Looking forward to further impressions on the 333 vs NDX as that’s my plan to change in the new year.
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Sinewave, I have absolutely no doubt you are going to be as amazed as I was by the leap in quality. I was off speaker axis and with my head down kneeling on the floor unpacking boxes and within about 10 seconds of starting “Budapest” I looked up with a slightly startled expression of disbelief… At this level (and lets face it a just serviced NDX plugged into a dedicated mains spur is no slouch) you don’t necessarily expect night and day differences but this was genuinely a bit shocking…
You’re in for a treat,
JonathanG
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Just like the Music Room threads on here, I like reading reviews that feature music I don’t know, or know but haven’t heard. It’s a good way to find new music.
Looking forward to reading your “official” thoughts in due course
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Awesome thanks for the further info. Ever thought of a career in sales???
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Your reviews are always interesting to read Jonathan. I follow Soundstage.
Just a bit sad that you don’t own an Ndx2 or Nds ( still more interesting for me) . The comparison vs the 333 would be more appealing.
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Unless suspicious of payola, ‘trust’ may be too strong a word word. I find reviews work best when you’ve identified that a reviewer’s past recommendations have overlapped reasonably with your experience.
For instance - I could be pretty certain that anything with a glowing review from Ken Kessler wouldn’t ‘get my juices going’.
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Frenchrooster,
Glad you enjoy reading my output. I don’t do a vast amount of reviewing due to the day job, although I expect to be ramping it up a bit next year. The plus side of taking my time is I get to experience the products I do review in depth by living with them over a period of a couple of months or more. As for the NDX2, I agree I too wish I owned one and you’re right it would make for an interesting comparison!
As for Ken Kessler I always loved reading his reviews and editorials even though our taste in gear doesn’t overlap much, aside from a shared love for SME. He’s such an entertaining and gifted writer though that I have always enjoyed reading his stuff.
One of the biggest challenges for Naim I think is that their classic (chrome/olive) gear was so incredibly musical and emotional to listen to and I think that’s true of their classic loudspeakers too. Sure, you could certainly pick holes in it for some grain in the midrange, there was occasional harshness unless you were very careful about speaker and room matching, it could be unforgiving of poorly recorded material and it had some bandwidth limitations, but my goodness did it rock!! It hit home so hard emotionally and communicated very directly with the listener and that imbued it with a certain magic. The early Naim Nait’s had this quality in spades! In short it was all about the music rather than the hi-fi. One of the questions I hope to answer as a long term Naim lover is whether they have retained that emotional quality or focused more on the ‘hi-fi’ elements.
I will certainly give the Simon and Garfunkel a spin Adam! Strangely enough I nearly picked up a copy of “Still crazy after all these years” on vinyl last week at the local secondhand emporium but it was a little too scratched for my liking… I’d rather just stream it on Tidal than put up with scruffy vintage vinyl copies!
It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to assess equipment of this quality, but I never lose sight of the responsibility I have to readers to be meticulously thorough and to carefully consider every word I write. It’s fortunate that I had the 252/Supercap/NAP300DR system here for a couple of months not too long ago and I’ve just come from reviewing Chord’s new Ultima pre/power range as well as Leema Acoustics excellent flagship integrated. So I have got quite a lot of recent experience with rival/predecessor products to factor into the review. It’s going to be fun!
Here’s some snaps I took on my lousy camera-phone as I was setting up just to whet your appetite!
JonathanG
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OK, perhaps trust may be strong but I certainly would never take what they write/say as definitive. Reviews can be useful to get an idea of a product but I personally look for the negatives mentioned as opposed to the praise, in order to get a good idea.
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Jonathan I ve a curiosity: as far as I know right now you didnt have an extensive audition of the 250nc but I would like to know if in your opinion they will be able to drive the atc 50 or if it will be barely sufficient to do it?
I’ve always disregarded him a bit, mainly because he’s always writing about American Exotica priced in the stratosphere. Interestingly though a few years back he wrote about something more mundane that I had heard (can’t remember what) and his opinion exactly chimed with mine! Since then I’ve paid him more attention.
Piebia,
I have never driven the ATC SCM50’s with the 250NC but I did drive them with my olive 250 and it wasn’t adequate to control them properly. I then ran them with the NAP300 for the actual review which was superb (although actives were superior in some respects). Naim have told me that the 250NC has better driving capability than the old NAP300DR so I think you should be OK but I really do think you need to try it first to see.
The most obvious thing to listen for will be loose and flabby bass because the amp simply isn’t exerting enough grip on those heavy ATC drivers.
Hope that’s helpful,
JonathanG
Love the Ash Design Cosmic racks.
Very clever and attractive design.
Nice that you’ve kept yours and still use it 
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Thank Jonathan really appreciated and cristal clear
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I missed to mention that I read and enjoyed your review in soundstaging and this is why I asked you. I remeber that your impression about 300 were really positive and honestly I dont know how it can be compared to the 250nc however I think that driving capabilities between the 2 are really similar
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That’s simply not correct. KK was/is a great fan of QUAD products, especially the electrostatic loudspeakers, and produced an exemplary coffee-table style hardback book about the history of the company and its products.
NAIM would to well to have a similar authoritative book written about their history to date.
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During casual conversations about such a project various essential players suggested that it needed to happen soon as they already couldn’t remember much from the past.
I can’t recall who said that.
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I find I remember the past better than the present
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That’s good to hear that you enjoyed the feature Piebia, I was never really sure how many people in the UK are familiar with Soundstage as I always suspected that they had more ‘presence’ in the USA/Canada/Australia. The issue traditionally has been that they never had a UK correspondent before but hopefully their visibility is improving here now that I’m featuring more UK products and doing more UK factory visits. I’m trying to get around most of the key UK firms as I’m a strong believer in visiting the factories and meeting the people behind the brands.
They’re incredibly nice people to work with and very professional which is important to me.
Brg, JonathanG
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