Well probably to the surprise of absolutely nobody on here I came back from the shop with a brand spanking new SN3 
The choice of deal was £1000 for trading in my Nait XS2 and RRP for the SN3 or a nice discount on the SN3 with no trade-in so I chose the latter.
It seems I was a bit harsh on my post about niggles regarding the RCA sockets as they are indeed colour marked with a thin ring of red or white on the outside of the terminals nearest the back of the amp.
It doesn’t sound quite as good as the one I had on loan yet as it is new out of the box and will need a bit of running in but at least I’ve heard what it is capable of. Still sounds mighty fine though.
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FIFY 
Did you park at the back and ring the bell? I’m finding parking there a challenge recently. I know that the parking spaces they pay for are often full.
Yes but we were lucky today as there was one of their spaces free. Otherwise the plan was for SWMBO to sit in the car and move it if necessary while I went in to do the deal. Too many Deliveroo/Just Eat drivers hogging the spaces!
Yep. That’s the ones. Driving the guys there nuts.
I was very interested to read a little about the SN3 as I hope to try one out very soon. I’ve decided to include this amp in my search despite it having a MM phono input, and no facility for MC. My cartridge is a Dynavector 17D3. Seems I’m paying for something I don’t need.
Sam
But the OCD may say that the dead center is not my dead center.
You can use the MM input and a step-up transformer, like the Ortofon T 5 or something more upmarket, with your cartridge. If the phono stage is a good one you will be pleasantly surprised. I’m waiting for a demo unit to arrive and will try just that.
Julia Jacklin - Pressure to Party from her album Crushing
Mogwai - Ritchie Sacramento from their As The Love Continues album.
The Julia Jacklin track was a bit of a fuzzy mess with the Nait XS2 and Mogwai almost unlistenable
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I had a HCDR on my SN2
Massive difference
Many advantages but there’s just something get lost or missing in the coherence and timing dept, which is reason I ended up selling the psu.
I will try Aethos to see if this perform the trick.
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I listen to the Julia Jacklin album quite often not found it sound a fuzzy mess on my Atom.
Mostly it is fine, just parts of that 1 particular track didn’t sound great with the Nait. All good now with the SN3
I’d say having done all these combinations myself that getting the source as good as possible makes a more meaningful improvement. I had a HiCap DR on multiple NAIT’s and NAC’s as well as multiple sources in particular an ND5 XS2 and later an NDX2. I actually traded in my HiCap as part of the process of moving to the NDX2 from the ND5 XS2. That and adding IsoAcoustics Gaia feet to the speakers made the most beneficial improvement to my ears. I’ve had a chance to add a HiCap DR back in to the mix but haven’t bothered, the SN3 has clearly been voiced to address some of the shortcomings of the SN2, which along with a SN1 I’ve had in the mix of various systems. Adding one to a SN2 made perfect sense and it did make it a better preamp, I think the distinction is less clear with the SN3, adding a HiCap DR to a SN3 changes the presentation more so than fixing it.
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Yes the midrange on the Mogwai track has had the hell compressed out of it but the SN3 handles it a lot better than the Nait. That said, I did find the CD rip sounded better than the hi-res version on Qobuz. I haven’t tried the Qobuz version on the SN3 so maybe I’ll give that a go and see how it compares.
I don’t know what the engineer was thinking as usually Mogwai sound great. If you’re not familiar with it, have a listen to a track called Remurdered from their Rave Tapes album, that really does sound good.
All true, but even better a good mono recording (in the absence of a mono button like real amps have 
)
Sounds like a certain shop in Ashford to me 
One of the oldest,if not the oldest naim dealership no less!
No way to speak about Geoff
Yep, that works as well!
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Also, 12 O’Clock isn’t necessarily the point of perfectly balanced output between left and right channels, on my SN3 it’s at about 1:00 - 1:30, on my SN2 I had it was around 11:00.
Set the balance to what feels balanced to your ears in your room, don’t be afraid to move the speakers about a bit as well, closer or further apart, towards and away from any rear walls and toe-in/out.
It’s a cheap experiment/upgrade potentially if nothing else!
I turn off any display output as well apart from the central Naim logo, that way you won’t ordinarily even know where the balance pot is relative to 12 O’Clock anyway.
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