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Why did Naim discontinue the CDS3?

ABCD said:
You got me wrong I am NOT arguing that computer audio doesn't sound as good as CD with classical music or jazz,

I am not happy with metadata, and software.
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Ah, now that I can completely understand. As I said, AlbumPlayer and especially Sonata Server do make the process easier, especially with dBpoweramp in tow. Unfortunately, they are both Windows products.
 
Just my experience, but moving away from a CDP which obviously had a drive mechanism, power supply, DAC and other gubbins in the box, to firstly a NAS, PC and DAC and now a NAS and streamer was (i) a huge increase in the quality of playback (ii) a huge increase in convenience as I can find CDs and play them without getting off the sofa and (iii) a massive boost to WAF as N thousand CDs dissappeared into boxes.

Ripping is easy as 95% of the time it is fit and forget. Re-tagging the 5% takes a bit of thought, time and effort, but is not a huge bother. I've done 1000s of the buggers, it is easy once you know how. IMHO, CD is rapidly approaching being a storage rather than a playback mechanism. There may be loads of CD players out there now, and more on the drawing board, but streaming or pushing lossless files is where things are going (have gone???).

The CDS3 was a really nice CDP, but it was taken off Naim's books for the simple reason that there was no viable market for it. In the medium term, it seems that there is likely to be a market for uber-high price players and the sub £1000 CDP (or cheaper). The middle ground, where the average audiophool currently seems to invest, is now inhabited by DACS (some with CD drives) and streamers. As time goes on, in the absence of big technological change, I would expect DACS and/or streamers to overtake everything else, largely because of (i)-(iii) above.
 
I just thought I'd add my bit having spent last night watching the football with soldering iron in hand as I adapted my last pair of speaker leads to enable me to go active with a pair of isobariks.

I have bored my wife senseless with all of this but as she delivered my cup of tea she said "that spins very clean now" and she is right. Relevance you may ask. Well I acquired a 2007 CDs 3 a couple of weeks ago to replace my cdx2. I still have both and have been comparing them. There is little to compare the cds3 really is rather good.

MY SUSPICION in all of this is convenience. I will endeavour to try out an NDS in the near future but quality seems to be losing out to convenience.

Word of warning. Having had my iMac hard disk just fail make sure you streamers back up.
 
I await some woe-is-me threads when music collections of 2000+ albums disappear in a cloud of virtual smoke or are lost in the cloud or something.
 
Steven Toy said:
I await some woe-is-me threads when music collections of 2000+ albums disappear in a cloud of virtual smoke or are lost in the cloud or something.
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Anyone without backup is being foolish as it is a question of "when" not "if" faulure occurs. My NAS is backed up to a pair of 2TB drives once a month. Both backup drives live in my office and one provides me with music at work. Backup happens overnight, so I don't really know how long it takes. I just plug in the USB and leave everything to back up automatically.

My physical CD and LP collection can not be protected from fire/theft/flood damage etc as easily. I dread to think how difficult it would be to replace the physical media given current second hand values for rare/deleted releases.
 
I had a whole record, and to some extent CD collection trashed at halls in my first year at uni. Some sackless, probably stoned twat upstairs forgot to turn the taps off in their un-suite.
 
Were I moving from a top dedicated 'CD player only' as primary music source then I would certainly be investigating that Wess Man unit. Or something like it. A cd drive with top internal DAC ( is there a Dac less version ?) , and can rip if I choose to try ( onto external solid state storage- X2 for backup ?).
And do everything else too streaming wise ?.
A little fly in the ointment though is that Weiss also do a dedicated Jason CD Transport. Presumably a step up in performance from the internal 301 drive.


All far in the future for me though. Trusty Naim CDS3 currently gives me great musical enjoyment .
 
The Weiss MAN 301 is available in two versions, either server only or with inbuilt dac.
The MAN plays CDs, rips , catalogues, plays any type of file from any external storage.
Plays Internet radio podcasts etc, is a proper pre amp with variable analogue output, and properly dithered digital attenuation, soon there will be added room correction.
Just one button onthe unit itself, everything controlled from an IPad.
Keith.
 
Mescalito said:
Only if you are terminally stupid. Storage space is dirt cheap & back ups are easy.

Chris
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Quite. There are loads of reasons for not doing something like taste, tradition, warm fuzzy feelings about something spinning to music. But being too stupid to have a back up isn't one of them.

In fact, music stored this way and copied twice with one off site is better protection than having your CD/Vinyl in the home which can go up in smoke, ask poor Fox.
 
Purite Audio said:
The Weiss MAN 301 is available in two versions, either server only or with inbuilt dac.
The MAN plays CDs, rips , catalogues, plays any type of file from any external storage.
Plays Internet radio podcasts etc, is a proper pre amp with variable analogue output, and properly dithered digital attenuation, soon there will be added room correction.
Just one button onthe unit itself, everything controlled from an IPad.
Keith.
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It is about £6K though. My vortexbox pretty much does everything described there save for acting as a preamp. It cost £300 including delivery.
 
Mine can be:
A digital pre-amp via JRMCs 64bit volume control.
A CD player via an external USB CD driver.
Any DAC via USB out, I picked the MIRUS...... over.....
Will play any format including all video and film, should I wish.

Cost: £600.
 
htm_1968 said:
Anyone without backup is being foolish as it is a question of "when" not "if" faulure occurs. My NAS is backed up to a pair of 2TB drives once a month. Both backup drives live in my office and one provides me with music at work. Backup happens overnight, so I don't really know how long it takes. I just plug in the USB and leave everything to back up automatically.
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I use a program called Unison to manage my backup drive. It intelligently only copies the changes.

Apart from the risk of drive failure, there is always a risk that some software like iTunes is going to come along and suddenly decide that your CD rips are "piracy" and delete them on behalf of the RIAA
 
davidsrsb said:
I use a program called Unison to manage my backup drive. It intelligently only copies the changes.

Apart from the risk of drive failure, there is always a risk that some software like iTunes is going to come along and suddenly decide that your CD rips are "piracy" and delete them on behalf of the RIAA
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I do not use iTunes for anything other than managing MP3s for my iPod and my kids iToys. We are on FLAC here and use LMS or Twonky. I am less than impressed with iTunes TBH.
 
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