LED once more: because RS costumer service told me that they can only ship in the UK, I ordered various white and green LED lenses from different manufacturers (all 5mm diameter) from Mouser Electronics. They are cheap and were delivered in a few days. However, shipping (from Texas/US to Switzerland) costs 20 euros. I achieved the best result with a combination of 2 green and 2 white lenses.
the green variant (light green and green variant) comes quite close to the LED of the ND5XS2. The brightness is reduced by around 50%. However, it is still brighter than the small LED on the streamer. Unfortunately, I didn’t order any yellow variants. This would probably bring the colour variant even closer to the original Naim LED colour
the white version (two white lenses) is more subdued and very pleasant.
Green or white is a matter of taste. The lenses are easy to slide on, even on top of each other. No glue was required.
I could give the article numbers from Mouser, but I’m afraid that would be against the forum rules.
(First Photo original, others are variants, in reality the difference is bigger than on the Photos)
…just a little design background about the muting/unmuting and soft-start.
Nait 50 on/off
Plugging in the Nait 50 to the mains you may hear a small click/pop as the control circuits take hold.
Once plugged in, it will go directly into 0.5W standby. Only the small SMPSU is on (under the black cover at the back). This powers the logic circuits; no microprocessors in the Nait 50). The audio circuits are completely off.
Pressing the ‘mains’ front panel button will toggle between standby (0.5W mode) and listening mode. The front LED will be brighter in listening mode. The button is called ‘mains’ to be like the original Nait, but is in fact a standby button.
Going in and out of standby by pressing the ‘mains’ button is very quiet (or auto standby). There is a 4 stage power down/power up sequence to take care of proceedings. FYI it is the same mute strategy in the new classic power amps.
Soft-start
Soft-start is how the mains toroidal power transformer starts up (the large round object). At power up a special resistor called an NTC soaks up the mains inrush current as the transformer magnetises. This prevents stressing the mains fuse and for bigger amplifiers stops RCD circuit breakers from inadvertently tripping. This is separate from the power amp section 4 stage mute. Once the toroidal has magnetised the NTC and the 0.5W SMPSU are switched off the N50 is ready to play.
Perhaps because they gauged the market right… I was reading last week that demand for CDPs is on the up, with a new generation of music lovers who no doubt enjoy Spotify but want to own physicals for music they enjoy that also sounds better.
Probably something to do with being able to buy CDs for about a pound a pop from charity shops, Music Magpie and the like. And without the QC issues associated with most sh vinyl purchases these days at money which is frankly bananas!
Kudos to the Oxfam I frequent, I asked if they could invest in some easier to remove price stickers last time I was in. Yesterday I saw they’d done just that!
There is a review of the Nait 50 on the What Hi-fi website. They don’t give star ratings for limited edition products but found it to be “a hugely entertaining and musical amp” although they do note the importance of matching the Nait 50 to speakers with care in order to get complimentary sonic characters.
The review includes a photo of the What Hi-fi review of the original Nait from 1984. Unfortunately the photo does not have sufficient resolution for the review to be read.
Yeah, but they rarely have any titles worth buying… but used CDs for interesting and modern titles can be found online unless your charity shop has a good source. I find Amazon a good source for good used CDs… as well as new titles.
I also note some CDs that are out of print are starting to go for silly money… one of mine is fetching around £300 when I last looked…… admittedly I bought it secondhand several years back for around £70.
Interesting… the Nait50 will drive many speakers well, however to hear the subtleties of the Nait50 you need to have a speaker than can render those, especially in the mids and higher end… and that is where the matching is important, or you might as well use a lesser amp.
It was the original immediately pulled and deleted version of Sandy Denny BBC Sessions… only a relative small number (3500) got out into the wild on the day of launch before it was pulled.
The album was later incorporated into a subsequent release… the recording of the Northstar Grassman and the Ravens is particularly impressive… it’s one of those artist audience recordings where you can feel the atmosphere… kind of like the Johnny Cash Folsom Prison recordings.