This got me thinking again. Had originally written this off for the same reason i dont think it makes sense to spend £400 servicing a £300 amp. However it did occur to me that the conversion appears pretty straightforward, and would also leave me with a 92/90 that i could separately A/B against other stuff.
You mention a dedicated streamer. What kind of level do I need to spend to make much of a difference to sound quality? My reasoning would be that with a separate Dac, the streamer was more about convinience/better file searching & management than SQ?
Thinking about it tho, I could definitely A/B between the TV and running some audio via the USB from a laptop to see if that makes any noticable difference.
Best not discuss modifying kit here.
Be careful. Streamers do make a difference but less so on a lower level system than some high level systems that can show that difference. Listen if you can before throwing money at a streamer.
Edited!
Rather depends on how committed you are to a quality balanced music replay system. A preloved NDX wouldn’t cost the earth if you are only looking at streaming from your NAS - especially once you factor in selling your DAC.
I could be wrong but I don’t think a full 92/90 split was ever offered by Naim, merely a Nait3 to NAC92 conversion.
An email to Naim support is your best bet to confirm what’s still possible at their end.
Thanks everyone for the help and advice!
Just wanted to post a quick update based on the suggestions…
- I’ve reterminated the speaker-end connections with silver spades. This is the before picture
- I’ve bought a new pair of SA8 connectors for the amp end. They look a bit more fiddly to solder, but will replace those too when i get some time.
- @Christopher_M I put some pucks to put under the speaker, so thats now on spikes rather than sat directly on the floor. That made a big difference to controlling the bass, so thats in a much better place now.
- @Svetty and others… I did do an A/B between bitperfect playback on USB vs. my Samsung TV into optical. Definitely a difference - a much fuller sound. After some digging around I set up volumio on a raspberry pi i had spare. Very quick and easy to install and get up an running. Verified with the bitperfect files, so now i have that streaming into the USB.
- Also ordered a naim grey interconnect, which should arrive next week. I can A/B against the current one and keep it or return it if i cant tell the difference.
A combination of the above, and maybe running in the speakers a bit more have left me in a much better place, and the system is honestly sounding pretty good now. Think i’m happy to leave it for a while!
Those plugs don’t look that bad to me! Yes, there is some superficial tarnishing which makes them look bad, and one strand has broken, but the important bit is the soldering, which looks pretty decent. If you don’t know what you’re doing it would be very easy to end up with a worse job than that, so if you’re not sure I would get a pro to do it for you.
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