I’m another who has found hifi kit very reliable: Every piece of HiFi equipment I have bought over my 50 years with this hobby, some kit bought brand new and some secondhand, has worked without faults for many years. Brands have been Garrard, Thorens, Shure, Coral, ATC, Rega, Cambridge, Shearne, Naim, Chord, Sinclair, Radford, Musical Fidelity, TagMcLaren, Bryston, IMF, PMC, Behringer.
The least reliable were Sinclair Z30 power amp modules from my first system, which had no overload protection and I burnt out the output transistors several times - but that doesn’t really count as arguably it was my fault. Next least reliable were my two CD players (Cambridge CD2 followed by Shearne Audio Phase 7), both starting to suffer misread faults through wear after about 10 years. Otherwise my IMF TLS50ii mid drivers’ foam surrounds deteriorated after about 15 years so I repaired them. Musical Fidelity The Preamp 2A went into oscillation on its moving coil input at about 18 years old, taking out a speaker bass driver. A supertweeter on an IMF RSPM speaker developed a fault at about 45 year, but easily replaced. And a switch-on surge from inadvertent wrong switching order took out a mid driver on another speaker. I think these have been the only faults I have experienced.
The Alfasud Sprint was a lovely looking thing. I remember at Uni seeing a mint one for sale on a driveway as I drove through Auchtermuchty. Turned out it had less than 30,000 miles on the clock, and so £750 in cash later it belonged to a close friend who was over the moon to have such great looking car (an Alfa Romeo!) for so little money.
To celebrate the new wheels, we planned a weekend away with some friends up in Aberdeenshire. I recall that the Alfa was going to play its part in a well planned seduction of a certain girl my friend had recently befriended. I led in my car for most of the journey, but on one particular long stretch of dual carriageway my friend must have floored it as he fairly flew right past me and disappeared into the distance. Boy, that Alfa did look good as it sped off and away…
Not for long though. a couple of minutes later we caught up to it as it was sat motionless at the side of the road, vital fluids spilling every which way from underneath, and a very upset friend, and a somewhat bemused girl still sat in the passenger seat. I went to the next town to call out a mechanic who duly arrived and towed the poor bleeding Alfa away. Not long after came the prognosis; it was terminal. The Alfa had not lasted the week. On the upside though, that was longer than things lasted with the girl…
Mine was a very sick car… When I bought it new, it had a lovely gear lever knob made of expensive looking wood (burl walnut?); 10,000 miles later, it was just white plastic - the paint hadn’t even lasted a year. It was also the only one of my cars to develop a tumour in the dashboard: a spherical bump appeared one day, which kept growing, and was about 4 inches across when I eventually managed to sell the car to a VW dealer. I’ve stayed with VW/Audi ever since (except for a couple of Scenics).
But this is really off-topic, sorry.
Given that my 2 month old 252 died this week and now has to go back for warranty repair, I have a very real opinion on the quality of new HiFi products
Very disappointing. My first failed component in 43 years of hifi ownership
It’ll be interesting to know what happened because I’ve never come across such a thing before - i.e. a pre-amp just completely dying. I can only guess it’s a component failure in the logic control board. This sort of thing is unusual, but it can happen. Luckily it’s warranted by Naim, which also underlines why aftersales and warranty support from a good dealer and from the manufacturer is so important. Hopefully it will be sorted out for you quickly and efficiently and I would guess that your dealer is ensuring you are covered in the meantime?
I’ve been a Naim user since 1983 , CB system for ten years,Olive for twenty plus years,upgrading to a Classic system in 2016.
I was using a NDX with my Olive system but upgraded to a 252,Supercap DR,250 DR an added a XPS DR to the NDX.
Upgraded to a 300 DR in 2017, added a Core plus full S/L loom finally upgrading to a ND555 couple of years ago.
The CB and Olive kit was bullet proof but my Core overheated a couple of times and cut out the dealer found loose screw floating around inside. My S/L speaker cables had loose connections and finally the ND555 has failed twice.
A bit disappointing after so many years of being a Naim user but this is where the legendry Naim and Dealer service kicks in.
New Core installed within 72 hours, replacement S/L speaker cables supplied and installed within 48 hours and finally loan streamers installed the next working day.
As I said a bit disappointing but part of the rich tapestry of life and a minor inconvenience as things stand at the moment.
Some mention of the reliability of motor cars I started my five years motor technicians apprenticeship in 1970 so you can imagine some of of the quality British cars I worked on !!
At the time Shell and BP were spending hundreds of millions of pounds drilling for oil in the North Sea. British Leyland vehicles were depositing gallons of the stuff all over the highways totally free of charge and if you were lucky your car would have some left for your drive.
I thought it had a rather staid look to it, and as for the raspberry blowing exhaust… The only Alfa I was ever interested in was the Alfetta GT/GTV - considered buying at one time unti I learnt of their rust and unreliability. Instead got an Audi 100S (the Aston Martin lookalike).
in total I owned 7 alfas one after another - great to drive but one day I went to the alfa specialist and there were 2 of my previous cars there…total 3 - which wasn’t a great indication of reliability!
Thanks Richard - yes my dealer has provided me with some loan amplification to keep me going in the form of a NAC 92/Flatcap.
He also said he’s never seen a problem like this before so I hope it can get sorted quickly.
