Why do you have no intention of getting a 555ps?
Because that will achieve your objective of upgrading the dac.
(Also, if you plug an external dac into the 272 you waste the 272s streamer and dac, and you lose the synergy that the whole machine brings).
Anyone adding a dac to a 272 may as well sell it and get a 282.
Cost. I wouldn’t be wasting the streaming option, if you read my earlier post I’m happy streaming. I’m thinking of just an upgrade when just listening in my studio.
Ah - but then why are you asking about dacs under 3-4K?
To add as a source to the 272.
Well that’s your opinion and I respect that but it does seem at odds with other comments (I think even from you) how good the 272 is as a pre amp.
Yes, the notion of a revised 272 with Qobuz integrated, an even better preamp and all parts improved is an interesting prospect indeed.
What I’m getting at is that if you add a dac you cannot use the 272 streamer part. So it’s just being used as a preamp so a huge amount of the box is unused.
I’m sure you know already but you cannot take a digital output from the 272 into a dac and then route the dac analogue back into the 272. If you chose the upnp input to use the streamer, the analogue input switches off. If you choose the analogue input then the streamer turns off.
In my view, if you want to keep the 272 and you want more naturalness the answer is a 555 rather than a dac. The difference between the 272/XPS and 272/555 is way bigger than that between 272 and 272/XPS. And with the 555 you improve everything - streamer, dac and preamp.
The 272 never sounded digital or bright to me.
Crisp, yes.
Adding the 555dr helped everything greatly.
And sorting out a really good Ethernet chain into it also improved the naturalness of the sound of acoustic instruments.
Defo not digital sounding at all.
But surely I can connect a 3rd party DAC to my UnitiServe then connect the DAC to a analog input on the 272. It’s just like adding a CD player.
And I do not use streaming services, only locally from my server.
And obviously it MUST have twin Burndy inputs and no built in psu!
Yes, connecting a dac is just like a adding a CD player and you could connect the Serve digital output to the dac. But: you’d only be using the preamp part of the 272 and the Serve’s upnp output is widely held to be superior to its digital output. You’d have to use the more basic nServe app to play music.
I occasionally use that app anyway, so that’s not a problem for me.
I’d certainly try the 555 at the same time as trying the dac. I’ve no idea which would be best but suspect the former. It may be more costly though.
There’s also the fact that Naim will probably not offer us any future firmware updates.
I tried the 272/555/Nap500 against 552/500 and yes the 552 was better…quite a bit better but the 272 was not disgraced and sounded excellent… the 552 begiles and gets better and better…it needs to settle down for a long time…and is more rewarding. I have listened to the 252 with a 300 … and it was very good but I would say it was a touch better than the 272 … these are my humble thoughts…
You can do exactly that. It’s just that this being the Naim forum, there’s a bit of a logic breakdown for people when someone says they want to do what you say you want to do - after all, people are often here because they like the Naim way of doing things, in many cases because they’ve tried other ways and found the Naim way best. And the Naim way to improve the 272 is to add a better PS or upgrade to different boxes.
But if you want to, and you aren’t bothered by the redundancy of parts of your 272, you definitely can use an offboard streamer and add a separate DAC (even - shudder - a 3rd party one). It’s basically the same sort of idea as what HiFiman describes above, and what I’ve done to add Roon functionality to my 272, but one stage further. Especially given that you’ve already got an XPSDR, there’s no reason to think your 272 isn’t already a formidable analogue preamp.
If you do do it, though, I’d suggest auditioning/trying DACs that will be genuinely different. I’m thinking of terms like multibit, R2R, NOS and so on. You’ve already got a very good oversampling (I believe delta-sigma type) DAC in your 272, so may as well do more than find a variation on that theme.
With so much love for the 272, and the pre-amp in particular especially with a 555 hooked up, perhaps this reveals the crux of the problem for Naim. If they made incremental improvements to the pre, and a step change improvement to the digital bits then how good would it be, for presumably £4.5k or so? I’m waiting to get my 272, but the comments on here suggest an improved 272 as described could at least match the equivalently priced separates.
A NDX2/282 & Hicap is around £12K, and people are saying the 272 is almost the same as the 252, so I’m not convinced.
