Well I’ve never heard a 552 but am a bit sceptical. When reading about it here I am sensing it might be too reveiling and hence create problems for me because of the equipment surrounding it such as the 250 or the sources. I’m overly sensitive to sharp sounds it seems.
82 Supercap, all serviced, is just magic!
Martin
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I would say it is less picky than the other preamps, there are so little distortions no harsh sound it just
make you realize how good your sources are, letting the music flow.
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I love these conversations 
thank you for the amusement
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Never heard a 552DR but my 552 non DR never get me into listening fatigue circumstances. My experience has been the higher up the range with naim the less listening fatigue. I guess it’s logics since fatigue normally is due to a signal not being clean enough so your ears and brain has to process the information more than from a good signal.
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Just bank what you read here in the “heard it down the pub” area of your brain until you’ve heard for yourself. It can help in shortlisting stuff but even then gut feeling has always served me well. 
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I have the 222 and 350s. It’s outstanding. From and upgrade perspective, I went from NC250 to NC350s and as it’s been said before it was a massive upgrade beyond what the power supply would bring.
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My gut feeling is steering me towards Olive and NC and is also pulling me towards Goldnote which I admittedly hadn’t got on with in the same way I am committed to Naim. However they too have a streamer/dac/pre coming in and that one I can actually listen to. My dealer sells Goldnote. So far that brand has been a bit too polite for me, except for the record deck and phono stage which are really nice sounding.
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Had a Goldnote IS1000 at home on trial against my former 272/555PSDR/250DR. Naim trounced it. It wasn’t even close. To my ears 
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Seems like a bit of an unfair comparison. Isn’t the is1000 more like a Uniti Nova?
Also I had the pre P1000 and amp PA1175 here for about a week and compared them to my NAC82 and NAP250. I prefer the Naim. The Goldnote were good and could be played extremely loud without fatigue which can not be said about the NAC/NAP. But they were too polite for my tastes. It’s difficult to find that balance between in your face and refined.
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Ah so you struggle a bit with your current system giving you fatigue?
Balance is indeed trivial since the room colouration is such a big part of it. Have you tried other speakers in your current system?
I struggled for some time with my former naim system and Harbeth SHL5+. The mids were bit to hot for my room. I’m sure they measured better than my current speakers but they gave me constant fatigue and were picky on music. I decided I wanted a system where I decide what to play and not my system so I made a change to speakers which had a long story of focus on connecting with music and never looked back. When reading a bit on your speakers some find them pushy in the mids which reminds me of SHL5+. Our ears ars super sensitive to the mids since they are tuned to voices so if something is not right there it’s more often an issue than with treble IMO.
Not sure how close D7 and D9 are but here’s few comments on D7 and naim.
“I had a pair of D7’s but only briefly for the same reasons the OP listed.
Very fatiguing and hard to listen to with my naim electronics.
I initially thought it was the tweeter causing the fatigue so draped a tea towel over it to check, turned out it was the mid-driver that caused me discomfort.”
“I find the D7’s presentation to be somewhat hard and at times harsh in the upper mid range”
"That’s the emphasis I found, which made them overly analytic, although I wouldn’t say they lacked ‘space and air’, just that it was that rather artificial sense of space produced by the analytic method.
They are impressive in some ways - if placed very wide apart they can really image an orchestra - but ultimately I thought they had an artificial emphasis that I could never live with."
agreed it is about how clean you can take your music … my bane for the last 40 years
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It’s not really an issue just something that can be fine tuned. I never heard the d7 but d9 I wouldn’t describe as artificial (not sure what they mean) or that the midrange is hard or harsh. The feeling is they don’t sound. They disappear and there is only music. It’s actually the first and only speakers I heard doing this trick with such success. My thinking is they play what is served, hence my focus on electronics when thinking about upgrades and also because I love how these speakers sound.
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Yes that’s a good way of putting it.
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Speaking of NSC222, I’m planning to pair an NSC222 with PSI Audio A21M for my one-box second system (aside the TT)
Any input/thought on this? Or would I be better of with NSS333/NAC332? Well that will make it 2 boxes (plus one small phono stage - IFI Zen Phono).
The speaker is done deal. It’s arrived already, waiting for the source.
Overkill?
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Valid point, because 333/332 together would cost around 2.5 times of 222 
. Thank you for the input:pray:
You could always add the NPX300 later if you really felt the need…but with active speakers it seems sensible to keep it simple?
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Yes, actually I’d like to keep it one box for it is replacing my Uniti Star.
It’s just people are talking so high of 333/332 that it trigger my upgraditis 
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