(I don’t know if I am going to post this, it’s being written to try and clarify some thoughts.)
I have changed a lot of pieces of equipment in my life. Including in the list only the gear that came and went since I live here - 19 years - but counting multiples of the same thing as single units, I easily reach tenths.
Some things I have bought, sold and re-bought: CDX2, SuperNait, Nait XS, 202/200… HiCaps! Speakers are the most reiterated: twice SBLs, twice Ovator S-400s plus of course seven pairs of n-Sats, the last of which is presently on duty.
I have tried a number of non-Naim things - Marten Design, Klipsch, Bow Technologies, rega, PrimaLuna, Pass, Luxman, Bricasti, Esoteric, other - in my quest for something that made me enjoy reproduced music at home. Naim is the brand I’ve owned more frequently, but it was rarely an absolute.
In the end, I only have these points to which refer safely:
- I don’t actually, really love to reproduce music at home
- I can’t stay without a stereo system
- No system and no part of a system can be fully satisfactory
- There must be an axis around which other parts can be chosen, changed, questioned, loved or hated.
In my case, on the basis of statistics alone, my axis is the Sats.
They are not perfect, but have the greatest number of qualities vs defects:
- Small
- Stand mount
- Sealed enclosure
- Easy to drive
- React happily to upstream upgrades
- Very very pretty
- Project the sound outside themselves in a way no other speaker I know can do.
- Sound clear, juvenile, involving.
Vs:
- Deep bass light
- Mildly ‘unripe’
- Not the warmest midrange - the exact opposite of BBC sound in fact.
I fiercely tried to change my perspective, to decide that I wanted more relaxing, domestic speakers - Harbeth, LS3/5A, LS5/9 - but in the end those that gave me a minimum of thrill are Sats and Heresy IIIs (two pairs). So much for relaxing and domestic.
Once I realized and accepted that the quest for optimal, if not perfect, sound is futile, I also decided that Sats can be the axis of a system and started wondering if the rest is really what I want and what can be done to optimize everything around them. Cost is not no object.
Curiously enough, what I like in the Sats’ sound is also what I like in Naim electronics. They don’t try to be HiFi; they try to be HiFun, while remaining competent, technically unquestionable, admirably engineered and reliable. While others fight with one another in the specs arena - s/n ratios with several zeros after the comma, damping factors in the range of hundreds - or in the marketing one - retro looks, sci-fi looks, Disneyland looks, I-insist-in being-ugly-because-I sound-good, I sit on my side panel, I glow in the dark, I’m oval - Naim is just black boxes with a green logo that make you want to turn the volume up (the box, not the logo - but yes, sometimes the logo too).
Sources come and go: I have no faith in eternity. Vinyl may seem reassuring because its mechanical part is simple and larger than its electronic one - in fact, everything in an LP/TT combination is passive safe the motor, the only electric signal being generated by the movements of coils between magnets, or the other way 'round.
Naim used to say that in the best reception conditions FM could be the best source of all: how true, and how I wish it could be so (for me)! Broadcasts of live concerts, unknown music discovered, not standing anymore in front of the bookshelf browsing among the same twenty CDs or LPs… And good sound, care of responsible, cultured men in radio stations.
But FM is absolute crap here - crap music, crap talk, a lot of stations covering one another, occupying the ether and booming at traffic lights from the oscillating inside of waiting cars. I live among cavemen, but at least they are not openly aggressive.
My preferred Naim amp system is 252/SC/300, but it costs a lot. True, I may be dead in less than five years (not mere pessimism, my current histologic condition) so why not f*ck it all and spend joyfully; but I have a protection system that keeps me from tossing money around in case I’ll have to deal with this world for a while more.
I have loved tubes, on conceptual, aesthetic and sonic grounds. I too often give in to the feeling of ‘How Everything Was Simpler And More Charming In The Past’. But as that guy said, past is the only dead thing that smells good. Loving tubes is a little like those kids wanting to marry their mom.
I love integrates but no integrated amp I’ve heard sounds like 252/SC/300. Yes, the original Nait was fun, but one cannot go out with teenage girls forever.
So what?
Am I looking for a solution or dissolution?
Sorry for having occupied the ether myself.
M.
