A say Supernait 3 or NAC272 must have a much higher cost of components than i.e XPSDR yet the XPSDR cost more. So Naim pricing is not based on component cost + added margins. They know those purchasing XPSDR will spend the money “no matter what” since they already invested a fair amount of money? I could understand if there was heavy engineering invested in it but to be honest, it’s a transformer, 6 caps and some no rocket science PCBs with resistors, caps etc for some pounds total.
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Basically two ways to price something.
Cost plus, or whatever you can get away with.
What is inside a xpsdr for a retail of £4200 is shocking. But as you say Naim know peeps will spend.
Second hand pricing gives a better idea of what an item is really worth ( at that moment in time).
2 year old mint ex dem xpsdr can be had for £2400. Still a lot for what is inside.
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The Burndy cable that comes with it is £520 + the PowerLine Lite another £100 = £620 just on cabling to fire it up with. However, once the XPS DR is plugged into a source component such as a NDX 2, then any costs that springs to mind are quickly evaporated. Anyhow, all audio gear seems over priced when you look at the face of it, not just a XPS DR.
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Correct. And that’s why we spend!
Naim are legitimate drug dealers.
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Beautiful. I always had a sweet spot with VU’s.
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A preamp I built in 1988 (which much help from a guy who actually knew what he was doing), based on blueprints in a German magazine for electronics nerds, Elektor. This was a time when you also hand-copied program code into your computer. It was my second piece of “serious” hifi after the Planar 3 that I had purchased a year before. It was considered “high-end” by the Elektor guys. The parts were all very high quality (Alps pots, Burr Brown ICs, Roederstein capacitors like in Naits at the time, all parts of course hand-selected and paired after measurements, inputs switched with relays, etc) and not all easy to obtain in small quantities. Difficult to quantify the cost because this was pre-EU and was 10,000 Austrian Schillings. By the conversion rate at the time of switch to Euros it would be approx 750 Euros, but this was like 15 year after the build date.
I took it from storage during covid boredom a few months ago to try how it sounds. I also had a power amp, sadly deceased during a party.
The front:
The black box on the left contains the transformer and the headphone amp. The amp knobs were originally not labeled because I knew. Many years later when I used it less and generally cared little for hifi, I added the high-quality labels for inputs. The volume knob received one label, “Laut” (you can guess 
Actually this was in homage to another friend from my youth who had built an amp that had only one switch with two positions, Off and Loud, to minimize everything that could be bad for SQ. This was the guy who had originally hooked me on hifi a few years earlier)
The amp inside:
Marvel at the Naim-like cable work.
The box for transformer and headphone amp:
Edit: I just had started university. When you opened a “student” bank account then, and paid like 50 Schillings into it, they immediately allowed a 10,000 Schillings overdraft limit. Of course at a rather outrageous interest rate, but being young and stupid I didn’t realize and it seemed like a good idea to invest it into a preamp
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That CD5si contains almost nothing!
Ok, so it’s only transport, psu and dac. But my goodness, that transformer must go in sometime else as well.
Looks like the psu and dac are on the same board too.
Naughty Naim. Which of their design manuals was that in?
Agreed, the XPS makes me laugh when I see the inside of it.
Compared to the inside of the 555ps DR, it makes the 555 seem like a bargain… 
Actually much of the CD5si (and the CD5i forebears) is hidden from view as the main PCB, is all on a board that is specially shaped to fit within the phenolic resin drawer, right under the mech. That’s good news as it reduces circuit distances dramatically and it means all that circuitry can take advantage of the isolation afforded by the drawer itself.
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I did wonder how my cd5si could sound that good with only a few bits. And that huge transformer!
Don’t start me off again!
FYI - the CD5si transformer is exclusive to that product.
And the DAC is inside the tray.
Regards
Neil.
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Thanks Steve that does help. Goodness only knows what that transformer is doing, but bigger is often better. And happy to know there is a hidden board of goodies inside the tray.
The second one looks like a modern F1 track
The CD5si is a stone cold classic. Fantastic player!
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