No doubt in my mind, golden era when J. Vereker were in charge.
He created some excellent products.
My first Nait 2 listening back more than three decades ago, smashed my then valve setup with much better prat and involvement.
I remember the change from Olive to Classic looks.
In the early days of hifi forums, many didn’t like the move, included me.
I sort of got “used to” the black boxes, as basically they were refinement of many earlier boxes, such as Nac 102 became Nac 202 etc.
Is this compred to the NC-range also?
JV certainly signed off the New Classic range so for me it’s just the latest New Classic that he has not had input with directly. How much he would have liked the new gear and sound is impossible to know. Given Naims drive to excel they must feel that each new generation has been an improvement on the last.
It is our personal preferences that produce this debate. From Naims point of view the latest must be the best because this is their mission statement. Just my 2p of course, but I remain happy that NC beats my OC system. I am also happy that imho OC was an improvement over Olive. YMMV.
yes ,it is.
My only regret not having had the chance for cds3/555 /252/SC/250-2.
Mid 2000s are long gone unfortunately
Which product do you want but can’t have just out of interest?
Down load a 2022 Price list, the products will all be available for many years to come. 
Yes! My experience with NC is very limited, being hearing it in the demo room of my dealer while my LP12 was being upgraded.
I think the NC is a technical improvement, and possibly the best that Naim have produced. One hopes they wouldn’t produce it unless they thought it was better than OC.
HOWEVER
it’s another step away from the sound I want. In 1996, when I was hunting for the amplifiers I wanted, I was introduced to Naim amps, and was blown away by them. They were exactly what I had been looking for. I had found my holy grail. In all the intervening years, I have heard many many amps, including all of Naims excluding the Statement, and nothing gets into my very being like the Olive series. That’s great news for me because I don’t have any urge to ‘upgrade’.
Of course, I appreciate that most people in here will think otherwise, and that’s great. We all have differing needs with hifi, and we all find our own solutions to achieve the sound we want.
I had that setup sans the 555 (XPS2) and it was pretty meh. 252/SC2/250.2 were a big let down. JV would not approve.
Thank you for your clarifying response. Much appreciated.
Ah so you are saying it moves even further away from the olive sound. I have an NDS, an 82 and a 250DR so it’s kind of unclear what kind of sound I am enjoying and how it would compare to the NC.
In what way, would you say, has the NC sound departed even more?
What is left of the “Naim sound”? Whatever that is.
Leading edge attack perhaps or focus on midrange/upper midrange? Very high resolution in the midrange? I don’t know how they done it but to me Naim is very special first and foremost in how open and breathy it is in the midrange. Sounds seem to emerge from a vacuum and have its own space even though the sound isn’t that clean or seamingly detailed. It doesn’t have a pitch black background or anything like that. At least not if I got to describe it. It makes the sound feel kind of “live” which I’ve heard people say before.
Exactly. Yes, the Olive sounds more live to me also. I don’t think it is as refined as the OC or NC, but for all old fashionedness it is exactly what I want. NC is much more refined, with more detail retrieval etc. but, I think, at the cost of losing some of its emotional connection.
I find my 82/olive hicap/250DR does that fairly well. On the other hand, I have never heard an olive 250 in my system. I heard a 140 but that was less satisfying than my 250 DR.
So your 82/olive hicap/250DR is doing what you need from your hi-fi, and making you happy. That’s all that matters. Enjoy the music.
The Golden Age of Naim was back in the years when it could be happily left powered up without any concerns of electric bill costs.
The Golden Age had kicked off again with the Nait 50 - a design classic!
What about the Golden Age of jeans?
Awesome: that’d be present range inclusive. (I can run my Nait for a month vs what a day or two of listening might cost me on the older pre/power or some integrateds’ in house.)
Value for money is based on eyes of beholder… so might not be going down as the price goes up, based on what is happening across entire audio market presently…
I suppose when the market lost CD mechanisms, and started modifying DVD transports to ‘suit’ was when scales of production clearly no longer focused on those focused on chasing ‘hifi’ (hi end) sound.
In that regard the entire audio market has been a a backwards slide since the iPhone 3Gs, and the Beats/Skullcandy reinvigorating of cool to wear large headwear in public persona that came with…
DAC chips built to sip power (phone use) lead R&D and sound quality has been taking a firm backseat to guiding principles for awhile now.
Throw in requisite ‘belt tightening’ any time a world financial crisis happens and I know that is a guideline towards MUCH of my hifi purchase considerations.
I feel system synergy is golden (requisite); so ‘golden age’ may mean different things to different people based on the times when they have heard synergistic sound setups.
If the implication that this could be done for more/less coin depending on ‘market’ and fair value swinging over the aeons, then Golden Age might be from when we were young and could hear better (but had less knowledge on how to listen), and bought what was affordable, OR just as likely - from the place in history where we finally had the income to own the kit that truly amazed us.
For me?
I am truly glad that Naim actually make the kit they do- their house tuning/house sound is something to strive for, something I really (really) enjoy partaking in, and am happy with even their ‘budget fi’ solutions.
I suppose my fear is that further ‘going down the road’ of trying to sell to the masses as high end audio prices itself out of the market, means that the Golden Age will come to an end in the decade that follows. (even if the spec sheets improve wink.gif)
And I do at 70. What I really can’t fit into is the idea of being 70.
My golden age of Naim is 2005-2011/12 vintage, changing significantly when the Uniti series was introduced, n-Sats discontinued, HardDisk replay first appeared and, last, DR took over LM317.
I still preferably buy used gear from that period. Everything I have or have had from those years has never failed or failed me.
Thread diversion - no apology. With the wonderfully named Aerial Bender on guitar it had to be the golden age!
I think Olive.