i have a wonderful pair of vintage and highy efficient blumenhofer. i love the sound paired with olive nac 82/ nap 250 but running on low levels with all common line level sources including integrated mm phono is possible only turning the 82 really low with the known results.
so what is the „official“ way to get it working ideally:
just low volume on 82
low the analog input level of my dac (possible through volume control of ifi zen signature)
put in some resistors before the input of the nap
throw everything away
my ears find some softness / lack of resolution overall when lowering the dac level so that for low-mid level listening the 82 is around 11
is there any known like „official“ naim-recommended workaround (except buying naim speakers )
What I don’t know is the disadvantages of running a pre and power amp at the very low end of each of their output range. Or whether there is a floor above which any sub-par musical output is mitigated. I suppose that the disadvantages are empirical; you don’t like what you are hearing.
What I do know is that people often pair highly efficient speakers with “small” amps. Maybe a “small” tube amp would give you more satisfaction?
Also what I do know is that preamps expect a certain line level input. I would not “mess” with the voltage the 82 is seeing on its inputs.
If you can lower the output level of the DAC, that is the best solution in my view. You meed to use a DAC that has a well implemented volume control that doesn’t degrade the signal, of course. Unfortunately Naim digital sources do not offer this. Other brands such as Chord do.
Regarding your turntable, obviously the above is not a solution. Carefully matching the cartridge and phono stage might help.
I’m not familiar with your speakers, but if they are very sensitive it’s possible that they are not the best match for a Naim system. More so if you have a small room or tend to listen at low volumes. Only you can decide whether it’s the speakers or other components that have to go.
which kind of amplifier would be a perfect match to sensitive speakers, like the blumenhofer? actually, it should be noticeably better than running the nac82 on low volume and it should be possible to change the existing amps without spending more money…
The problem is Naim’s preamps having too high a gain on line level inputs - it seems they never properly adapted to the high signal outputs from DACs and modern head amplifiers, so aside from the volume control channel balance at low levels, people are having to use the volume control over a very small range of rotation. This is made worse with higher sensitivity speakers - a quick Google of Blumenhoffer suggests that depending on model they may be 90-93dB/W, 90 being slightly above average, but 94 quite a bit.
I had a (non-Naim) amp once tgat had input level gain controls as well as a main volume control, and that made so much more sense, but for some weird reason is rare. I don’t know if you can get some form of input attenuator to put between DAC or head amp and the preamp, or for digital use a DAC with adjustable output level as already suggested, otgerwise a different, probably not Naim preamp but check out gain first, or a lower gain power amp (again wouldn’t be Naim)
I reduce the analoge volume of my ifi signature dac a bit when listening on low volumes and switch to fixed when listening normal to loud. maybe i will get a rme adi-2 at some point which has different fixed reference levels built in.
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