I am considering “moving up” within the Naim line of amplification. My system consists of a Chord Dave/m-scaler, a 282/250dr, a mac mini running Roon and Harbeth Shl5 plus xds. I am thinking right
now of getting NAP 350s to add to the 282 for now. I live in an apartment and also my personal preference is to listen( mostlyclassical music) at a moderate level anyway. Wondering if the NAP
350s can sound bright with the Chord which I feel maybe slightly bright itself. Unfortunately I have a
large flat screen TV close to the wall behind and between the loudspeakers. The room otherwise
is well-damped with furniture, drapes and rugs. 20x19x 8.5 ft ( LR + DR) with 2 feet behind the backs of the loudspeakers to the wall.
I would have thought more likely your speakers or room - don’t know the Harbeths but I seem to recall from time to time people saying they found them excessively bright. Certainly I don’t think Dave is. I have no idea re the 350s, but from this forum I get the impression they may be more neurteal than some Naim amps, though of course best thing to do is go and audition (taking your speakers and source incl Dave, and exsting amp, unless dealer has all).
Everyone’s ears differ, but I would be surprised if 350s are the best upgrade here, esp at that price. I would also encourage hearing before buying if possible, or buying on eBay and selling on if you don’t like the result. Having said all that….
The 282, like the 82 before it, is great fun - I still have my old 82 in the Tasmanian system and am listening to it right now. However, it isn’t ultra-quiet or neutral or subtle. For those, I’d strongly encourage trying a 252 or similar.
I tried my Mac as a streaming source a couple of times. Even feeding a really good DAC (and yours qualifies) I found it muddled and harsh - a s/h ND5XS2 gave my Mac a thrashing for SQ and general enjoyment, and people using non-Naim steamers as sources have reported the same.
Your speakers may not be helping, but that may be way to check. If you move them closer to the back wall and reduce the toe-in a bit, does the excess brightness go down a bit (albeit with some minuses created too)?
I kind of miss the warmth of the old SHL5s. The new version is better overall but leaner sounding. Will be going to a dealer for a demo of the NC 300 system, with the SHL5 xds and the DAVE.
Thanks. I enjoy it a lot. I am just thinking about how I can improve upon
It… I want to see what more power will bring out in the loudspeakers even though I listen at low to moderate levels. I heard that a great combination
Was the 252/300dr. I see a few listings online for discounted leftover stock
of them. Still quite expensive and don’t believe they would make as good
Investment at this time.
That encourages me to think that this is not an electronics issue so much as an issue of getting room and speakers working together to give a better balance.
I recently bought a s/h 552DR from a top dealer for well under £9k. It works brilliantly with my 300DR and would be better with a 500. As Naim staff confirmed again recently, the biggest challenge for the NC range will be improving on 552 and 500 - for now they offer white logs for 500 series boxes to keep them looking fresh, but improved replacements are years away because they are very hard to design.
For the cost of new 350s, you could get a dedicated streaming source and 552/300 or 252/500 - you might even get 552/500 with a bit of patience.
Of course, if the 350s will soon be joined by matching 332/333/2xNPC300s and you want the boxes to match, then the 350 option may well be the right route. In any event, hearing that and one or two other ways forward must make sense when spending that sort of money.
Maybe better use of the money would be upgrading speakers, after all speakers are the key component that affect the sound character of a system more than any other, and to me they are the component worth spending the most time and effort choosing, and money especially if full range sound is of value, despite the source first mantra common here. Perhaps worth having an audition of a range of speakers within the budget you have for the amps.
This the first time I encounter someone saying Harbeths be excessively bright.
When I have listened to Harbeth at shows, they have always been the least brightest.
Some suggestions for SQ. Though you don’t say what you don’t like…
Cheap ones…
Try Audirvana on the Mac instead of Roon (freee trial). Comments about Macs being poor sources are off beam when you’re just running it for Roon or Audirvana.
Ditch the flat screen TV (just take it out and see.
I’m sure if you search the forum you’ll find more, at least that model, though might say things like too, very, over, or just bright, rather than using the term ‘excessively.m’. But of course one person’s excessively bright is another’s just right, while the room can also make a huge difference.
Before upgrading to a 252/SuperCap DR, I enjoyed a 282/NAPSC+2xHiCap DR for many years.
In my opinion, the weakest link in your system is the Mac mini.
For years I used a Roon Nucleus as my music server, and recently I upgraded to an Antipodes K40, and - as they say - I wish I would have done this sooner. The difference is “night and day.”
Roon servers are available from a few other cutting edge companies like Innuos, Playback Designs, Grimm Audio, 432 EVO, etc.
Thankfully, I have a very good dealer, and he pointed me in the right direction. My future upgrades will be focused on the digital front end rather than the pre amplifier and power amplifier.
How on earth can the Mac mini be the weakest part in the OP’s system?
It’s just generating a digital signal to send to the streamer…… I believe Roon works similarly to Audirvāna, rendering a PCM stream. Sure the software used can influence this (filters etc), but the hardware? It’s not connected to the system by USB, but Ethernet. Try a different software for sure, but the computer is a red herring and Mac Minis work very well for this purpose.
It’s an interesting question, particularly for those of us so old that we remember Sony (and Tomorrow’s World on BBC) ‘explaining’ or ‘proving’ that CD offered “perfect sound forever”. The argument about 1s and 0s sounded convincing, but even my ears could tell that it was twaddle.
In a blind test, even the most hardcore anti-hifi person I know wanted to know what was wrong when I swapped to my MacBook as a source feeding my NDX2.
If you find that a Mac sounds the same as expensive boxes from Naim or anyone else, that surely means that you can save a lot of money. However, I don’t think that this is a universal conclusion.
It’s a question of what you are getting your Mac to do and how it’s connected to the rest of the system. In my system it simply runs Audirvāna and links to the Audirvāna app to connect to a upnp target. Same as running Roon. Same as a NAS. I can stream directly using the Naim app to the hifi, but Audirvāna sounds subtly better on account of the way it processes the digital stream. The Mac isn’t connected to the hifi, but to a router. In my system fiddling with routers and cables makes no discernible difference. So my point is not about 1/0 but about what the Mac is doing and how it’s connected. I agree if you render from the Mac and use USB direct to a DAC it most certainly doesn’t sound as good!