After one year, it seems time to upgrade

You asked for “any suggestions” so I gave you mine. I did say you wouldn’t like it - and I was right!

4 Likes

Pleased you’re happy with it. I’ve sold mine. The M6 was miles better than the S6 though.

There’s a subtle difference between not liking it and having a different view. I should probably have phrased it better, left out “any,” and explained the boundary conditions of the suggestions :wink:

By using “any,” I ran the risk of saying I bought a BMW, and then getting the suggestion to buy a Mercedes :winking_face_with_tongue:

But, to be fair, if I would have the opportunity, I would certainly try your suggestions. The point is that I live happily in a part of the world where there’s no hifi shop nearby, let alone one that stocks Naim… So, I made the decision last year, based on earlier experience, and it turned out well. But, and maybe luckily, I have no way to compare. Sometimes, having fewer choices leads to much less stress and greater acceptance.

3 Likes

I said you wouldn’t like it because I know from my own experience how easy it is to get committed to a particular way forward. Once committed to that road you just tend to keep going and stop thinking about whether it’s the right way or not. You become resistant to taking any other route. Sometimes something can happen though that forces you to stop, take a look around, and wonder whether you’re going the right way after all. It can be a difficult moment, because it means accepting that maybe you’ve been going the wrong way for so long. That’s what happened to me with the Chord stuff anyway. I was forced to reevaluate. I didn’t like it, but I had to face up to the fact that I had been going the wrong way for some time and I needed to take a different route to get where I wanted to be.

I’m not suggesting that the same applies to you and maybe the Chord stuff is absolutely right for you. I was just giving a suggestion based purely on my own experience. Obviously it’s entirely up to you whether you choose to think about it or just dismiss it. As has been said many times before, there’s really no right or wrong here, it’s all just personal choice.

2 Likes

I wonder whether getting a Rega Aura might be a better option than the Naim phono stage. The Apheta works wonderfully well with Rega phono stages. The P10 is a superb TT. I’ve not heard the NAIA and that may be an option for you. Adding the two NPX300s sounds like a great idea. I’ve not heard the Chord block but was very happy with a MusicWorks G3; they are up to G5 now I believe.

I agree with all of the above plus I would add the power supplies one at a time, 332 first then 333.

G

2 Likes

You are about to hear the best of the current Naim NC.

NPX PSU upgrades are quite straightforward if you have the shelf space and the spare cash.

I would say not so simple with the mains and Chord in my experience. They make exceedingly good interconnects at Sarum T and Music level, however I’ve found their mains cables and blocks either poor value (cables) or changing sound in a way you might need to consider carefully (Chord M6 in particular). The Niagara 1200 have been a clear no-no for me with my then SN3 and NDX2, so great that you are planning on replacing them. The Chord M6 will be easily better and you may like it, at least at first:). I think I had some similar exchange with @70sPete if I recall correctly, and see he has now moved on from Chord mains.
I feel that your Sig XL speaker cables, while very good, are a weak link for what you have and I would deprioritise Chord mains cables and such to upgrade to ChordMusic speaker cables - they have been a difficult purchase for me to justify initially but were even more difficult to part with and find an alternative when I had to as I needed significantly longer speaker cables! They are something else and I believe your system deserves them.

If you get the npx300 first and put it on the 332 (i think thats your best first move) i really recommend the Nvc-tt phone stage. You can power it from the 332 (which means it is being powered by the npx300) and you get a hell of a phono stage for a very attractive price. I love mine.

2 Likes

Yes, good point, I have my NVC TT powered from the 222 and have been wondering whether not to violate my 2-3 max box rule with the NPX300 for the same reason.

1 Like

Can’t say you have a setup where budget is the limit, must be quite expensive all in.

That said, you asked for suggestions…few will have experience with exactly your setup/cable loom/frontend combination.

Interesting you have a SL1200 and want a Rega.

Both are fine decks but entirely different, also cartridges…entirely different.

I didn’t like Chord Sarum & Signature cables I’ve heard, but adding a preamp power supply usually benefit.

One more thing, don’t change many items in one day, spend at least some weeks before next step, to avoid confusion.

If I may put in my two cents: my system isn’t exactly high-end, but I experimented with cables for quite a while—including expensive ones from Tellurium Q and Chord. It was only the Naim Powerline power cables that brought absolute silence to the system—total silence coming from my Neat speakers. It just goes to show, once again, the importance of synergy.

1 Like

Interesting you have a SL1200 and want a Rega.

It is. I’ve had many turntables, and when I moved to the Caribbean, I took the SL1200 with me and sold all my other music gear. I only bought a new system last year because the one I had here had already broken down. But I kept the SL1200 for nostalgic reasons - and we don’t have any hi-fi shops nearby, so new gear is a challenge.

I’ve had Rega in the past too, and I’ve always loved their beautifully simple turntables. Conceptually, even a P10 (or Naia) is simple. Not in the engineering sense, though. I think the P10 will be a wonderful piece of equipment to upgrade the analog path.

From all the answers, I gather there’s quite a bit of antipathy toward Chord cables, but I may be reading that wrong. In my listening room, the system does truly wonderful things, and it can bring tears to my eyes during certain live performances. It has a stunning sense of realism. I think the Dynaudios play a big part in that.

But if I had to synthesize a recommendation, it’d be: get rid of the Chord stuff and replace it with Naim (Super Lumina). And yes, that makes me curious, of course. But realistically, it’s not what I’ll do. With the upgrade I am planning, only a few cables are involved; the rest is electronics. Replacing all Chord would cost another 16- 17 k€ or so. That’s not realistic, but I can order a Super Lumina DIN and a couple of Power-Lines to experiment.

Gen 6 now, £4.5k :scream::scream::scream::scream::scream::scream:

ATB, J

1 Like

Hi Arthur

I’m a bit late to your thread but, having read through the comments, I can see that you would come to the conclusion that there is a general antipathy towards anything with Chord on the label.

As you probably know, Chord came into being as a small-scale manufacturer of RCA-DIN cables primarily to satisfy the request of Naim’s US distributor at that time. No one had a problem with that, in fact the early cables were (and still are in many cases) well-liked by Naim users. However, since then, as Chord has innovated and developed a broader range of cables, along with other associated products - M6, EE8, Ground Aray etc. - quite a few Naim users have become increasingly uncomfortable with them. Firstly, it was because of the very genuine concerns about the specific requirements of early Naim amps (despite the fact that Chord was set up to, initially at least, exclusively cater for Naim equipment). They were also criticised for being more expensive than Naim’s own cables and, more particularly, that they altered the sound and weren’t what Naim intended. You can see that, for some, that’s a real concern.

Complicating things perhaps, was the launch of Naim’s SL cable range, which also altered the sound, but nevertheless, as it was Naim branded, it was quite naturally accepted. Personally, I think that after SL launched, it opened, if not the floodgates, at least the door for Naim users to consider the potential for improved sound through cables, traditionally a very non-Naim view.

The fact that you’re already using Chord cables suggests that you may have decided that they add rather than detract and, if that is the case, I’d suggest that adding an M6 might be actually worthwhile. Oh, and if funds were available, I’d even consider adding a Music power cable. I’ve found that Music cables, wherever I’ve used them, add tremendously.

Otherwise, by all means, scrap all your Chord cables and revert to Naim.

1 Like

Hi Dave, thanks for your elaborate reply. I am more than happy with the system as it is with Chord. As I mentioned in my reaction, it’s not realistic to scrap all of Chord. So I won’t do that. The reason for the upgrade is that I know the system can do even more than it already does.

I decided to do the upgrade and where applicable use Chord Sarum T. The Music line is wonderful but I find it too costly for what it additionally might bring.

So I am waiting for the plane to land with the crate of musicality. :grinning_face: Just a few more weeks of patience.

1 Like