I have a nice problem that I hope you can help me with.
We are going through the process of building an extension on our house. This is a great excuse for new hi fi for a new room.
I currently run a Uniti Nova with a set of ProAcs tablettes from the late 1990s in my living room. The Nova is great, so my plan was to build another system around another Nova.
I have been to a couple of dealers to audition speakers with the Nova and thought I had settled on the Audiovector R3 in Signature specification. But, then my wife managed to find an authorised dealer selling the Arrete spec R3 for āonlyā Ā£1,000 more than the Signature spec (this included the freedom grounding cable) as an ex-demo pair. Top marks for my wife on this one and the Arrete R3 are currently on their way to me.
The problem is that I now have in mind that I can probably do better than the Nova to match the Arrete spec R3, but I am going into house renovation work so the budget is limited. My current thought is to purchase a new Uniti Atom headphone edition and use this as a preamp to pair with a used NAP 250 DR, it looks like these two boxes would work out close to the price of a new Uniti Nova.
Would you suggest that the Atom HE with an NAP250 DR would be significantly better as a match for the R3 Arrete than the Nova?
The R3 Arrete is a Ā£10,000 speaker and Iām not sure Iād be happy matching it with a Nova or fronting it with an Atom HE. The logical minimum match is probably a New Classic 222/250.
I have an Atom HE / NAP250DR combo
Initially it drove a pair of KEF Reference 104.2 that I planned to upgrade.
I visited my local dealer to audition speakers (inc the R3 Arrete) that would be somewhat future-proof, and here is the post I made to the forum following that visit-
Why do I get the feeling that this is going to end up being an exercise in justifying spending lots of moneyā¦ (Got to be strict with the budget on this one!)
Itās what happens when you are seduced by speakers that are in a class above the intended electronics. Itās fine in the short term, but unlikely to provide long term satisfaction. If itās a system for the long run, make sure itās well balanced from the off.
I auditioned the R3 Arrete against the Fyne 501SP. Couldnāt hear a difference, so spent Ā£3500 instead of Ā£10000.
Important to audition the speakers in situ. I suggest you hold off until renovations are completed. Room interaction is important and along with positioning and room size should guide speaker selection.
This is great advice, and I am not new to hi-fi (Iāve been playing this game for years with various brands) but I got a little carried away with the offer on the R3 so I am now all-in on this one.
Generally though, I think that the hold off for a while advice is very good. Iāll not be rushing into the amp selection just yet.
Weāve had our R3 Arrete since the end of 2021 and love them - for what itās worth, when we bought them, we were told they were developed with a Naim 252/300 and certainly sound excellent with that combination.
I demoed the arrete for over a month with Supernait 3 / Hicap Dr / nd5xs2 / Chord Qutest and it was a marvelous setup. This comes in more expensive than the Nova but I wouldnāt go lower than that setup with those speakers.
Thatās interesting. The NAP-300 DR with the PSU is available used for pretty decent money so that could be an option to build around. There are also a few ex-demo / pre owned NSC222 preamps around (I really want to keep the nova streaming functionality so the 252 is not going to work for me). This is obviously already stretching the budget and the box count compared to a one box or two box solution.
I guess it gets a bit difficult to demo exact equipment in the used market though.
Plenty to think about and a nice problem to have to solve.
I have the R3 Arretes as well, with the Classic series NDX2, NAC282/NAPSC/HiCap/NAP250DR at the front end. Iām very happy with this setup and this will last me a long time, aside from some experimenting with cables.
I suspect that if I was able to splash some cash on upgrades, the speakers would sing sweeter with better amplification !
A pal has R3 Arrette with a Novaā¦they sound excellent, no doubt can do better but as a start should sound fab. Like yourself he got them ex dem at a price to good to refuse.
Thank you for all of your comments on this. I have had some time to play with the system now. As part of this process I also pulled out of storage an old Roksan Caspian power amp. I have used the Nova direct to the R3 speakers and also used the Nova as a preamp to run the Caspian power amp to the R3 speakers.
Itās pretty clear to me that while the Nova alone works with the R3 speakers it really is not delivering anything close to the potential performance of the speakers. When I plug the Caspian power amp into the chain then it all really starts to sound phenomenal. With the Caspian in the chain I have no doubts that I purchased the right speakers (although I also have no doubt that the speakers are fully capable of achieving even more). Without the Caspian, I would probably be out looking for a new amp.
My plan to move forward now is to think about getting hold of a dedicated streaming DAC to feed my Caspian integrated along with the power amp. I think at that point I am complete.
I could have also run the Caspian integrated in power amp mode along with the other Caspian power amp to bi-amp the speakers. Iāll save that for another day. It will need me to shift the rack around a little to accommodate the boxes. Iām actually pretty surprised how well my old Roksan gear has performed.
I will be considering the Naim ND5XS2 or the Auralic Vega S1 as a starting point for streaming dacs.
As you will see from my profile I currently have Naim amplification at 282 / 250 level driving the previous SR3 model. I heard the R3 Arette in my system and they were superb. I did consider sending my speakers back for an upgrade to this level. Unfortunately costs escalated due to ācustoms changesā and it became too expensive.
You have found that the Nova works well with the speakers and better amplification brings even more joy. I suggest enjoying them now, and they well be great, and looking at streamer / amp improvements later if you can. My ideal, which I have heard, is a pair of 350s!
Just another tip, I donāt know what speaker cable you have but a house move meant I auditioned a number of cables (at a sensible cost), I bought another set of Tellerium Q Black 2 cables. Really suit the Naim / Audiovector combination well.
Thank you for the comments. They make a lot of sense.
My plan is to indeed enjoy the system as it is now. I tend to keep my hi-fi for a long time, my Roksan and ProAc gear is still running at nearly 30 years old so I am prepared to play a long game on this.
The 350 pair of amps that you mention is probably the place I will aspire to for an effective match with the Arrete, but I am thinking perhaps in 10+ years time. For now I am planning to enjoy my Roksan power amp which is sounding fantastic in any case. I doubt a move to a 250 would be a good value for money change for me.
One other thing. I mentioned on another post that I was considering my streaming front end as possibly a ND5XS2 or an Auralic Vega S1. I did some more reading on the Auralic, and while it has fantastic reviews it also seems like it does not support BBC radio in a very effective manner. I listen to a lot of BBC radio. The Auralic forum has comments about chasing around ever changing URL links. I do not want to be manually changing the back end systems of my streamer to listen to the radio. Naim have given super customer service on the BBC radio implementation so I am staying with Naim for streaming. The thing that has changed though is that instead of a new ND5XS2, I have found a pre owned NSC222 for an excellent price. Having an inbuilt phono amplifier is a nice little bonus for the very occasional times that I play physical records. This also means that my old Roksan integrated is no longer needed as a preamp so I can now run that in power amp mode with my Nova on my existing system with the ProAcs.
You asked about speaker cables. I am still running my Nordost super flatline cables that I picked up at about the time that I bought the Roksan / ProAc gear back in the late 90s. I have no plans to change these.
Great move with the NSC222 and as you note the benefit of the phono stage for occasional use. Great when a plan comes together and you will get much enjoyment from the changes.
Coincidence with the flatline as I also had this before I bought my first set of Tellerium cables. Having bought it many years ago I wanted to reuse it but it was a bit bright when I bought the Audiovectors, hence the switch. Itās not cheap (Ā£60/m new in the UK) but after a demo I found it a worthwhile improvement.
Audiovector was for many years the Danish Naim destributor, but that changed a while before the R series was released. But Naim and Audiovector is still a very good combination.
Yes - I started out with a Ā£6k budget 