I always thought the 152/155 were great and criminally overlooked.
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Like going to the Serengeti and thinking you have just enjoyed an unsurpassable wildlife spectacle and then realising the rhino are missing.
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I bought a Bluesound node when they came out and it sounded dreadful in my all-Naim system, so I returned it.
Yes, they are cheap and small, but the sound quality is simply not appropriate for a Naim system in my view.
I have just set mine up as a second system driving a Lehmann Audio headphone amp directly. My Sennheiser HD800S cans sound much better on this amp. now, having cut the intermediate amp. out of the chain.
Maybe they have improved. I am pretty pleased with it. My Lehmann amp was just gathering dust. So with this ā¬300 streamer it becomes useful again.
It was a pain to set up as it was not clear that I had to set my iPhone to permanent Hot Spot. Or maybe something else. Setting up just came to a halt. I rebooted it and it came to life. Why are instruction manuals so cut back to almost zero information.
I find my Node Mini pretty good, for what it cost.
Iām glad youāre happy with it.
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As Innocent Bystander has already noted the cloth-eared are truly blessed!
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I tried one relatively recently in the absence of a matching streamer for my Nait50. I think of it as a grown up Sonos (with which I started my streaming voyage) and so came to it predisposed to like it. Sadly though it just didnāt cut it.
I did try one tweak which helped it quite a lot but canāt honestly remember now, it would have been adding either an Entreq macro grounding box or an AQ jitterbug or an iFi low noise power supply.
I have a Node in my system (552/300) and it performs way better than the price tag suggests. For casual listening, discovery, etc., itās more than adequate. Since I got it, I will only put on a record for āseriousā listening, when Iām giving the music my full attention. Definitely one of the better purchases Iāve made.
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If Iām to believe Naim these days, the equipment my system uses isnāt capable of producing good sound. Such devices are no longer part of their product portfolio.
Iām talking about my Naim 5i with the CD5i (purchased around 2005). The pleasure of listening to music with these simple devices is still unparalleled.
This system also makes it relatively easy to identify poorly produced recordings. Something I only noticed sporadically before. (Example: The Cure Disintegration, a fantastic album but sounds truly awful.) And I think thatās the answer to the central question of this topic:
the system is twofold, the music production is one. In my car, almost everything sounds at least okay. But when I put that music on at home, itās sometimes unbearableā¦
Forgiveness seems to be inversely proportional to the price of the systemā¦ That fact also ensures that I wonāt upgrade as long as my āEntry-setā still worksā¦
The best effect of experiencing good sound for me is taking breaks from listening to music: a week or two of not listening at home and only listening through other sources, and then going back to listening to music at home, naturally allows me to experience good sound in all its intensityā¦
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Naim have told you this?? I canāt believe that. Entry level they may have been but they were really the distilled essence of what Naim is about.
FWIW, and keeping on topic, I remember demoing the NAIT 5i and CD5i with Arivas when they were introduced. Forensic it most certainly wasnāt but what it did do well was to really get to the heart of the music - especially on older, less well recorded albums.
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Dropping from continued production, or ability to provide routine serviceability, doesnāt and never has of itself been an indication that previous products arenāt capable of producing good sound (or outside hifi do well whatever the products were originally designed to do).
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The Nait 50 is a lovely little integrated amp.
I tried it at home fed by ND5XS2 into Naim DAC/555DR, which sounded very good with SL2s.
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You have, of course, heard every preamp on sale today? 
Roger
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Yes, it took me 21 years.
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If you are referring to LP12s you are absolutely correct, but it is a problem can be easily fixed with the Taica Gel Bushings for close to nothing.
One personās good sound is not good enough for another person. My first system in 1994 was an Arcam CD player, Arcam Delta integrated amp and Mission 752s, it cost around Ā£1300. I thought it was good then. Now it would be not good enough. My present system cost probably in the region of Ā£10 000. To me it is extremely good and it gives me great pleasure. As a musician and music teacher I could not live without music. Perhaps the amount of money you spend mainly depends on how important music is to you within the constraint of what you can afford.
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My first separates system also has an Arcam amp which is an Alpha 10 integrated, bought together with a Marantz CD63KI-Signature CD player and B&W CDM1 SE. Total cost is around Ā£1,900. My present system is around ~Ā£21,000 (excluding cost of cables). Your experience and thoughts coincide with mine as well. I am not a musician but used to play the piano and completed Grade 8 ABRSM.
Ha ha! I have noticed that frenchrooster. 
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One of my most enduring musical memories is of listening to Bill Withers Lovely Day on an ITT transistor radio while fishing one night from Felixstowe beach as a teenager. Another is hearing Counting Crows A Long December for the first time in a diner on Key Largo, Florida. Getting to Florida is obviously quite expensive but the musical experience in both cases cost very little. Now I have more hifi equipment and cash invested in it than most people would think is sane. I get many hours of pleasure from it but it doesnāt and wonāt ever surpass those moments in time (Michelle Shocked on a Walkman in a delivery room at Reading hospital is another).
Spend what you can afford/justify to yourself/your family on what pleases you and ignore everything else.
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Exactly, I was discussing this with my son yesterday evening, an ardent music fan in his twenties, who is now getting into hifi or quality replay for the first timeā¦
As I explained to him the whole recorded music chain is usually so processed and compromised, you choose a system that sounds appealing across as many styles as you want to your tastesā¦really unless you are listening to dry spoken voice there is no ānaturalnessā as the audio will have been processedā¦But what my son picked up on, is that the better or more revealing replay equipment was, the more you could hear more how a track or album was produced, mixed and indeed recorded, as well as more clearly hear and enjoy from how the musicians, performers or engineers were playing and layering sounds in the mix to create the track.. and he really liked thatā¦ and I effectively said welcome to hifiā¦ thatās what itās all about.
He also commented that tracks usually sounded musical and interesting on Lofi or standard replay equipment ā¦ as indeed they do as most commercial music has always been produced to sound good on such equipmentā¦ but you will loose those added dimensions of how the track was created, and hear the limitations of how it was recorded and produced such as on tracks from the 60s and 70s. He also realizes that live music and studio recorded music is a world apart and sound quite distinct and separate a revealing system. He goes to many gigs.
I was really delighted to see my son pick up on the cues that brought me into hifi.. as opposed to a replay system that simply sounds āmusicalā which are two-a-penny and every where and he has been enjoying those since a young teenager.
The other thing I note, my son currently has very little disposable income, much of his replay equipment focuses on headphones, his latest acquisition a pair of well loved hifiman magnetic planar headphones.. he buys used from eBay for not much money at all but gets great resultsā¦ so hifi doesnāt have to cost much at all.
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