I have been given a cost of circa £1,400.00 - £1,600.00 to service and upgrade my NAIM NAC92, NAP90, FlatCAP. However, the HDMI inputs, integrated AMP and Streaming capability for the NAIM NOVA is appealing. I plan to add a Rega Planar at a later date. Speakers are SBL MKII.
Do I pay for the upgrade / service or sell out for circa £450.00 for the NAC92, NAP90, FlatCAP and put the funds torwards a NAM Nova ?
If you decide to part with the separates I would also consider an ND5XS2 and NaitXS3 at a similar price to the Nova. It also has a built in phono stage which you nay find useful.
1, Its compact, less clutter
2, Brand new, my old kit is 30 years old
3, HDMI interfaces, good for my TV
4, Built in Streamer a bonus if I don’t want to fire up the TV
5, Will support the Rega Planar when I decide get it
You should be prepared for the unfortunate fact that HDMI ARC is reliable for some, unreliable for others, and in some cases doesn’t work at all. A more reliable solution it to use an optical (Toslink) cable. You lose the convenience of integrated volume control and switching, but gain in reliability.
The Nova does not have a built-in phono stage. Of course there are many reasonably priced phono stages out there - you may already have one. Also, the Nova does an AD/DA conversion for the analog inputs to support multiroom playback. This matters not to me, and I can’t hear any “digital-ness” to the sound from my Rega turntable, but just FYI.
Other than that, however, I think the Nova is simply stunning as an elegant, one-box solution, and streaming (local from an attached HD and Qobuz) now accounts for about 90% of my listening. It really is fantastic. So, the newer streaming platform is definitely a point in its favor, IMO.
Edit: That said, like many others, if Naim would hurry up and come out with either a “Supernova” with an external PS upgrade via HC or something like that, or perhaps even just a successor to the 272 streaming preamp, I would have some really hard upgrade decisions to make!
Are you based in the U.K.? If you are talking about Class A in Sheffield, Darran’s prices aren’t anything like that, or weren’t anyway. I certainly wouldn’t spend that sort of money on servicing it. If you are thinking of spending Nova money, why not consider an ND5XS2 and Nait XS3? It will sound better and you get a decent phono stage for when you get the Rega. It’s a really nice combination. The only issue, for some, is that the ND5XS2 has no remote, but that may not matter to you.
I am not a huge fan on 92/90 or even 202/200. I am a huge fan of both Atom and Nova - at what they are designed to do. However, when building a system this spring for a holiday home, I planned to buy a Nova (plus Neats) - but I didn’t.
Instead, I hit eBay. For the cost of a Nova, I got ND5 XS2 plus olive 82 plus olive 250 plus olive Hicap, with all olive kit serviced after 2015. It’s a much less elegant solution than a Nova, but (good though a Nova is as a 1-box) it sounds a good deal better.
If you want to spend less, and servicing your existing kit really is going to cost a huge sum, then ND5 XS2 + Nait XS3 or even an older Supernait from eBay may well do the trick. Using either also doesn’t involve an extra A-D & D-A conversion, which the Nova does - I don’t know if that degrades things in any noticeable way when using an RP3, but it can’t help.