Biamping experience

It’s no DR.

Thank’s for the step by step suggestions.

Try the SN3 without it. I suspect it will sound better.

I saw that, will try later this day, thank’s.

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Just to help your English (which is better than you think) you don’t need an apostrophe in thanks. It is just like boxes or wires!

Thanks :slight_smile:

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Richard! tut tut! More power = more quality? Surely you’re not falling into that assumption. Outside of the Naim world there are plenty of NAP500 price level 15w amps.

Similarly there are speakers out there about the right level for a NAP250 that really need NAP500 power but don’t justify NAP500 expenditure on the amp.

The extra outputs on Naim PSUs are about more than the stepping stone to active. They provide flexibility to allow Naim to drive a wider range of speakers.

No, FZ, I’m not talking about power per se (as ever with Naim), more about quality; ergo, I’d rather have one NAP250DR than a pair of NAP200s passively bi-amping. Or perhaps one NAP300 instead of a pair of NAP250DRs passively bi-amping.

Of course, if you were change that to active bi-amping (where possible), then the arithmetic changes somewhat.

And of course there are exceptions, such as the B&Ws I mentioned earlier. They required lots of current, so the NAP500, while powerful, thanks to its bridged design was not so good with very low impedances, hence a pair of bi-amped NAP300s tended to work better for similar outlay.

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Well, FWIW I once had some Naim gear on loan including SN1, HC and NAP200. I had no intention of buying them all, but just for fun tried biamping (into Kudos speakers) and found any improvement over SN/HC alone to be marginal and not to my mind worth the investment. Of course this was several years ago, my memory’s not what it was and I only had one run of NACA5, so this needs to be taken into account. Nevertheless, I second the suggestion that improving the PS on the NDS is probably a better use of funds.

Roger

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In the Naim power amp hierarchy price very roughly doubles as you move up a level, so the question is whether it’s better to biamp at one level or move up to the next. Forum experience as exemplified by Richard’s post is in favour of the latter, at least in most cases.

With ATC, I think the argument for moving up may be clearer as the P2 is nothing like twice the price of the P1. Did your compare the P2 with two P1s and, if so, with what result?

Roger

tbh no but I already had the P1 so adding a second P1 was the cheaper route. Saying that I did get a couple of replies on the ATC forum that going biamp with a P1 and a P2 (rather than two P1s), with the P2 doing the bass, was something to consider but funds wouldn’t stretch that far. ATC seem much more inclined to the idea of biamping.

I have now borrowed a NAP200 and biamp together with my SN3, disconnect the HiCap (no DR) from SN3 and the SQ is now more separate, more bas control but still PRaT so I am realy satisfied with this update.

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Now with the SN3 + NDX2 merely out of the box, introducing a NAP250 DR to biamp the K6 is something I don’t have completely ruled out as a long-term or very long-term upgrade path. Will see…

about 25 years ago i biamped my 72 hi cap with two nap 140s into epos es14s i remember that did sound pretty awsome

Is that because you removed the non DR HiCAP or because you are bi-amping.?

I realy don’t now. I am just satisfied, but will try to connect the Hicap again and see what’s happening. Mabe even better :).

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Have you tried running the 250 as a power amp off the SN2 and compared that to bi-amping?

No, I have already replaced my SN2 with an SN3 and use it for the base / middle register and NAP200 for the treble. It was a good lift and intend to dream of a PS500 in the future to replace my XPS.
Saw that upgrading an older PS500 to DR would cost about 1600 Pounds so maybe better to find a 4-5 year old with DR?

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But there is one very plausible alternative…use two NAP200, but only one per side in a pseudo-monoblock configuration. This gives results very much better than the 200 run in a conventional stereo mode, and has some of the benefits of the sweeter sound of the non-regulated signature (think of the early 160 vs the 250 for instance). Splitting the transformer and power supply duties into L-only and R-only makes a lot of sense, whereas biamping the 200’s still runs all 4 sides of the power supplies.

This is of course extremely speaker dependant. Passive biamping for instance is a waste of resources for the Tukans, but a huge benefit for speakers with a more reactive and less efficient profile. The thing is that there is no guarantee that biamping will always make things worse-because sometimes in the right setting it can offer magical improvements, and any dogma against it should be discarded.

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Ron, I agree, hence my caveat that there are exceptions, one of which was the B&Ws I mentioned above.