What was the last bit of gear you bought in 2024?

My dealer sells the brand, great sound and build quality beyond the ordinary.

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I never felt that Naim products were snakeoil. :slight_smile:

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Ken Kessler Dec 21, 2023;
I found the Soulnote E-2 to be everything one could want in a phono amp, whether or not one owns a DS Audio cartridge. So clean, detailed and open is the sound that I can see users swapping cartridges just for the fun of it, to challenge the E-2’s prowess. I fed it seven entirely different cartridges and it made each of them sing. This phono stage is utterly magnificent.
hfnoutstanding

Might be worth a closer look

Thanks. I don’t disbelieve you, but it doesn’t look like there is much of an American presence for Soulnote from what I can tell. It appears there is a dealer in Nashville, TN, a good 5 hrs drive each way.

The advantage of Boulder is that I have a long term local dealer who is 5 miles away (selling Naim, Boulder and Simaudio), and it’s one I’ve dealt with happily for 30 years. For that kind of money I’d rather deal with a well-established brand with local dealer sales and support.

I also don’t need the DS Audio support. I heard the cartridge and didn’t think it was as good as the Dynavector, Clearaudio and Lyra cartridges I’ve heard in similar price ranges.

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Cable OCD in me doesn’t approve Soulnote engineering. How can one place speaker cable ON transformer inside?!

It’s only a really little baby transformer though :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I tend to agree. From an engineering perspective, a toroid fed by clean mains shouldn’t have a flux field outside of the core, in which case cables on it is perfectly fine. This is the main reason for choosing toroids. The no unbound flux doesn’t affect adjecent components and doesn’t require any shielding.

But!

If the mains isn’t great and the core saturates, they are worse than any EI core. And we know poor mains is a constant struggle for some people. So I guess the question is, should designs assume bad mains? On the other hand, if the mains is bad enough to saturate the core, everything in proximity will suffer, not just those speaker leads. The same is true for Naim boxes.

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and its spectacularly thin cable too…

Don’t doubt it. But you responded to @Bjorn , “ look what’s inside “. I guess you wanted to say that as it’s a bit empty audio suppository, it’s snake oil. Not what you wanted to suggest?

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I have the phono box, its the one with mc and a volume pot out front, I use a Linn Koil so basically an audio technical OC9 xml. The combination works very well!. If I run thru the MM circuit I still have enough output gain too! sounds different but there is flexibility there. I wouldn’t compare it to superline.its a totally different beast and is full tube etc. It does sound really good in a naim/linn/atc system though :slight_smile:

Boulder is awesome gear. I’ve been considering getting the 866. But I really do like my Aestheix amp.

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@JosquinDesPrez hi one curious question , have you co solder 350 monobloc for your new system ? :thinking:

Consider *

Yes, if you look for faults you will find them Blackbird…:smirk: Here is another picture of one of their products :man_shrugging:

Pic from google

Look at this HUGE transformers placement :grimacing:

pffffrrooooooooooaaaarrrrr

No, I have no desire to get NC anything at all. What I have sounds fine and needs no change. At the point I make a change it will be to reduce box count by switching to Boulder or Simaudio North.

Reducing boxes going for boulder /simaudio makes sense !!

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???whatwhatwhatyoutalkingtome??

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And that’s why I wouldn’t want it. Different sound, and tubes (that probably won’t work with my cartridge). I like the sonic characteristics of the Superline. The Boulder is similar but better and solves the problem of multiple inputs.

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