, and already has been by several people, as creating a two-tiered class system of forum participants.  I myself had similar misgivings, but decided to subscribe on the basis of being repaid in music discounts.

Now that I have subscribed and have seen the subscriber forum topics, I can tell you this seems to me more innocent than we might have feared.  The subscriber forums are IMO unlikely to have threads on subjects covered in the forums available to everyone.  Taking as an example the only forum Chris C has mentioned, it allows non-dealers to post messages about equipment they want to sell or buy.  This is not a subject of the all-comers forums, and there is I suppose an argument to be made that buyers/sellers will feel a bit safer knowing participants are bona fide at least to the extent of having made a small payment through PayPal.

No matter how innocent the motivation, though, this has certainly struck many people as somehow wrong and against the spirit of such a forum.  So we will see how it turns out for CA.

Thanks, glad to be here.   

So actually there was no Kernel Streaming at all.  Had it set on Speakers (AQ Dragonfly), because when I'd tried Kernel Streaming Normal mode I got no sound at all.  SFS and Device Buffer size changes had no effect - 5 or 6 seconds of music, that was it.

So I decided to try KS Adaptive Mode, since you'd suggested that, and success! 

Went on to try Special Mode, and liked the sound better, but unfortunately I always eventually get distortion at some point during a song, even with Q1 at max (30).  This is with the device buffer set at 256, which is the lowest I could get in Adaptive Mode at Q1=0 without dropouts. 

Any sound quality reason to try setting the device buffer higher and trying Special Mode again?

0.9z-6-1: PC through an AQ Dragonfly (set at 24-bit when >16, because XX told me so after I tried 32-bit).  Lovely music from a 16/44.1 CD rip for about 5 or 6 seconds, then it fades out.  Once in a great while it will keep playing, but with numerous "skips" (playback will frequently jump ahead several seconds).

Could this have anything to do with still being in demo status?  If not, should I just wait and see it if goes away with -7?