I thought about you when i wrote my earlier comment yes…
In the 80s and 90s DIY stuff was fun too ofcourse, but it was a ton of work and often not nearly as good as manufactured equipment. Good sound was difficult and often expensive back then. What ‘we’ really wanted ofcourse was the high end gear we saw in the stores, but could never afford back then. Now that we have the money we bring back that feeling and buy the type of equipment we couldn’t afford when we were younger.
For younger audiophiles today though, they can build or buy a 200-400W kit-amplifier that ‘measures’ better than a 10.000,- Naim amp for less than 1.000,-, and it will take them only an afternoon to assemble.
Similarly they can build a streamer + DAC for around 150,- that has similar or better specs and measurements than a ND555.
Ofcourse there are still big quality differences between properly engineered Naim gear and DIY versions, but it’s difficult to see how the younger generation who are now growing up with that kind of very high quality affordable gear, will suddenly become interested in 10K+ separates (and equally expensive linear transformers, cables etc) in 10-20 years time.
Nice of you to think of me
Good points, but I think that anyone who is sufficiently interested in building their own gear from kit will also be interested in the legendary brands and how they compare. (Same as back in the day, really). If Naim and others of this kind deliver, the seed of desire will be planted in the tinkerers. If the self-built tinkerer kit sounds as good or better as expensive Naim gear, these companies will be in trouble but it will be good for consumers in the long run I guess.
As he mentioned mainland prices, Euros I guess. But it seems to differ a bit per country and/or shop, e.g. I see the Atom for 2899 online in Germany (vs 2925 in litemotiv’s list)
Fully agree, I’ve started this discussion a couple of years back on the old forum, but I guess there were not that many Dutch people present that time …
Depending on the black box, it was (and still might be) cheaper to travel to the UK and buy it over there …
I wonder if this is a substantive thread in it’s own right /write?
One of the big issues is the demise of so many independent dealers . (Hat’s off to the survivors) but audio is a product to be sampled before being bought …
Youngsters are so much likely to buy on line , and that suits Cambridge and Richer Sounds more than Naim
When I bought I was buying a whole system and ending up getting a substantial (by Dutch standards) discount. And still paying more than I would have in the UK. For me worth it as I appreciate the relationship with a local dealer.
But if I’d been buying a single item I might have just bought it in the UK (I visit regularly, or at least I did pre Corona)
I know many of my younger friends, including audiophiles, would happily just go for the cheapest option regardless. I personally expect local dealers to be a rarity in a decade or soes. I guess Japan is ahead in that sense if I understood @feeling_zen correctly.
I think it’s also an age / disposable income thing. Younger people are willing to put in way more effort to save a few bucks. Those people will as they age and start to have more disposable income go for off the shelf items, even if they cost more.
I do agree measurements are getting more important and it will mostly be integrated. The market for stacks of separates will decline. Manufacturers will need to adapt.
I hope Cambridge are having success with their new range.
They certainly need to be cheaper than Naim Uniti’s & Linn whatever they are called these days.
I never really liked Cambridge sterile presentation in some of their yesteryears amplifiers, so sort of ditched that brand long ago.
I used to own dual Benchmark AHB2 amps as bridged monoblocks, driven by a Benchmark LA-4. I sold them for my SuperNait 3. They were very open and dynamic. But less dynamic than my SN3 and they also tended to present as dry and analytical. They seemed to homogenize whatever you feed to them. Also, listening fatigue was REAL. Regardless of level.
With HiCap DR in transit to my dealer as I type this, the Benchmark setup was bested by my SN3 alone. Vastly more liquid, organic, natural. More dynamic and controlled as well.
A Naim preamp with NCore/Purifi power amp is a waste. The NCore/Purifi modules are cheap and lossy with nuances. I tried them for a bedroom system but even the NC1200 was a no-go. That was with a 252.
I bought the Naim Atom instead which is a modern day Nait with very professional design and sound excellent. I paired it with the old Naim nSat speakers which is a very good match with the silver stands,
Interesting, I’ve also heard from other other members here that it worked great, so I guess the sound is divisive. Although I guess speakers used could have also played a role as the the class D amps will be able to supply more power. Or the pre-amp used of course, you mention a 252, perhaps that doesn’t have the synergy some others have? I think @afgverhart has used an Atom, and not sure what @MrUnderhill has used.
You can’t really lump Ncore and Purifi together like that, they are different generations of technologies at (relatively) very different price points. Subjective evalutions almost always favour Purifi over Ncore.
Implementation is also key, including which opamp and preamp are used, it has a drastic effect on the (subjective) audio output.
FWIW, I tried a NAD M22 V2 with nCore (fed by the NAD C658 I owned then) to cover all bases in an audition that also involved NAP 200, 250, and some others (before I decided to go all in with the 300 and the rest that followed), and I made “put it away” hand gestures to my dealer within 10 seconds. The Purifi may be better but it also has to be, by a lot.
The Purifi is supposed to sound completely transparent, so if there is anything you wouldn’t like about the sound, it would be coming from somewhere else (source, preamp, speakers etc).
I think this part from alpha-audio sums it up quite well:
How does such a NAD C298 sound? Well …. …very… not present. It’s odd, but this amplifier technology is soundless. So have we finally arrived at the ultra-transparent amplifier? Well, it looks that way, yes. With predecessors, think UcD and nCore we always heard something. With the M33, we felt for the first time that there is just no amplifier anymore. We hear the Focals or the Bowers, or the DALIs playing…. that’s it. A bizarre experience, because if we changed something in the system we would hear it really immediately… That is also the case with the Bryston (otherwise we couldn’t use it for reviewing), but it really just colors more: there we hear a Bryston playing on the speaker: a combination. With the Purifi Eigentakt that is gone.
So this C298 is in fact system- and speaker-agnostic. It doesn’t matter what you put in front of it or behind it. The reason we dare to say this is that we really hear a significant difference between the Pass XP-12 and the C658. Both in timbre – Pass is a bit richer – and in imaging – bigger and a bit more stable. However, this happens without us feeling that the NAD C298 is in between. It’s almost as if the pre-amp is driving the Focals. Weird… And hard to put into words.
So what can we say about the sound of the NAD C298? Well: it lets you hear what your system is doing. Your source, pre-amp and speakers. Is that in order, then you have a fine marriage. If there is something wrong that you were compensating for with the power amplifier… you’re going to hear it right away. It’s that simple.
