At least 500!
Maybe less. Who knows all the 500 will be sold?
Worldwide they’ll all be sold, pretty quick to.
Not really, makes perfect sense to me. Solstice opens up a whole new revenue stream for Naim and electrifies the brand. 272 replacement although a profitable proposition, plays to an already captive Naimee audience, highly profitable, but nowhere near as groundbreakingly sexy as Solstice. All 500 will be gone in a flash, collectors items, then the individual components will follow to market…
I don’t want to give up on my 272 cause I have it not to long. A bad decision afterwards but the store pushed me that way and I let them. And I’ve regrets on that and that’s never gonna happen to me again. No updates no nothing. A shame….
You may have hit the nail on the head there - Naim may think that current 272 owners are a “captive audience” - but I’m sure that a lot are thinking about their next purchase, and what brand that might be, due to the lack of a sensible and up to date replacement.
My 555 will be certainly going up for sale and I’ll be jumping ship if my 272 conks out before a replacement arrives - and I really don’t want to do that.
The 555 is his PS.
I doubt Naim feel 272 owners are a captive audience, and whilst some on here have moved within the Naim family, others have gone to different suppliers to fill the gap.
I’ll keep my 272 for a while and be happy that it sounds good. I will change it sometime in the not too distant future though and will buy its replacement if there is one, or move to an alternative 2 or 3 box system. I don’t think I’d stick with Naim as that would either mean loads of boxes or selling my amp too and having to replace that, so virtually starting again.
Using a 272 as a standalone pre-amp seems a bit of a waste – or is it?
Put another way: within the context of a Naim system, what better pre-amp could be bought with the current expected sale proceeds of a 272?
As a 272 owner looking to upgrade to an NDX2, using the 272 as an interim pre-amp has a certain logic.
And at least in theory, wouldn’t the 272’s pre-amp then perform marginally better with its nearby streamer and DAC functions rendered inactive?
I guess they can only do so much at one time, by Naim’s standards the 272 isn’t particularly old either.
Sorry - I didn’t make it clear that the 555 is a power supply for the 272.
Using the 272 as a pre in the short term makes total sense. If you plan to stick with an all Naim system of course a separate preamp will be a nice further upgrade to look forward to but in the meantime the 272 will not sound ‘broken’.
I wouldn’t be so sure…
Back end of last year I located an ND555 at a good price and used the 272 as a preamp, under that same impression that it would be ok as a pre for a while. Being used to the 272/555PS sound I expected a decent jump in quality with the ND but I heard the opposite, and was very disappointed at how the ND sounded through the 272 and within a week had sourced a 252 + SC to replace it.
We can speculate on how the 272 without its 555PS was lacking something (the 555 was now feeding the ND), or maybe some other factors involving terms like synergy, but the bottom line was that the 272 as a pre wasn’t very good at all, when as a combined streamer & preamp with the ext PS it was superb. Life returned with the installation of a 252.
But that is what everybody is saying. Bare-272 is nice but no cigar.
So Naim could just as well use a small SMPS internally. Perhaps they could talk to Lejonklou here in Sweden that make some amazing amps using 2 SMPS in kindof push-pull, small and light. Very low noise.
If you’re removing a PSU from the 272 then yes, it’s a big step down and that will offset the gains in source quality considerably. With an NDX2 though, I would delay moving the PSU onto the source until the preamp was upgraded, which of course you can’t do with the ND555.
That’s an interesting possibility – which I’ll put to the test if / when my NDX2 arrives. I would have guessed adding the PSU to the source would be the way to go.
Source first is all very well, but preamp performance is always a key consideration in any Naim system, and I think a bare 272 would be a significant weak spot in the company of an NDX2 and a 250DR.
Still, once you get the NDX2 you will have the luxury of trying both options, so just go with whatever sounds best to you.
My 272 (as a bare preamp ) with a Digione Signature via spdif is miles away then the streamer inside
I’m now quite intrigued by these conversations about keeping the 272 as a preamp and upgrading the streamer. Currently, my 272 is powered by a 555PS, that replaced an XPSDR that I still have, unused.
Im wondering whether I could go for the NDX2, powered by the 555, and plug the XPS back to the 272.
That’s still two additional boxes to my current, ideal 4-count (with a 300DR). Sighs…
@jejese1 I don’t see why this isn’t an option if you want the new streaming platform, especially as you have a spare PS. I think I would try it with 555 on preamp as well before deciding which way around to have PSs