Had mine a week so it’s time for a review
Listening has been with the LP12 Akurate & Hana SH cartridge as source, speakers are ATC SCM11. It’s had a week of playing the Denon tuner to itself during the day with vinyl spinning on the evenings.
First impressions:
The build finish is lovely, nicely weighted volume control and the source buttons give a retro clunk when pressed. Speaking of retro, if you bring it out of standby without the volume being at zero, you do get a significant pop through the speakers.
Yes, that LED is bright. In my photo the unit is in standby and that is sufficient brightness in my opinion.
Onto the sound then. Fresh out the box it sounded a bit confused, vocals were gorgeous but the higher frequencies were lacking and the bassline of some tracks seemed like it was falling out of the speakers rather than being pushed. A week later and it’s a totally different animal. Let’s get the obvious out the way first, this is not an updated Nait (1) but a modern amplifier in a box that happens to look similar. Comparisons between a 40 year old design and the new design I don’t think would be fair. The original Nait is a cracking amp when paired with a similar age LP12 and some Kans (which I have) but in the context of my modern source and speakers there is more rewards with the new Nait.
What do I like about the Nait 50? Everything! The music has snapped into place now, it sounds a lot more open, the bass is taught (kick drums can be felt on your chest) and it’s filling the room nicely with a soundstage when fed with well-recorded material. ATC speakers are unforgiving of imperfections but the Nait does try to add a little smoothing of the waves in those situations too.
My previous setup was a SN3 with Hicap DR and I’ve done some comparisons but to be honest they are not even plugged in now. Don’t forget this is a comparison of vinyl performance using the onboard phono stages of each amp, the Nait against a bare SN3 is certainly a very close call. With the Hicap connected things are a bit more complicated, the SN3 then has more punch but for my ears the midrange falls back a notch. It’s like having a bigger picture but it’s too much to take in. Switching back to the Nait is enjoyable and surprisingly, the phono stage of the Nait is digging out little details from tracks that I know are in there but the SN3 doesn’t make so prominent.
Yesterday I gave the CD3.5 a quick spin which was pleasant enough and then for a giggle I hooked the Hicap DR up to it. Wowzer… Definitely more listening required on that combination.
One last observation, the Nait gains more bass weight when plugged directly to a wall socket instead of the (DIY) MK socket block so that needs a bit of further investigation, or perhaps I need to scratch that Powerline itch ?