Upgrade from NAC102 to 82 sound quality issues

As far as is possible I have done this. However in reality it’s not very possible. :frowning:

Unserviced 102 though (20+ years old probably) so it will actually sound quite soft by now - maybe even as wooly as a 72! :wink:

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Amen. I tried one and liked it a lot. It’s also very cheap now in contrast to some of the others. Perhaps it depends on what you pair it with but I liked mine.

Glad you are sorted, back to musical bliss! :smiley:

Re; unlocking of snaics, just lock em in Naim put collars on for a reason don’t mess with the chi of the Naim boffins!

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It looks like you could pull out your stand by a few inches. May give you some scope to do something.

Signal leads not touching anything helped me.

Exactly. The 102 is a proper bargain now so you can buy one and afford a service at the same time - which really opens up the window again.

FWIW I never really ‘got’ the 82 - a bit too energetic even when the music isn’t. It always seemed to me to be a staging post until funds were available to upgrade to a 52. Whereas the 102 was half the price and (in a front end heavy system) gives a very satisfying long term result. Crikey - Mine has seen 25 years’ use so doesn’t owe me much!

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My experience was the exact reverse - 102 vs 82. I never really ‘got’ the 102, after having a 72 - but the 82 was a winner straight away…!!!

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I’m going to see how it goes with the 82, but I may well send off the 102 for a service and then compare, which’d be interesting. I also have a friend in the village with a very similar system to mine (but with SBLs) who doesn’t seem to use it so may ask if I can borrow his 82 to see how similar it sounds to mine.

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The 102 isn’t massively different in performance to the 72. Certainly a bit less pipe and slippers, and of course has the convenience of remote control. So in your shoes (and wanted a proper upgrade) again I’d have bypassed the 82 and gone from 72 to 52. Too many preamps in the range IMHO.

I wish i’d bought a 52 years ago they are stupid money close to 4k for that and the matching supercap. Madness. It is supposed to be a great amp tho. I liked my 82 but the somewhat budget napsc always grated my nerves.

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Err… YMMV… But… What I should have done (IMO…) is stuck with the 72 - and waited to get an 82. This was about 20 years back now - and it wasn’t see easy to get/find ‘pre-loved’ Naim stuff…

Also, my 102 had ‘problems’… After a few years (so out of warranty…), I had it sent back to Salisbury & it got a new main PCB. Then I bought a used 72…
That convinced me the 102 had to go… :slightly_smiling_face:

Thats My Experience. You may not agree… but its still mine…

PS. I love my 82… :grin:

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Spending over £4k on a used NAC52 is not going to happen (two on eBay now). It’s not that I should even need a pre-amp! I’m only running the NDX from it and I have no need of balance, or loads of buttons and lights so all a pre-amp really means to me is the (supposed) Naim sound and very, very annoyingly, volume control. NAC 72 is no good either as I need the remote. My choice is 102 or 82… or if I dump the NDX and use the SB+ no pre-amp at all… but last time I tried this the system became very noisy.

The pre-amp is one half of the amp - and the most important half, it’s not just a volume control. I used an 82/140 for a while and it was really good. A 102/180 would sound poorer for example.

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I went from 72 to 82 when it came out (I think mine was the first Sound Org London sold), I lived with it and enjoyed thousands of hours of music through it for 25 years. Running with 135s and ES14s it was very slightly forward at very high volumes (belated apologies to my then neighbours), when the ES14s succumbed to a lightning hit I replaced them with the B&W804S I still use and even that slight edge went. The 82’s a very classy pre, the 52 I replaced it with is a big step up, but the 82 stayed in my system for a quarter of a century because I loved music through it.
I did run a bare NDX1 through it, I didn’t find any harshness.

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I get that. It’s an inelegant solution. And then you can add 2 HiCaps to end up with a four box preamp with three mains leads. Bonkers !!

Currently my 102 is taking a well earned rest and in its place sits the 42.5. I miss the remote, but kinda enjoy the simplicity of it and it sounds really good. It’s a reminder that the kit we use actually doesn’t matter very much once you get to a certain minimum standard for decent sound.

Apologies to the OP for the diversion :innocent:

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What needs servicing inside a 102? And I mean ‘needs’. I bought mine in 1999 and it’s fine. I’ve chatted with long-time Naim owners/fettlers, and they’ve advised that if it’s working, leave it alone.

The 82 is very different, needs servicing regularly.

Ooh. I can answer that. Naim used capacitors that have a useful life of 10-20 years. A service replaces them. A Naim licenced service uses exactly the same capacitors whereas a WitchHat one uses one they think are better… but then it becomes ‘not pure Naim’.

I’d also hoped that a service would verify that the amp was working to specification but I’m not at all sure that is the case.

The differences between the 102 and 82 are worth a quick exploration:

So what extra does (approx x2) extra money get you with the 82? Well, looking at the actual circuitry, surprisingly little! There are some fairly minor circuit tweaks here and there in the 82, but the two preamps share pretty much the same basic design. More interesting is the use of some better quality capacitors in the power filtering and feedback locations in the 82. But you’d expect the (much less expensive) 102 to save some money by using less exotic (but still perfectly decent) capacitors here. Both amps use exactly the same quantity and specification tantalum signal coupling capacitors throughout- no penny pinching here. By the way, all of the above mentioned capacitors deteriorate in the same way in both preamps, so both will obviously benefit equally from servicing.

Looking around the rest of the 82 you start to see other differences. The 82 has had more effort put into isolating the sensitive areas from vibration. The volume and balance pots are mounted directly on the main pcb in the 102, while the 82 has them nested away from direct contact with the pcb. All of the input sockets are pcb mounted on the 102, where the 82 uses panel mounted sockets, wired to the pcb.

Then there’s the differences that only really become worthwhile if you use them. Here I’m thinking about the extra bank of record select buttons, and the additional sockets and wiring to facilitate a second Hicap. Oh - the 82 has an LED in the volume and balance knobs. I do know of one 102 that has those. I can confirm it doesn’t make it sound any better :blush:

Lastly, the NAPSC comes as standard with the 82. I sometimes wonder how many people never got to hear a 102 working as well as it can, but didn’t because they wouldn’t fork out for this vital little psu.

There’s probably more but it’s time to flip the record over and maybe pour a whiskey. Cheers :tumbler_glass:

OTOH….

I have a 102 + NAPSC1, and an 82+NAPSC1 (also an NAPSC2).
I have run both from a Hicap, and also from a Supercap ( with and without a NAPSC in the case of the 102, and also 2 Hicaps in the case of the 82).

The 102 is great, the 82 is better.

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@Mr.Tibbs
They do seem to be quite different internally.

102


82

I agree the 102 is good but the 82 added the artists into the room without being forward in nature