Hello I’m new here and after hearing my first Naim product (a naim Nait 5i-2 I got for my brother) I’m well and truly hooked but my current dilemma is would it be safe to use a Naim Nac 252/supercap Dr with 3rd party mono blocs (in this case Albarry m408s)
I understand this is heresy of the highest degree and one might ask why you would do this, simple I’m building a naim system from scratch with the end goal being NDX2 NAC 252 NAP 300DR but I can’t afford to buy everything at once so I’m gathering components as spare funds become available
Yes, using a Naim pre-amp (and PS) into non-Naim power amps should be fine, just so long as the power amps weren’t designed for use with a passive pre-amp (Naim pre-amps are high gain).
The Allegri (and Music First Audio) is not like most passive pre-amps in that it uses transformers for the attenuation. Such pre-amps can be quite effective and also avoid some of the drawbacks of a regular passive pre-amp.
I have a Sondex pre/power that uses a regular passive pre-amp into a high gain power amp. They work really well together, but are much less successful when you try to pair with other pre/powers. The Sondex power amp in particular really needs a passive pre-amp otherwise it can be really noisy with some regular pre-amps and with far too much gain.
I spoke to Martin about his Allegri experience and he was slightly less enthusiastic than he was in his review and commented about it breaking the synergy between the Naim pre/power amp and its integrated grounding arrangement. I tried an Allegri+ in place of my 282 with a 250DR and it was poor.
Some on here, including myself, use Naim NC pre amps, pre/streamers and the Atom HE to feed active speakers (e.g. PMC and ATC) to very good effect. The power amps are of course built in to the speakers and are therefore not discrete power amp boxes you are referring to. It does however show there is nothing inherently wrong with matching a Naim pre amp to a non-Naim power amp(s), particularly if it is a stop gap.
As many of us with active speakers have moved from separate Naim pre and power amps, this could be another path for you to consider, unless you ultimately want separate Naim pre and power amps
I think there were hints when NC started to trickle out that the move to balanced XLR connections was partly motivated by increasing compatibility with active speakers and possibly non-Naim standalone power amps.
I normally use a NAC332/NPX300 pre-amp & PSU into a Krell KSA-50 power amp. It sounds pretty good to me. Although, full disclosure, the Krell is currently being serviced / re-built, so I’m slumming it with a NAP 100.
I’ve wondered about the feasibility of using my 300DR amp with a non-Naim preamp. I want to upgrade to Boulder and have considered doing it in stages. Boulder 1110 with Naim 300DR, sell the 252/SCDR, then get a Boulder amp using the proceeds of the 252/SCDR to fund it in part.
The tricky part might be getting the cables right (Boulder balanced outputs into 300DR single-ended XLR inputs). I’ll have to mtach the pinouts Boulder says to use for single-ended connections with the inputs for the 300DR XLR inputs. I don’t imagine a regular balanced cable will work single-ended into the 300. Boulder says to leave pin 3 open for single-ended connection.
I’m (very) happily using an Esoteric Grandioso C1X Solo preamp with my 300DR. The Esoteric is fully balanced and as such I have an AV Options Signal XLR going between the two as they have compatible leads available without having to get a bespoke pair made up.
You can’t use balanced cables with the 300dr. RCA to Din/XLR. Less risky would be to sell the 300 dr and get a Boulder amp. But still you will have to use special cables.
I’ve successfully used a non-Naim pre-amp with a NAP300DR. Worked fine using either the balanced XLR or unbalanced RCA pre-amp outputs. As long as you are handy with a soldering iron or can you get the leads made up for you. The correct pin connections are printed on the rear of the 300 chassis.
Some appropriately coloured insulation tape or heatshrink will be needed to avoid channel mixups. But I think you’d only get silence if you got them wrong anyway.
I enquired with Naim about the way they wired up the XLR to XLR cables for NC to 300/500 and was told just to connect +ve and -ve and not to connect the 3rd pin (at either end).
PS You can basically think of a NSC222 or NAC332 as a non-Naim pre-amp (compared to eg OC or 500) to be honest.
However, I’d counter that when I swapped out the non-Naim pre-amp for a 282 and eventually a 252 I found out what all the fuss was about. There is definitely a synergy there.
You might get different results with different non-Naim pre-amps of course.
Thanks. I’ll probably just end up getting both the Boulder linestage and power amp at the same time anyway. Just thinking about options though.
You are correct that pin 3 should be open for a single-ended connection. That also what Bouder says. I have some XLR female/RCA mail pigtail adapters I needed to connect balanced sources to the 252 RCA inputs. I bought those on Amazon, but had to open them up and snip Pin 3 to leave it open (they were shorted to Pin 1 by default).
Yup, thanks, I already know the 300DR is not balanced. I noted above you can use a pair of balanced cables, if you fix the pinouts (wiring); i.e. adapt them to be single ended. Maybe I should have just said ‘re-wired XLR cables’ to avoid the confusion.