i am the happy owner of a Nova with a set of PMC 25.23’s.
With my new listening room being larger (4.6 by 6 meters, 3.20 meter high) and the desire to separate voices even better form the other instruments I’m considering upgrading. Being quite happy with Naim and PMC my first thoughts are staying with both brands.
Considering my budget I’m looking at PMC 25.26(i). These speakers like some power. I consider a NAP 300 DR. For the rest I’ll stay with the Nova for now. Waiting for funds and a (Roon enabled) successor for the N272.
Questions for now:
Does anybody have experience with the Nova - 300 combination
I was happily running a Nova and B&W 805D2s and was happy with it for a year or so, until I started thinking about upgrades.
I replaced the speakers with power hungry TAD ME1s, and after posting on this forum, I started to realise I needed more power - enter a NAP300DR.
Nova only has one XLR output, NAP300 has two, so I bought a cheap interconnect and thought I would be done. It sounds good, very good, and I am very happy with it. But, I do believe that a NAC-N272 or ideally NDX2 and NAC252 would be a marked improvement over the Nova now…and that will certainly be my next upgrade rather than an expensive interconnect.
Thanks for your sharing experience, I am also the user of the TAD ME1s and Nova for 1 year. I am also happy with it when listening pop and jazz from tidal. It gives me touching vocals and clear and dense mids. The amount of bass in some music is even too much in my room(around 16 square meter). The usual volume is 30~35 . But in Classic music, it is just barely satisfactory even when volume reaches 50+. So I re-think to add external power amp like 300dr or TAD m1000 in future.
Do you use 5 din pin to 2 XLR wire for interconnecting? Do you use bi-amp wiring?Thanks.
thanks for your feedback. Yes I absolutely agree adding a 300 will not be the end of the upgrade path. The nest step would indeed be to replace the Nova with a streamer and pre-amp. My budget does not allow to do that in one go.
Good to hear the “intermediate” step is worth it to enter this path.
Could you tell some more on your interlink between the Nova and the 300 ?
Hi Peter, when i bought my Nova i did demo it with a Nap250 dr, just to see what that upgrade path would do. I liked the extra control it gave on my PMC 25.26…shortly after buying the Nova my dealer had a second hand 250 dr, i bought it.
A few months later after an idle conversation with my dealer about the 300 dr…i bought an ex demo one. As you would hope its a big step up on the Nova. But this was part of a long term plan while i waited for the new streamers.
For the interconnect my dealer made up a din to twin xlr from standard Naim interconnects…no charge.
Hi, apologies for the delay. Yes this is the cable I’m using, Flashback Naim DIN to 2 XLR. I was lucky to find one on eBay, I emailed the seller saying what I needed it for and he confirmed it was for that exact requirement, sure enough it is
no worry, no rush.
The nice thing about the Flashback cables is that they are reasonably priced. I’m always somewhat skeptic about high prized cables. Especially when it comes to a mains-lead or a network cable.
For now I will save my money for the next upgrade step to a NDX and all that
