I’ve been in manufacturing for most of my working life, so it would be nuts to think the R&D department are drinking tea and twiddling their thumbs. I’m with Darkebear’s thinking on this. The 552 is the most likely candidate for a change. Perhaps we should take a look at Naim’s history for a clue? We had the 32/SNAPS then the 32.5/Hicap, then the 72/Hicap and finally the 52. All were essentially developments of the same pre-amp. I suspect that the 552 will eventually get an upgrade that places it between current performance and the S1.
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Totally agree, if they relied on him for sales patter that would be funny. A nice guy who is incredibly knowledgeable, and passes that on to customers and dealers alike.
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No news there, we are left to guess and thats quite a fun.
Good idea - my advice is to allow the speaker cables to be loose in a void under the floor. I run my 3x pair of 7m SL cables under the floor suspended in loose loops via loose cable-ties, looping between - but I have a cellar under my music room so I just drilled holes at the speaker end and Amps end and run the cables under the floor and loosely hang the cables.
If you only have a small space void then keep them away from the ‘top’ floor and lay them on spacers to keep as much of the cable ‘in the air’ - then you just want to forget about it all forever after, so worth getting it right with a little care.
I tried running sperate mains runs to each box from consumer unit and did not like the musical effect - in fact it made the music lose cohesion and sound dessicated ‘HiFi’ in the worse sense of the sound but laking musical connection.
In fact my Dealer did exactly the same with their reference Statement system - found the same as me and reverted to a single socket and was very annoyed at me telling them ‘I told you so’, which slipped-out before I could master-up my better diplomatic skills.
In short - if you can experiment to prove it yourself that may be best as people have this fixed in their heads it seems that every box needs its own seperate long mains run and nothing I will say will disabuse that other than trying and finding which mains topology make you want to play and enjoy the music rather than be ‘impressed’ with the HiFi but then find something better to do than listen to it much.
Technically - it is about keeping the relative mains connections between the equipment to around the length of two mains-lead lengths. So one lead to a power point (Pre) then another from the same point to the Amp(s).
Most, by several orders of magnitude, of the noise in the mains circuit is from the power supplies and their recifier diodes switching mains current on and off into the smoothing caps. This makes huge noisy current-spikes and associated magnetic and from that induced electric noise - but where they all connect-together they merge into a common ‘noise-signal’ on the mains - then if all boxes get fed that same voltage they all normanize between themselves and have a smaller relative noise voltage between them to induce noise into their circuits from the mains. Some of the mains block effects are down to this - the mains architecture is important as it carries the largest noise-inducing current near the HiFi that is worth paying attention to.
What I did: A set of three double sockets connected in a ring-circuit back to the house mains distribution point, closely-grouped together. Then put all power-Amps grouped into one set of double-sockets (I put my two Bass Amps into one double-socket and the HF/BMR Amp into the next double-socket along with the SNAXP PS, then in the next double-socket a dis-board). On the board, away from the wall-skockets, are in-sequence beginning the socket closest to main-lead: S1 Pre - 555PS(A), 555PS(D).
That works well for me here and was better than plugging all into the wall direct. My view is the Pre and source boxes greatly benefit from having their own ‘island’ to plug-into so their own relative mains noise gets normalized before it then gets connected to the main wall-sockets where the Amps are pulling a lot more dynamic current and associated noise. The Amps operate class A/B and are a lot noisier than the class A Pre and sources.
But I experimented and tried a lot of options before I found all this out then tried to understand what I’d found works.
With a little care you will get great results and can then forget about the mains for decades - I had to just go have another look through the various spider-webs just now. 
DB.
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Brilliant detailed post DB. Thank you for taking the time to advise.
I have bought 68mm gutter down pipe to run the speaker cable through which will easily facilitate any unlikely but possible future change in cable. The cable won’t be hanging as such but could be fitted to the underside of the joists via down pipe brackets if that is worthy.
Mains and Ethernet cable wise I have a reel of 50mm water pipe which I planned to run each length of cable separately in.
So correct me if I’m wrong but you are recommended through your experience that I go with three double sockets connected via a single run of cable via a ring from a single RCB? With everything bar the power amps and Supercap (that feeds Snaxo) fed (in my case via an M6) via a block? I would have to fit 2.5mm T@E to terminate. 6mm will be just too big. Of course a 2.5mm ring is equivalent to a hypothetical 5mm radial. The only difference between that and a single 6mm radial to a double socket and two blocks is that the 500’s get individual wall sockets. It makes a lot of sense.
Would you recommend that over two supplies. One ring feeding two double sockets for amps and Snaxo and a radial feeding the rest via my block?
Always like to hear your measured responses, hope you are well👍
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I have an idea how about the Statement Green Light edition! doh!!!
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Well this certainly says a lot, and back’s up exactly what i have been saying about the 552dr. When naim themselves don’t use it to highlight the difference.
I guess the S1 was easier to move than the 552dr lol.
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I have my HiFi set of wall-mounted mains double-sockets connected as a Ring circuit. In fact I have a block of four double-sockets (8 outlets) of which I use three double sockets for the HiFi and one as ‘spare’. The wiring runs from conumer unit to one socket - then short hops between the others minimum to just connect them - then a run back to the consumer unit again; so effectively two mains runs to the consumer unit run side-by-side, topologically a ring, but not an open (to RF) ring.
You could say this is the same as a thicker single radial, but I did find the ring worked better in terms of the system sounding ‘happy’, but that is just what I did.
I also have an additional radial into a block near these other HiFi ones which I use for items not specifically in the HiFi mains circuit, but that I also don’t want on the house mains radial circuit. On this I only have the ER switch linea PS that takes my Ethernet from a Cisco 2960 (house mains) - ER switch (clean Dig mains) - to Melco and ND555 that both sit on the HiFi mains circuit.
So effectively the ER switch with its seperate mains run, bridges between my house and HiFi mains.
A bit elaborate but I happened to have that spare after my initial tests with seperate HiFi radials failed to satisfy and as expeiment I tried the ER switch on its own clean mains - noise floor dropped and sound opened-out, so it stayed there.
All my mains is standard 2.5mm which made it all easier to wire. One thing a ring gives over a radial is that there is no ‘end’ of that circuit and that does sound different. Techically as a two-wire transmission-line for HF-noise it is totally different to an unterminated single wire, so there may be some topology reasons to what seems to occur.
There is a lot of simplistic thinking considering only linear resitance and that the noise source is outside the house.
The noise source is the HiFi PS mainly and additional noise from outside and induced into the area of mains wiring loop-areas subtended.
The wiring has inductance and transmission-line effects that come into play when you have HF edges, like you have when the eqipment PS, especially in the Power Amps is cutting in to pull current.
I’m just suggesting there is more going on that all seems to bundle-together into the final supply that your HiFi experiences - and I know plenty of other differnent takes on this are there so this is just mine and how I reflect on it all.
DB.
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Much food for thought. Many thanks once again DB.
C
The main thing I found is that the circuit made through the mains between items that ‘talk’ to each other - like Pre to SNAXO and SNXO to Amp is that it should be short and ideally no longer than two or three standard-length Naim mains leads.
If you take one of these back to the house distribution board you are adding many metres of cable.
The view people have is that pure electricity gets piped from the distribution board and enters the Naim boxes - and that is it!
In fact is more like a wild race-track of fierce signals firing out the back of the Naim PS boxes into the mains wiring then entering the wiring-mesh of the mains and they get gradually absorbed and reflected into a messy noise signal on the mains.
The equipment sits on this mesh and one box is connected to the other by its official signal interconnect but also via the mains circuit and differences between the noise seen by the two boxes enters - and if the differences are less (less wiring) then less enters.
The subjective effect is of a colder sound with less warmth and low-level detail, as I hear it.
DB.
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Hello @Cohen1263 . Reading your post above regarding strengthening your suspended floor. I too have my system on a suspended floor in a 12X25 foot room over a garage. It is simply a single layer of plywood covered by a wall to wall wool rug. Was thinking of putting a hardwood flooring over the plywood and then a large area rug. Would that improve floor stability and hence SQ.
Sorry for the thread drift but you sound knowledgeable regarding this and didn’t want to start a new thread directed at you.
Thanks
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Well I could post pics of the job I’m doing at its various stages if you like. I know that your floor throws up some serious and different problems to overcome (not least being what I call the boom box scenario) but maybe you would learn from checking out how I go about creating a very stable suspended ground floor. I’m taking photos anyway for a friend of mine who is planning to tackle his ground floor shortly and is looking for guidance.
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lol suppose it had been the 552. Do you think the result would’ve been any different? Would the 500 series have been bettered by the new 300 series?
I mean it’s a bold claim.
I’ve heard the new 300 series twice now at dealerships and I wasn’t in any rush to sell my 500 series.
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I also have some floor issues that need to resolved later this year, so I’d definitely be interested in seeing that 
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Ok I will start a thread after completion with pics of the various stages from concrete pads to oak strip flooring. I will include key areas of good practise (like ventilation) Work will be done on the 21st of this month all being well.
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Fab - look forward to seeing that.
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Don’t hold your breath! Naim have a long history of delayed releases. The current Uniti and New Classic ranges were both delayed by a couple of years. Looking further back, the NAC52 was released after the 62 and 72 despite being, as the numbers show, put into development earlier. Again, a couple of years delay to develop the flagship preamp of their range at that time.
Naim have a record of taking as long as it takes to get a product right, in addition to which supply chain problems and skilled labour shortages have made things even more difficult.
My guess, and that’s all any of us can do, is that any development of new higher end products is still going to take a while.
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In my shoes what would you replace my 552DR with? S1 isn’t an option space-wise or financially.
Happy to spend a bit more but not mega bucks. Maybe trade in plus 30% tops.
I guess they used the S1 because it gave the big difference they needed. No other reason to use it over the 552dr, as the 552dr is obviously the 500dr natural partner.
It would certainly be more hassle to use the S1 over the 552.
I guess naim probably tried using the 552dr, and then decided it probably wasn’t a good idea, and so went with the S1 to make sure they didn’t receive any negative feedback.
A good move, but it certainly says something about the pre amp’s used at the show, or should i say the pre amp not used.
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