Naim/PMC to Luxman Neo Classico II/Omega

The system grew slightly, as some are aware. The SQ-N150 has, by all accounts, a very decent phono stage for both MM and MC and it seemed a shame to let this go to waste. And it feeds into a project I have taken on to clean and digitize all of my mum’s 60s-70s vinyl for her.

The TEAC TN-4D
It has been commented on that the turntable seems a bit low end compared to the quality of the rest of the system. And to be honest, my dealer felt the belt driven TEAC TN-3B ultimately performed better for a third less than a direct drive TN-4D. However, context is important. Vinyl is not my main source and it never will be. This is largely for a bit of fun and for music discovery via second hand bargain bins. Direct drive makes it extra low maintenance and the optional USB digital out serves my purpose of digitizing my mum’s collection for her. It doesn’t hurt that the TN-4D and the Luxman SQ-N150 have become somewhat of a paired set in the local market - though usually in piano black which, with the silver trim very closely matches the Luxman styling. As you can see, I went another way.

As we know, music is an emotional experience and as I was going to be playing a lot of oldies that I hated from my childhood (some, like first pressing of Johnny Cash I now know are great. Others like her Marty Robbins collection I might still roll my eye at), I’ll be honest and say that looks were important. How looking at this thing made me feel when spinning these old discs was, I knew from the outset, going to be an integral part of the experience. The walnut finish with the 70s aluminium trim just hit all the right emotional notes for me.

Superficial selection criteria aside, this isn’t a cheap toy. It comes in at around the cost of an RP2 and by the time I had finished dressing it up, was just shy of an RP6 in terms of cost. The build quality is exacting and it comes from a Yokohama factory just down the road from Luxman. The direct drive motor is low torque and although faster to come up to speed than a belt drive, it isn’t instantaneous at about 2 seconds. Something that really sets it apart is the tonearm. The SAEC designed tonearm is just brilliantly crafted and frankly from a slightly different class of turntable altogether. It obviously looks very different from SEAC’s $15k flagship offering, yet has kept some of the basic DNA such as the S curve and the SEAC Knife Edge virtical pivot.

Dressing it up
As mentioned, there’s a few things I did to this turntable to push it’s performance as far as possible within it’s very modest price range. First up was the cartridge. The supplied Sumiko Oyster was a bit overly smooth and warm for my tastes. Nice for background jazz, but not what I was after. Going for a replacement at a decent jump up but careful not to outclass the turntable, I fitted a Sumiko Rainier MM for about $170. This has a presentation that is far more dynamic and extracts a massive amount of higher frequency information that the Oyster just ignored. Sumiko is yet another company that manufacture in Yokohama, so this was fast becoming the Yokohama System.

Finally, no turntable is complete without a really good power supply. The supplied SMPS got replaced by this nice 24v linear PSU you can see on the bottom shelf next to the fanless micro PC that serves as both digital transport for the DAC and recording station for the TEAC. The power supply wasn’t expensive but was particularly nice. A quick look inside revealed superb hand soldered joints, and good board layout. The readout is more than just pretty. As you may get a slightly different voltage depending on your mains, you can adjust the output up or down by about 2v and I did need to get it spot on. Would have preferred the readout on the rear though. Coupled this to the turntable with a Cablecraft silver DC power leads with Oyaide plugs. The addition of a quality linear PSU really helped
with tonal neutrality and brought things a lot closer to the presentation I’d come to expect from much more expensive sources.

Last, I picked up a second hand Zonotone phono lead for half price (new it would have been half the price of the turntable). A bit overkill, but a sensible new Chord Co cable would have cost the same and I was keen to go Japanese all the way on this system.

Suffice to say, the TEAC never embarrasses itself. Even in the company of such a source as the D-N150, which might be edging out my NDX/XPSdr, the TEAC has a sonic character with the Rainer cartridge that is really engaging and allows for a degree of serious listening I had not in fact planned or expected.

Over time, and after calm reflection, the only gripe I have about the Luxman/Omega system compared to my Naim/PMC (and it isn’t a true gripe), is that I miss the off axis response of a dedicated tweeter. If you have a listening spot (and most people do), the Omega’s are just nothing short of incredible. They convey so much emotion and have such a beguiling soundstage it is really astounding. But outside of that zone, they do sound totally different. And I do have to do a lot of listening while doing things with the kids in other parts of the room. It’s a bit of a shame for the company actually. You have to hear them set up just for you to understand how beautiful they sound. You’re never going to pop you head into a dem room at a show or in a session with 30 other people seated off to one side and think “wow these sound good.” That can only happen when seated directly in front of them with a captive audience of one. Personal listening room or den, hell yes! In the living room for all to hear? Maybe not.

12 Likes

I do get the feeling that the thought that has gone into the system has produced a system that is on a pound per sound basis hitting well above it’s actual price cost - and the turntable looks a thing of joy

Same here, the Qb in my kitchen is a blast

1 Like

Looks great especially the engineering of the arm. Good to see something at a reasonable price nicely made and not the usual rega or linn.

Some people cope well with this while some don’t. I haven’t really experienced a speaker which sounds awful with off-axis listening. Although I sit at the sweet spot most of the time, music still sounds rather good if I am in other parts of the room, say 2 or 3 metres behind the listening chair. My lounge is a long room though, 3.2m x 9.0m with openings to other spaces.

Do you have the PMC/Naim set up? Any plans? I am beginning to come to a conclusion on what to do with the excess gear since I don’t have the luxury to set up 2 big systems in the house. I can still run a small system alongside the Luxman/Marten but not 2 big systems + 1 small system. In other words, I can still accommodate 2 systems, not 3. One will eventually have to go as it doesn’t make much sense to keep something that I will not use for a considerable period of time.

@Ian2001 Yes. A huge amount of time. The selection of the Naim system was very quick. I just used a dealer in the UK and spent time in their dem room and within a month, I’d settled on what I was going to order.

I’ve mentioned many times that Japan doesn’t do dem rooms or home trial in any meaningful sense. My current dealer has an entire floor gone to waste doing nothing that could be carved into 3 large dem rooms but they don’t bother. So the punter is really reduced to buying on spec. I’d set myself that arbitrary goal of “Not more than the cost of a new Supercap” as far back as 2018. It took well over a year of research to come up with the Luxman/Omega combo. And the turntable took a long time too. I had gone deep into the Rega, Pro-Ject, and even Clearaudio rabbit hole before coming back to TEAC which I had initially written off with a mental comment like “TEAC for turntables? Not a chance - what a load of rubbish.

@ryder Sadly the Naim and PMCs are in storage. We’re still looking for a suitable plot of land so I don’t expect they will get rolled out soon. Until the house is done, I cannot really envision how the different hi-fis will get used (up to 4 now not including a couple Qbs). I certainly intend to keep both.

5 Likes

Thanks for the response. It is good to hear you have the intention to keep both which is great. Currently in my new place which is much smaller than the previous house, I can’t fit 2 big systems. As I don’t have immediate plans to move in the near future, one system may need to go in due time.

Enjoy the Luxman/Omega.

Just a minor update after the system has been burning in for months.

Initially I postulated that the NDX/XPSdr fronted Naim system was more detailed. That’s no longer true now that things are flowing so nicely. This is really in praise of the D-N150 DAC. Listening to Montrose Paper Money last night, and the Luxman DAC was just extracting so much effortles detail and bringing the performance to life. It does it by stealth so it isn’t immediately apparent like some clinical sounding sources. But the ease with which it untangles simultaneous cymbol strikes without any of the smearing into one sound is incredible. You can hear the minute changing of pitch as the metal disc of the cymbol tilts up and down on the decay despite other stuff happening over the top.

You can sense how dry the singer’s throat is midway through a track compared to the start. It is a marvel as a DAC and shows there is miles more to be had from Ti PCM chips if implemented well. I’ve yet to use the CD player function.

It’s not massively expensive as far as DACs go but with no DSD or more than one of each input type, and no adjustable gain. The philosophy appears to be on making a limited set of features perform really well rather dilute the performance for something more versatile.

The SQ-N150 might be getting all the review limelight but if source comes first, the D-N150 has been massively overlooked in my opinion. And for those with a large CD collection unsure of how to transition to streaming, Luxman’s approach of CD players with digital input makes huge sense. CD is static technology but streaming transports evolve. I’m totally sold on bundling a DAC with a CD transport over a streaming transport.

Two thumbs up D-N150. You elegant understated beauty.

8 Likes

It is interesting to note that the D-N150 with a small A4 footprint can achieve so much when compared to the 2 box NDX/XPR. I’ve looked at the brochure of the D-N150 on the Luxman page and there isn’t any cutting-edge technology or exotic parts used in the unit. Perhaps just simple but solid engineering and implementation.

Yes indeed. It’s totally legacy tech from 20 years ago.

So while a few are swapping there two box ND* for a Chord of an even smaller size, the Chord’s are packed with cutting edge innovation.

Nevertheless, the proof is in the pudding and the D-N150 is made with Jersey Cream.

Be sure that when big Naim comes out of storage, I’ll be swapping the sources out on both systems to see if they lift them up or bring them down.

2 Likes

I am sorely tempted by the Luxman sq n150 for a second system. Choosing speakers will be interesting as I doubt they will pair well with my PMC FB1s. Might try anyway …

In the D-N150 manual is says when using the USB input from a Windows OS you need to download the Driver Software from Luxman or it may “cause malfunction”. I assume the Lenovo ThinkCentre uses Windows OS, did you use the Luxman driver? It’s not needed for a Mac.

Almost no chance that’ll work. You need a speaker that presents both friendly phase angles and a nearly flat impedance. Tube amps like to see the impedance they are rated for without dips.

That doesn’t always mean high sensitivity thought it’s a place to start. At the lower end of the sensitivity scale but easy to drive are larger JBL monitors (dealers seem to like pairing the SQ-N150 with these). If you need to crank it, you’re going to need both easy to drive and high sensitivity together. Omega, Zu, Decware, Voxative etc.

Yes I use the Luxman driver on the Lenovo running Windows 10. And then the DAC appears as a hardware audio device.

I’ve had no issues with it.

~90dB/2.83V/m and

image

Looks easy enough on a 4Ω tap but I’ve never heard of anyone driving NBLs with valves.

If the room isn’t huge and you don’t go crazy on volume, it might be okay. The SQ-N150 will handle 4Ohms. But tubes aren’t very flexible about dips below their operating thresholds.

OTOH, they don’t clip like transistors or burn out when overloaded so experimenting is pretty safe.

I’d be interested to hear if anyone’s tried it but I’m not planning to.
I’m more likely to give single driver speakers a go on the end of my 500, should the next house disagree with the NBLs.

very nice Luxman

3 Likes

I run a Naim Atom as my streamer and output it to a Luxman 590AXII. A nice combination. Enjoy the music.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.