Wow; what a thread!
PRaT, ay?
I’d like to contribute my recent observations specific to this topic as I feel they develop and support a few of the views already given in this thread…
I am fairly new to the NAIM product range after years/decades of ‘watch this space’.
Having access to a ‘lowly’ Nait XS(3) I found the first week with it a very hard adoption.
And then I adjusted my speakers to suit the equipment.
WHAT
A
DIFFERENCE;
For the entire first two hundred hours, assuming the amp was breaking in/warming up (for life), I let go the ‘slight volume imbalance’, typical of kit with analogue volume pots ‘down low on the dial’…
but it wasn’t the case; the NAIT simply was a fast little amp that revealed the imbalance in the speakers distance (from the listening position).
Having rotated six plus amps through the ‘den setup’ in the months prior… (and five more the year prior); NONE of the other amps were intolerant of the 1.5inch recession on the left speaker… (from the listening position)…
So- ten other ‘mainstream’ high quality music amplifiers did not have the ‘precision’ to show this error in my setup…
So I moved the speaker forward the appropriate ‘few centimetres’… (smidge over an inch, with the speakers nearly four metres away…)
Naims’ precision with the soundstream made a very differenet, very obvious improvement in the rendering of MUSIC.
The ability to layer instruments correctly on a 3D stage means my ears can correlate the musicianship of artists ‘in sync’ with each other.
(great as I like improv’d Jazz and the ‘fun’ of musicians ‘in the zone with each other’)
In the first four hundred hours the Nait imaged well forward of the rear wall (not a preferred trait in my equipment selections), but after many hundreds of hours (the amp was ‘new from box’), the subtle high frequency cues that revealed absolute room dimensions were also in the music, and the Naim staged WELL BEYOND THE FRONT WALL (as it should).
Not all musical/audio equipment is tuned or built with the same design goals.
Most equipment I have bought that plays the ‘spec sheet’ warfare game, seem to forget to tune for music, and output the ‘less real rendition’ of the music (flatter/less dimensionality)…
If I didn’t care about stage depth and absolute stage size OVER improtant factors like timbre/pitch etc, then I might not have noticed so much…
The Naim ‘house sound’ to me seems to be focused on recreating a stage that timing is critical to render not just the musicians in relation to each other,… but also the distance from them individually to where I enjoy them as a listener.
It has to be much much more than this, as via the Naim amplifier, the music, even ‘rooms away’ sounds cohesive and intact.
I associate this with ‘high slew rate’ amplfiiers, and admittedly the recent Naim Naits’ have been optimised on this front.
Having the ‘smaller stage’ presentation of the Nait vs the previous part (a much higher price point piece of kit), and other top tier references (throughout the decades); Naim kit seems to render the music right in the way that most associate Valve amps as ‘being more musical’. (typically a slowness of the leading edge of a bass note that might creat a visceral ‘real’ feel (and fantastic vocals!!))…
The closest I have come to ‘great valve sound’ (danish monoblocks) is the Naim Nait - ‘lowly integrated’.
I have been very happy downsizing to Naim, and the music that flows isn’t unique to Naim, certainly, but is what I find from only a few vendors in the market, none of THEM being affordable or ‘generic’/mass market products…
Tuning for musicality vs spec sheets is 90% of this battle…
Most circuit designers that I have read about in interviews regarding their ‘tuning’ is that the first version of a circuit build might be electrically better (/measure better), but lacks absolute musicality … they then ‘detune’ the perfect circuit to make it ‘sound right’.
Spec sheet warfare is the wrong way to buy hifi. -it IS emotional in our engagement and we should find what elicits the feelings we seek.
Naim tune for timing and factors of what I consider musicality, vs 'a ruler flat soundstage (no depth) and ‘spec sheet perfection’.
Muchly appreciated!!