I purchased a new Naim CDI as my first CD player when the new medium of CD was introduced, and when Naim finally started to make CD players.
Auditioning competing players at a simple A/B level was very difficult, as most players that were 'lauded' by magazines at the time as a shortlist to audition, were only available at different retail establishments.
I bought the CDI as it almost sounded like 'analog' given the tendency for many CD players at the time to sound bright and harsh. Within a year a 72/Hi-Cap/!80/SBL setup followed; the electronics to complement the CD player, and the speakers to complement/match the overall system.
It was always an 'exciting' and 'impressive' aural presentation of music - if at times a little hyped and unnatural sounding on some material.
Over the ten-odd years that I had it, I was very happy with the system as a whole; however high maintenance, leaving on/warming up rituals, the incredible rudeness and arrogance of some of the Naim cult followers proved both tiring and very off-putting, and as my interest in adding AV capabilities to my system grew, so I started looking in other directions for solutions.
AV add on came by virtue of some Sony 9000 ES components, which surprised and shocked me by actually outperforming the Naim kit on serious two-channel music listening when the assessment/measure was "which is the closest approach to the original sound' or "which could fool me into believing this is a live performance", - speaking as a classical musician.
So after ten years of satisfactory use and where I genuinely enjoyed the system most of the time, the Sony 9000 ES kit proved to be the usurper of the Naim system, which was sold off within a year.
In time, as the Sony 9000 ES kit lacked modern digital connectivity such as HDMI etc, a fully active B&O system was purchased and resides to this day, providing enormous musical and movie satisfaction to an equal level in both audio disciplines.
Two-channel audiophile companies have long touted the idea that you cannot have one system to do equal justice to both music and movies; however, in my experience, this is simply a rearguard action by such companies to understandably try and not lose sales.
As such, and looking at the overall picture and what Naim has to offer today, whilst I enjoyed my time in the main with Naim (pun intended), it is not a product/sound/marketing philosophy that I would wish to return to anytime soon.
Kind regards
John...