Obviously the SN2 is no longer for sale… the SN3 is £4300 now (from next week) and the pass is just over 7… so definitely a step up in terms of price bracket… as you’d probably expect for something I’m considering as an upgrade
The vitus is way more expensive of course!!
Did you do a Home demo of 333/332/350s?
Wasn’t much point given my previous comments !
In my experience, it’s hard to judge the sound quality of the gear until it’s in your own house.
I kind of agree… but given I already had 3 things that sounded great in the dealer, there didn’t seem much point adding stuff that I didn’t think sounded that great, that I thought was overpriced (the 332/350 combo is also going up by £1600 next week!), and that had far too many boxes for my liking to my list!
You have to narrow your choices down somehow…
the two amps I loved at a dealer both sound magnificent in my room. I’m sad I didn’t get the Gryphon here too, but at nearly 50% off current list price for a demo unit slightly over a year old, the Vitus is a no brainer for me.
Given I’m on the Naim forum I’ve probably said enough now!!
That’s fair comment. It is important to short list gear and make final decisions with a home trial. You shortlisted 3 items that you considered to be the best so job well done.
And that home trial over a reasonable time if possible ie one to two weeks.
For me if familiar tracks still sound familiar in their sound and feel without loss, and you are discovering new elements in your recordings in an interesting and enjoyable way… then the item passes the home audition… but these can take a little time to determine. Be hasty here and in my experience disappointment can follow. Initial superficial enjoyment can lead to irritation and ultimate lack of musical enjoyment.
And in response to other posts in the thread the school boy/girl error that some seem to make is to assume price matches assured musical replay enjoyment … it absolutely doesn’t… and over the couple of decades of participating on the various Naim forums you have seen people, including myself, discovering this time and time again.
Very true and possibly more so if mixing components from different brands.
I remember reading several of your posts on the Chord Hugo and how you preferred the original to the mk2. IIRC you now use a DAVE. Not sure price wise how it compares with the rest of your gear but you certainly got it right in the end after ‘falling out of love’ with music for a while.
Also, many people have downsized from considerably high end Naim gear to much smaller systems, HH and NigelB spring to mind. Money is no guarantee of enjoyment but system matching is extremely important.
Hi yes use a Chord Mk1 and DAVE currently. I used to use the DAVE with my 552 DR, but now simplified everything, but still use my DAVE. Quite simply I find it very very enjoyable … and the Nait50 seems to benefit from the best sources you can give it… but system matching to me is about sonic synergy as opposed to pricing equivalence.
I always took system matching to mean the way the components interact with each other rather than matching by price. I personally never subscribed to the old adages of 33% source, 33% amp, 33% speakers or 50/25/25 etc.
In my case, my 4 box 300 series amp works very well with my much cheaper Kudos 606 speakers and one box (soon to be two) 300 series source.
For the past few years I have respected your posts and wondered if I should explore a DAVE. I have always ended up sticking with Naim but in the future….who knows!
It looks we have a similar perspective on things 
So true!!
The Pass at 7k is the match of the Vitus at more than double…. Of course the Vitus has a pre in there too but the Pass integrated is still about half the price of the vitus!
If it wasn’t bigger, less pretty and consuming twice the electricity I’d probably go Pass
Just a little update i found out the other day and explains why i and others have had such great results and other’s not so.
Well the apex upgrade covers so much more than just the out put stage, basically just the ring part off the dac remains unchanged, the rest gets a work over, completely changed and redesigned.
But more importantly the new apex can run any lenght off cable you want and into any impedance amp and it won’t effect the way it sounds or works. This is why it just works so great i guess, and why a pre amp just isn’t needed, and only gets in the way off the quality.
As said i didn’t know all this before as if i did i would have said, as it certainly explains why i had such a huge difference between the first time i tried no pre amp and the second time with no pre amp, but with an apex dac.
Probably no one is bothered but there you go.
Cheers dunc
But to be clear… you will be using a pre amp… it’s either built in to your source or your power amp.
What you might not be using is a controller……
And in Dunc’s case an extra preamp in his integrated.
Well no it’s not a pre amp in the dcs dac,it’s done differently to how a pre amp does it. I think its done before the dac, i could find out for sure as it’s all been explained if anyone really wants to read up on it.
Yes i couldn’t get rid off my lovely turntable, i did for a few day’s think about it so i could just have one source, and so go direct.
But i had invested to much money into my turntable, and would lose too much, plus i love the way it sounds. So for me i had to find a solution that worked, and luckily i did.
The pre amp is part of an audio amplifier. It’s at the small signal end of the amplifier before the power amp. It can be combined or separated, it doesn’t really matter other than if separated matching usually becomes more important between preamp and power amp stages.
Funnily enough, whilst more detailed that is pretty much what I’ve said before on the subject…
To me the clue is in the word: pre-amplifier. In an integrated, which was simply called an amplifier before the idea came of splitting off low and high level circuitry for better sound quality, also introducing greater flexibility.
So, as you declare you love the sound - that turntable source is making more (good) difference than the (evil) preamps that are trying to wreck your enjoyment 