What do you think about your speakers @bruss? They are a very personal thing. I have had my Focal Aria 936s slated on here but I love them.
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Love 'em and am thinking of a set of D7.2 to replace them when I get the amp/source/racking upgraded to my satisfaction.
Also love or hate them the thread is about changing one component and noticing a difference and getting that sorted. Changing anything else is a separate issue for me.
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Good. I say as long as you like them that’s what counts. Servicing always helps and then you have the burn in for upto 4 weeks where it sounds good, great, rubbish and then fantastic. Stick with the 300.
The new turntable will be great to hear.
I love my sources and have spent a great deal on them. The NDS 555PS is truly amazing for the money!
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I am an advocate for full Fraim. Worth a try?
Not over keen on the looks. Thinking about a custom made jobbie from Sound Organisation but that will be after Christmas.
Nice gear. I bought a black glass shelf in Naim style for a Fraimlite shelf from them and it is pretty good. Not quite Naim but does the job just fine. I considered their racking but went with full fraim apart from 2 fraimlite shelves on a 10 component rack. Cost me around £5k, mixture of new, demo and preloved. It was worth it though and looks the part, sounds the part.
Regardless whether the speakers are any good or not, it doesn’t take away the fact that they are obviously more suited to the 250 than the 300. It suggests 2 things to me, as has already been suggested the more revealing power amp is showing deficiencies upfront, and that speakers don’t always respond to better power amps. I have experienced this with a pair of Shahinian Obelisk, whereby a Nap 110 was clearly happier than a 160, the exact opposite of the result with a pair of SL2 which responded as expected with the better amp.
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That might explain why I prefer the 250DR over the 300 with my obelisks, defies all logic but nevertheless the case…
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I’m no fan of Spendor speakers but they are generally pretty consistent. Your model I think was an aberration. As with all speakers there is always a system somewhere which will work with them but perhaps within tighter parameters than you might expect i.e. it won’t take much for them to sound off.
I’m going to be auditioning a Qutest in my system with an Innuos as the source. I would expect it to play nice with a 202/200/HCDR/NAPSC especially with a reclocker added in but if I were to ever upgrade the amplification I can see how the DAC would instantly be the weak link.
I’m asking looking at your picture thinking there must be an awful lot of energy with that floor and the 300 is less likely to play nice with that.
Though this from an earlier post of mine may also be relevant:
it seems from at least some some people’s viewpoints that as you move up the amp hierarchy the improvement of other aspects on top of the core timing focus means that the characteristic ‘Naim sound’ is diluted - if that is what you crave then maybe the 250 is better.
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It’s always difficult when you hear negative things about stuff you have/like/are trialling, but that’s the nature of asking on a forum!
Your ears are what you have to listen through, so whatever they tell you is right - and whatever is causing it, the 300 isn’t working in your current system. I’d give it a few days before really judging, however, as it might just be different, not worse. But if you then think it’s worse, it’s clearly out of balance somewhere, and if you want to keep the 300 then you’ll be needing to change other stuff too - source, or speakers, or both. Maybe an opportunity to audition via post, maybe not. In general, the 300 is a better amp than the 250 - but not in every system in every circumstance, and if you’re happy with the other aspects of your current system, ONLY changing the 250 to the 300 would be a mistake. Keeping the 300 and changing other stuff too should result in a better system, which you would hear the difference with - but which might be a step (emotionally or financially) too far. In which case, enjoy what you have until you can hear other stuff more easily again…
It’s a hard one - I started off happy with my system expect for the speakers, and changed it all in the end…
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Crackles and pops would be exceedingly rare with a power amp - and are not the basis for servicing them or not, though I gather by now you do seem inclined to have it serviced.
I fear this isn’t an easy case for ‘tele-diagnosis”…
I am not surprised that Chord’s Qutest was the first victim. A £1,200 DAC just can’t be good enough for top-level Naim amplification. But then @MrUnderhill has a 300DR and a super-transparent passive pre-amp ICON4, and he’s rather content with the small black box from Chord. And lots of other happy Naim users here.
And then the 300 brigade — yes, I don’t doubt that the 300 is a great amp. But then @timmo1341 couldn’t make the 300 work with his speakers in his room, and instead settled for the humble 250…
And then there’s the age issue. Surely the 300 would benefit from a service, and possibly a DR upgrade. @Roog wasn’t happy with his 300, and the DR upgrade was a game changer for him. But it’s a lot of money, and it might not be the solution in your case…
I could continue, but my wife tells me it’s time to go to bed… I guess I would try to establish the “endgame”, and take his a starting point for searching for solutions.
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I think there are a number of issues that you need to look at here, some of which have already been discussed.
I, too, have tried Spendor A5s, and found them to sound truly awful. So I would suggest that you consider trying some alternatives, but that doesn’t seem to be the cause of your current issue, as you say you have enjoyed them before adding the 300?
Your source is arguably somewhat weak compared to your amp, at least on paper. But the Hugo, from which the Qutest was developed, has been the DAC of choice for some, even with higher spec Naim amps than yours. So again, I’m not convinced that this is the problem, even though I think you could gain a lot from a source upgrade.
If an individual component is to blame, I suspect it has to be your old, unserviced 300.
BUT…looking at your photo, I’m suspicious that a big part of your problem is the way you have your system set up. This becomes increasingly important as you climb the Naim upgrade ladder. A dedicated HiFi rack (such as Fraim, but there are others) would be nice, but it’s essential to take care with cable dressing, and to keep mains cabling, and especially those pesky little SMPS boxes, away from the very sensitive source, preamp and interconnects. So if I were you, I would rethink the layout of your system from the ground up, service the 300, and take it from there.
Good luck!
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I see that these speakers cost around 1,6 k. Cost is not all of course, but 20k electronics on 1,6k speakers is not ideal.
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Thanks everyone. Lots of useful comments, and I have no problem with a bit of criticism or even negativety. I’m a big boy now 
The path for me now is to establish whether the 300 is what I want and to do that I will have it serviced and bring it up to the best it can be. Meanwhile I am going to swap out the speakers for a set of Dali Oberons to see how they perform with the 300 against the 250. It could be that the A5’s have hit a low spot with the 300 but I find it hard to believe that the 250 is soooo different to the 300 in its ability to drive them.
Re the rack and positioning cabling etc, again its not optimum but I ran everything well spaced before compressing it all into the rack and tidying the cabling according to domestic goddess and family harmony requirements. It will improve when I get a new racking system made, but I shan’t do that until I have decided on the final kit configuration. Also I am not talking about small changes in the sound here, there is an obvious and significant something gone missing.
Re the A5’s, I am surprised that there is so little love for them. I’ve had them a whole number of years and have moved them from small apartments to larger country properties and have not found them lacking. Admittedly the 250 did release something in them compared to the 202/200 combo, but even so they have been preferable for me over many alternatives I’ve had over the years. Next year if Covid permits I will be demoing the D7.2’s but will also be looking at alternatives. We can argue about that next year.
As I said on an earlier thread this is a steep learning curve for me, so once again thanks for all comments, it really is a good forum for honest opinions and I’ve learnt a lot very quickly.
Your ears hear what your ears hear. That said, there is inarguably quite a difference between a 250 and a 300 so if you’re not hearing that then something is clearly amiss. A service for the 300 is definitely the way to start. Then see how you feel.
Yes, my overnight conclusion is just that. It may be this particular 300 that is lacking rather than 300’s in general. Test that first and then go from there.
It is true, I purchased a used 300 and was very disappointed with it, it sounded like it lacked in the high frequencies and lacked clarity in the bass. I thought my relatively new SU sounded better on balance, despite its limitations when driving fairly power-hungry speakers. There was much talk here about ‘mullets’, but a service and a DR upgrade improved things a great deal. (I don’t remember using the expression ‘gamechanger’ ) My 13 year old 300 was definitely not performing as intended. Of course, I do not know if it was the service or the DR upgrade which made the greatest difference.
I was disappointed at how bad a 13 year old (hardly ancient) Naim power amp could sound.
I still have this system, my dealer has told me that he didn’t think a 272 without PSU would make a noticeable improvement, so I wait to see if anything interesting lands regarding a suitable streamer/DAC/Pre, Naim or otherwise, and until then, I am quite content with my apparently “terrible Mullet!”. 