Strictly-speaking, the newest purchase has been a pair of Neat Xplorers. That may look odd, as I already own a pair of B&W 804D3s, but all my recent purchases are driven by Good News…
- I have just retired.
- I have new (or nearly new) additions to my main hi-fi in Wimbledon.
- I have a holiday home in Tasmania - I have seen December to March in London many times…
- I needed to buy a new hi-fi for the house down there.
For the house in Tasmania, I had imagined buying a Nova and pair of the excellent Neat Xplorer speakers. While the excellent Bob Surgeoner at Neat deserves much support, this choice is entirely driven by how much music and how much fun the Naim/ Neat combination offers. However, that combination means £10K of outlay for good (but not audibly as good as it can be) kit, with Qobuz & Tidal streaming services as the only sources.
I can imagine that my internet service there should be good, but that any failures may take rather longer to fix than here. I am a bit nervous of finding that we have no music for days because the internet is glitchy and everything goes through the Nova and the Naim app. In addition, I already have a Naim 82 pre-amp not being used, as I bought an old Naim 52 pre-amp (looks the same but sounded even better, i.e. less) a few years ago, and am aware that eBay here is a good way to cut costs for most of this stuff. Time for Plan B.
eBay has now provided a Naim Core with 2TB of SSD storage. Either the Naim Core NAS (once filled with all my CDs) or the Naim CDS2 CD player (plus attendant power supply box and the piles of CDs) will stay in Wimbledon, with the other being shipped to Tas. I’d rather ship the NAS and keep the CD player in situ (not least because of the sheer volume of CDs involved), but can reverse that if the news on internet robustness and speed at my Tasmanian house is not ideal.
eBay has also provided a Naim 250 power amp and a Hicap power supply for the pre-amp, just like the ones I have in Wimbledon, plus a nearly new Naim ND5 XS2. Finally, Grahams in Islington have offered nearly-new Xplorers at a compelling discount. All of the older boxes (whether new to me or not) have been serviced in the last couple of years - from previous experience, this makes a big difference even if nothing was about to fail.
Whether I ship the Core or the CDS2, I will have multiple boxes instead of one in Tasmania. On the other hand, I will have audibly better kit for less money than the single box would have cost new. It’s a bit hobby-ist, but there are worse ones.
Of course all that mean for now that the visible change at home is the appearance of the Core on my existing HNE table.
I have just joined this community - this is my first post, so please tell me if I am not doing any of this correctly.