No… any gain stage ahead of the output stage of a poweramp is a preamp… in achain there are many such stages or pre amp stages … they critically buffer the signal between stages for each function and conditioning the signal for the next stage… now whether you have all stages in one box or various will depend on circumstance…
Now I agree having multiple NACs such as a 552 would be redundant… you only need one of those.
@Simon-in-Suffolk are you using ‘DR’ NAPs…If not then might this be accounting for why some of us find Chord DACs direct great, and others not so much?
Not asking from a position of technical know-how here. Merely speculating.
G
Not using DR NAPs right now, as to my ears I am not too fond of their balance with my ATCs and listening setup … but in other setups and rooms they sound good.
To be honest I only did one comparison of direct connection at home out of sheer curiosity… it was not good at all… strident and hard (that was with a Hugo) … but I have heard several other system with direct connections with various amps elsewhere.
One thing I have discovered with Naim, the heart of the system is the NAC, and brings everything else along with it…to me the NAC provides much of the qualities that are essentially Naim… again why I always recommend to my audio buddies is that they get the best controller/preamp or NAC (if they are Naimites) they can afford.
On reflection this thread ihas reminded me of some of my electronic engineering labs I took years ago when I was at Uni… with designing and coupling audio amplifiers… there is far more to a preamp/controller than just volume and signal level… easy to do, not easy to be also good with bandwidth and transients across signal levels, matching impedance and attenuation. Careful conditioning of the signal is also required to avoid instability… our lab group got through more than it’s fair share of blown output transistors. 
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But there is added circuitry - which cannot add anything previously lost in the signal, nor correct anything incorrect with, say, timing, but will add its own sound to the signal, however slight that may or may not be.
Otherwise all it is doing is acting as an additional buffer. (Of course different if you also have analogue sources, requiring ready swiching.)
This is all theoretical IB.
Naim state that for best performance a naim NAC is considered an essential part of a naim amplifier.
I’ve done the test… and my 2 naim preamps are going nowhere. It’s very easy to hear…
As Simon says it’s a big part of what makes an Naim amplifier special…
Yes there is no naim sound… but of course there is a reason for a naim preamp to exist… try to listen to one someday soon…
No preamp in is needed with digital sources as the levels are high enough, rather what may often be needed is buffering and volume control (which is what Dave provides for itself) and, often, switching for alternative sources if not tgrough tge same DAC. I haven’t looked at Chor’s pre, but it may well have analogue inputs, which mostly do require preamplification.
True, they have digital volume control with analog output stage. This is, er, a preamp isn’t it? Not a wholly analog preamp but nonetheless a preamp.
When Rob Watts confirmed this to you he was confirming it has digital volume control rather than analog.
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Spot on…
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That is interesting. I found the move from 250.2 to 250DR a significant leap forward - possibly my easiest ‘no-brainer’ upgrade.
Horses for courses and all that…
G
Naim would say that, as they are in the market to sell their products.
As for Naim sound, strange that others with Naim amps often say there is? Regardless, much as I would quite like to hear (actually more interested in the NAP 500 than a NAC), that is unlikely any rime soon as would involve a significant expedition, and there is nothing wrong with the sound I am presently hearing to push me to make the trip.
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Actually it’s the engineering team that designed these components that say this, because they obviously know how made their NAC and NAP designs to operate optimally and what each stage does and how they are designed to work critically together … it’s not coming from the sales and marketing and team.
The sensitive bit that needs careful consideration is the NAP… the NACs however are quite happy feeding other make power-amps or active speakers assuming those devices are happy to be driven that way.
Hmm… perhaps to your point the sales and marketing teams are missing out on on not positioning Naim NACs to drive other vendor poweramps as well… certainly could increase sales…
You should try to hear a NAC 552 rather than focusing on the Nap 500
There’s no naim sound but naim does less timing and other distortion than others… less damage to the very delicate signal coming out of that expensive Dave.
" At the risk of tempting fate, I wonder whether there’s a power output arms race going on between manufacturers. The arrival of the new Ultima power amplifiers from Chord Electronics – at £30,000 apiece in either silver or black, along with the matching (and similarly-priced) Ultima preamp – suggests so. After all, their rated power of 780W/8ohm load is just north of the 768W claimed by Naim’s ‘Statement’ NAP-S1 monoblocks [ HFN Jun '15] – a target vaunted as ‘one horsepower’. In practice, Naim’s NAP-S1 achieved 795W/8ohm in PM 's lab tests at the time, but it seems that in the current ultra-high-end amp scene, there ain’t no substitute for cubic inches – or something like that.
Read more at Hifi news.
Given we are supposed to be saving energy and thinking how to consume less… and do more in a better quality way with less… it does seem strange and almost slightly vulgar… and strangely out of phase with the Zeitgeist…
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Well, you can certainly spend $50k on plenty of Japanese power amps rated at just 25w. If that makes you feel better. But at class A, it’s a false economy.
It’s not the price so much as the energy, Class A is the most inefficient class out there.
I guess we should be finding a way of using class D with high quality audio reproduction,
That’s what I’m referring to.
I don’t get that - it won’t do less timing or other distortion or less damage than nothing, no preamp! In that regard, as opposed to whether it adds anything that people might like, the only question is whether there is actually any adverse effect from feeding the power amp (whichever it is - e.g. a NAP) direct by Dave, and references to Naim designing it that way don’t recognise the possibility that another source (whether another pre, or in this case Dave) could meet the required impedance, voltage, current, bandwidth and anything else.
As for trying, the interesting bit about the NAP is its use of single output transistors. If NAP requires the buffering effect of a NAP to perform fully, the already very high price becomes stratospheric. If I was to choose one over the other the NAP makes more sense on paper, though if I did do the trip to a Naim dealership to do so e auditioning I’d certainly try a NAP to hear this Naim effect to see if what it adds might be to my taste.
and you will not be able to understand it until you hear a Naim amplifier.
Once I’d settled in and begun enjoying rather than analyzing the sound—easy to do because the NAC 552 did nothing wrong that was readily apparent—I tried to envision what would happen if I ran the dCS Elgar and the Manley Steelhead directly out. Each has a built-in volume control designed to drive an amplifier directly, but here’s where the Naim threw me for a loop. Audiophile gospel says that less is more—that the simpler and more direct the signal path, the more “pure” the sound. But after running both sources directly, then through the Naim, I preferred the sound through the NAC 552.
Both sources driving the amplifier directly sounded somewhat more transparent. For instance, with Cisco’s indispensable LP reissue of Nathan Milstein’s recording of the Dvorák Violin Concerto, there was a slightly creamier, sweeter texture to the violin’s upper register, and greater richness to the overtones, via the Steelhead’s volume pot—but there was more body and solidity to the fiddle through the Naim, and the orchestra had greater weight and image dimensionality.
Whatever was doing it, the NAC 552’s apparent sonic effect was to add enormous weight and meaning to all of the music I listened to through it—kind of like what the Boulder phono section did, when I reviewed it last August. More than any other preamp I’ve heard so far, the Naim organized and solidified the sound picture. I went back to my review of the Hovland HP-100 preamp, in the November 2000 Stereophile . About the Hovland’s presentation of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue , I wrote, “The HP-100 seemed to be able to dig out and reveal tiny vibrational peaks and valleys where other preamps deliver flat lines. And it did so three-dimensionally, without etch, grain, or spotlighting.”
I preferred the Naim’s and Hovland’s presentations to the sources directly out, and that convinced me that I’m a “more can be more” audiophile, not a “less is more” type. Recordings are simply raw material—grist for the mill that is your stereo system. Whatever it takes to make a recording sound more vital and realistic is fine in my book. The Naim NAC 552 is what it takes.
On the positive side, what it always managed to do was grip the music in a way that helped delineate small and large rhythmic and dynamic gestures. Its bass extension, definition, and textural presentation were as good as, if not better than, what I’ve heard from any other preamp—and the rest wasn’t half bad either!
The NAC 552 never added thickness to the overall picture, never slowed down or dulled high-frequency transients. Whether Naim’s proprietary ultrasonic transient filtering improved the performance of my reference Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 300 amplifier, I can’t say. It would be funny if much of what I heard was not preamplifier performance but better power-amp performance.
It’s a cliché to say that Naim specializes in providing “rhythm’n’pacing,” but wow , did this preamp let me know it! It was the first piece of Naim electronics I’ve had in my system that wasn’t a CD player, and while those hint at exceptional control and rhythmic drive, the 552 put it in my face. I mean that in a good way.
Putting the 552 in my system was like outfitting my car with heavy-duty, high-performance shocks, 17" rims, and low-profile tires. Once I’d gotten used to the preamp’s dynamic authority, and especially its grip on contrasts, when I played familiar recordings with explosive dynamics, such as Classic Records’ 45rpm edition of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition , I entered the same kind of relaxing yet exhilarating zone that I do when throwing a high-performance car into a hairpin turn at higher-than-normal speed. Just as I feel the small bumps in the road without the car pitching and rocking, the 552 did the same with low-level microdynamic contrasts.
Thread drift alert!
I am keen to hear what the OP thinks of DAVE.
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