In the Hifi world for the past 2 years I had the opportunity to test various setups as I got bored of my Yamaha RN-2000A.
One came out of the crowd, guess what ? Naim !
Current setup being NAC202 + NAP200 + NAPSC + non-Naim PS + Dynaudio Special Forty.
Really enjoying it BUT (would be too easy otherwise), I do have a ‘SHHHHHHH’ on both speaker that I find quite bothering for my nearfield configuration, especially as I have acoustic panels.
As I don’t have any NAIM people around me to confirm this behaviour, I did check a lot of things: caps (capacity, ESR, etc), wires, filter, power strip, dry solder joints, etc but still it’s there.
It’s there even in mute, stays quite constant even when increase volume (EXCEPT the very end).
My initial guess was that the NAP200 was the culprite but replacing the NAC202 by a denafrips hestia it’s dead silent !
What I considered a initially as fault/issue seems somehow ‘normal’, did anyone have such case ?
When no music is playing it’s kind of distracting, and can hear it a bit when listening at low volume.
And yet I do have 86dB sensitive speakers….
Would an upgrade to a higher end NAC help resolve this ?
Naim amps do hiss, even when muted, though it’s not normally that noticeable with 86dB speakers. Try removing the non-Naim power supply and powering the 202 directly from the 200. In the longer term, a proper Hicap is strongly advisable.
I’d say you’re describing exactly what that system does when you insert a power supply which simply isn’t meant to be there. Put a HC2 DR in there and if it’s not absolutely silent then it’s service time.
Powering 202 with 200 was the first thing I did with similar result.
That’s the reason why I tried with NAPSC then a non-Naim PS to check if the circuit around the LM317 was the culprit
For the hiss I read a lot about it before asking here, but quite often people have standard distances for the speakers, here I’m less than 2 meters away from them
While Service will be in the todo list (if I find a reseller here) I wanted to make sure this behaviour isn’t ‘normal’.
Most importantly, I like to learn/understand why things misbehave, and out of all the measurements I made, couldn’t find a proper culprit
I have my speakers a standard distance away but for the 15 years I had the 202/200/NAPSC/HC2 DR I always had to walk to the speakers to put the TV on. Absolute silence.
The definition of near field is critical here. If we are talking true near field with speakers on a desk, then even a 84db speaker is likely to exhibit this.
The input sensitivity on Naim amps has been historically high, harking back from the pre digital age. The newer range and Uniti range actually cope better with that kind of near field setup.
The equipment you have is extremely good but I probably wouldn’t opt for it where I am sitting less than 1m from the speakers.
Most people find that unless the speakers are very high sensitivity, the hiss is barely, if at all, audible from the listening position of 2m+
Thank you for all your answers, it helps !
While playing music it’s not a big deal, it’s more bothering me when I want to focus.
A bit tedious to cut the speakers/amp each and every time.
If 282 mute is a real mute it could be interesting as well for me
And it’s really the first time I have such a behavior from a preamp (I had such kind of noise from old Quad Amp).
I had AVI, Electrocompaniet EC1, EC4.5 preamp and they never bothered me
It’s not input sensitivity but all down to the high gain design of the pre-amps (sounds best that way). It should be essentially unnoticeable at normal listening distance, but can be exacerbated by a verity of factors; an overly bright or sensitive speaker, speaker cable, extreme near field listening, certain room acoustics.
