I own a NAP 160 CB & recently a NAC 32.5 CB They are simply connected with a grey snaic which gives more than an acceptable sound
I have owned the 160 for a while and it never sounded better !
Previously i used a NAC 72/160 & pre amp power supply made by another well known UK manufacturer a friend of mine also used similar but with a NAP 110 power amp
He recently decided to remove the non Naim pre amp power supply & connect up his unserviced hi cap of which it blew the other power supply away although i will say he is a turntable user and i use only a streamer
The sound of my system is excellent with the 160 feeding the 32.5 on a grey snaic and my question is would a Naim Audio power supply such as hi cap further improve sound quality even though i am only using a line level input from my streamer as opposed to a turntable ?
As my guess would be that there is more advantages using a pre amp & power supply on a turntable than would be from a streamer ?
We have both found that our Naim pre amps sounded better either using a hi cap and/or the power amp internal power supply
We have bothed ditched the non Naim power supplies as they appeared to do very little for the music and simply squashed the life out of it !
As you have a 32.5 there should be some advantage to using a Hicap as different bits of the circuit get their own dedicated supply.
The preamp supply in the CB 160 gets its own winding on the transformer so is pretty good quality.
I use 72/Hicap/160 myself and am interested why you swapped the 72 for the 32.5?
Adding a Hicap will improve the performance on all sources. Presumably you would get a serviced CB example, so try to get a black Snaic, which is quite a bit better than the old grey one. A black Snaic 4 to connect the Hicap to the 160 would be a good idea too.
The 32.5 is lovely, especially its two little toggle switches.
I prefer the look of the CB stuff i always promised to try the 72 fed by the 160 but never got round to it on reflection i should have done so because i prefer the sound of 32.5/160 with grey snaic to the sound of Non Naim PS/72/160
We both agree a non Naim P.S.does nothing for it
Neither the 32.5 or 160 are overdue for service
I didn’t suggest that they were, merely that you might want to look at black Snaics.
One thing at a time it would be either a Black Snaic or Hi-Cap ?
I second HH’s reccomendation of black SNAICs - a very nice upgrade on the great ones. Just be sure you get genuine Naim SNAICs - there are a number of fakes to there that can look quite similar. Also note that collar locking Preh DINs can be used on the old Deltron DIN sockets - just wind the collars all the way back. You can’t lock them though, so be careful not to accidentally pull them out when powered up.
Hicap. Make sure it’s been serviced otherwise it could make things worse. A serviced one, however, should give a really significant lift.
Richard please can you also advise me on my Nait 2 Integrated with cd input please
I intend to lend this out to a friend but wondered why on the back it has the rca inputs labelled cd yet on the front input selector knob it says phono for the corresponding cd input ?
Do you know why this is ?
No idea. The NAIT 2 CD versions I have seen all had CD on the fascia input labels. Maybe it needed a replacement fascia at some point (they chip easily) and all that were available were the standard Phono fascias? A check with Naim with the serial number will give you any history with the factory.
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