Greetings everyone.
Hope you lot have a space on the couch because o emptied the bank on this one.
I always listen to what I buy but this time I made a blind purchase both in terms of speakers and amplifier. I will get this out the gate and say I am a NAD user and love their products. For my taste, NAD and Focal work and my father’s Aria 948 were sublime. He got the set up 6 years ago and I had my eyes on a personal Focal and NAD combo.
After a year of saving I managed to have enough money for the Focal speakers I wanted. I pulled the trigger and they arrived Tuesday. My choice, Kanta #3. Now I was looking for an amp. Of course my first choice was the NAD M33 but seeing all this Focal -Naim marketing material in the last years I had a doubt.
My father also said to go Naim and not Nad M33 because they are a match made in heaven as he heard them. So like any 40 year old kid, I listened to my father and here we are with a Naim Unity Nova and Focal Kanta #3.
I set everything up paired the remote, activated the product checked for firmware updates and launched Qobuz HI-RES songs. My initial 5 minutes were like hang on a second, where is the punch, the attack I am used to from Nad.
I realised that the Nova needs a bit of volume and things change between 30-40. The Kanta started breathing better and the amp was as warming up. Still I wasn’t convinced as I felt is this a 15k EUR setup ? Did I do the right thing to purchase this blindly ? Is this the combo for my liking ?
I told myself let them run for a while as they need to break in. After two hours things started to change. I understand that the speakers need 20 hours so it is likely that the sound will change again.
While my original thought was to return and get the M33, it’s growing on me and this is a quality amp.
I have not owned a Nova so can not specifically provide advice or an opinion on your set up but if you do a search using Nova and Focal Kanta you will find 50+ threads which have some insite to the combinations.
Give it a couple of weeks of use to settle down and you should hear improvement in the sound…
I have a Nova and really enjoy using it. In your case I feel that the K3 may well be too much speaker, and that the smaller K2 would be a better match.
My girlfriend has a Nova and uses it every day. It’s a great one-box combination of streamer source, DAC, preamp and power amp.
Having said that, your speakers were really not designed to partner a Nova or anything in that price bracket (not that a Nova is exactly low-cost).
I hope and expect that the sound continues to open up in the next couple of weeks, and it may be that that combination is good enough that you never want more.
However, if you want to hear why people rate your speakers quite so highly and all that they can do, you’d probably want a 250 or above as a dedicated power amp and boxes of similar quality feeding it.
That’s a lot more bother (and cost) than a Nova, but there may be no need to think about that now. In addition, it may be that in a decade or more you have completely different electronic boxes (Naim or otherwise) but have never needed to consider changing your speakers.
As a much more minor point, you may want to spend a bit of time moving the speakers around - just 10cm or so extra from a wall can make a noticeable difference to the sound.
As I see it, these speakers require a fair amount of current and power, I would listen for a few days more but in all honesty cannot see a very good pairing there (so if you can, keep your option to return open). I guess this is the thing, when choosing speakers, one needs to make sure they can be entertained properly and matched by the rest of the system.
E.g. in my case I do have the curiosity if I should upgrade my speakers to a model up from the same brand but I am acutely aware that I might almost certainly need to consider replacing my NC250 with a 350.
The Kanta 3 speakers will be fine. I’ve heard a Nova driving a pair of Sopra 2 speakers at a HiFi show and in no way did i think that the sound was lacking in anyway, and this was in a large room.
The kit you have will take many weeks of use to fully open up and come on song. Are you using Naim NACA5 cables? I would try to stick with Naim cabling if you can, this will help you to get used to the kit without any confusion or other variables getting in the way. Above all though, have fun and enjoy your new system.
That’s a lot of £ without listening first.
My personal opinion; the nova is outclassed by the speakers and though it will work, it can’t get the best out of them.
Also if this kit is new, it’s going to take some time to bed in; before you can really hear of what it is capable.
Or to put it another way; you can seriously upgrade the amp etc before ever needing to change speakers.
Welcome, great work. A word of caution- this forum loves to spend others money with reckless abandon…
They aren’t wrong: more power will make those speakers really light up.
NONETHELESS, you have two stellar pieces of HiFi kit. Enjoy them knowing your speakers will provide nearly infinite headroom if you want to upgrade amplification in future. No rush.
Hi @Mistio - stick with it, give the Kantas some oomph to let them open up. I had the Nova with Kanta 2 which was a good combo. I then moved in an SN3 and NDX2 and there was a significant difference. Partly amp and partly source related, of course. By the way, the Nova is now on some Neat Iota Alphas (much smaller but very capable speakers) and while its not as impressive a sound as with the Kantas, it is a superb and fun combination.
Welcome! The Kantas are great speakers and I too am one of those who think Naim and Focal are a good match. I had Kanta 2s with both Supernait 2 as well as 282/250 DR - as others have said these speakers scale up nicely.
My experience is they will take a lot longer than 20 hours to settle in, especially the beryllium tweeter (which is excellent). So there is no need to panic. I ran NAD amplification for many years and was happy with it. But moving to a Naim XS 2 amp was an “oh, wow” moment.
So relax and enjoy as the system breaks in. You are in for a real treat and your speakers will reward you for many years.
@Mistio by sheer coincidence I happened to be at my local Naim dealer today (getting relays changed on the NDX2). In the shop front they had a Nova driving - guess what - Kanta 3. I had a listen for a few minutes. The sound was wonderful. I was trying to place your concern about lack of punch but it was not apparent at all to me. I do remember when I moved from NAD to Naim wondering if I had been over reliant on the bass control… but when everything had settled down the sound was just superb. Let the speakers play for a few days non stop and crank it up a few times too.
I have an irrational aversion to Focal, but have heard NC200 with Kanta 2 at my dealer’s and have to say it was excellent, in a modern, precise, hyper clean and somehow unsexy kind of way…
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