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Naim Solstice officially unveiled . . .

Mr Pig said:
I didn't just mean you. I'm talking about the hundreds of people who've just ordered a very expensive turntable without having any idea what it sounds like. Technically, it's not stupid if it turns out to be a sound investment, people buy ugly paintings for this exact reason, but it's stupid to me because for me, a turntable is for listening to music on.

By releasing these for pre-order before a single buyer or reviewer has had the chance to hear one Naim have just proven beyond doubt that they're all about the money now. Personally, I am no fan of the way Naim are going and I hope this turntable sounds mediocre leaving investors feeling a bit silly.

Hands up who thinks there is no way Clearaudio are going to built a turntable for someone else which sounds which sounds substantially better than their own?
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Wrong. At least one reviewer has one at this point (me) and the only reasons I am not buying one is that I am already fully tapped out financially. By the time I will be less tapped out, those Special Editions will be long gone.

I am not going to pre-empt my own review, but this is the most ‘chrome bumper’ Naim product I’ve heard in decades.

Hopefully, the success of the Solstice Special Edition leads to a Solstice turntable, a standalone Nu-Aro, a standalone Equinox and a phono stage with either its own PSU or running through the Solstice.

After that, I’d like to see a good, better, best option at different price points. Given these first 500 were so well received, those things are possible.

As to prior auditions, this was the high point and major talking point of Munich High End 2021. All those who attended and got a chance to hear it were moved to tears. Of course, that didn’t happen, so only a select few of us outside of Naim have had a chance to hear it before it was launched.

Finally, on the subject of Clearaudio and ensuring it’s own decks sound better, there is a wealth of difference between what Naim and its users think is a good sound and what Clearaudio and its users think is a good sound. You don’t hear of that many Clearaudio decks replacing Linns and Roksans in Naim systems. Clearaudio is a grown-up enough company to build OEM to specification, in part because it has the machine shop to do so.
 
G T Audio said:
You seem to forget the high end turntable market pretty much finished years ago. I would say around 2010 when most people interested in analogue had already bought their last turntable. There has been sales in the budget area and some mid fi turntables sold since to 40-50 year olds, but not a lot else...

Assuming that a lot of Naim owners will be using LP12's, do you think it likely that many of them will be chopping in their LP12's for the new Naim/Clearaudio turntable?
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I would suspect they’ll pick up a number of sales that way. Who knows how many but I very much doubt they haven’t done their homework on this. So far they’ve sold it in to the dealers, very successfully from what I hear. Sell-in is only half the story. If it doesn’t sell through then they won’t make more and the initial run is all there’ll be. Either way will do fine for Naim as they’ll be scarce and thus collectible/rare and sought after or there’s plenty of demand and they’ll keep production going. Whichever, they’ve sold the initial run: it’s up to the dealers to do their jobs now…
 
Must be the end for the green logo and lights.

Looks solid and priced ok, especially for the people who have naims top streamer and power supply.
 
pocketkitchen said:
I would suspect they’ll pick up a number of sales that way. Who knows how many but I very much doubt they haven’t done their homework on this. So far they’ve sold it in to the dealers, very successfully from what I hear. Sell-in is only half the story. If it doesn’t sell through then they won’t make more and the initial run is all there’ll be. Either way will do fine for Naim as they’ll be scarce and thus collectible/rare and sought after or there’s plenty of demand and they’ll keep production going. Whichever, they’ve sold the initial run: it’s up to the dealers to do their jobs now…
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I think they’ll have a very good idea from key Naim dealers how this will go and they’ll have estimated accordingly.

Given the prices of things at the higher end of the market, I think this is lower than I would have expected it to be. And if you can afford it, it’s probably not that risky - it’s collectible and high-end vinyl replay is holding its value.

Linn have sold something like 120-130,000 LP12s as far as I know. So that cross-sell market is pretty large to dip into.
 
Given the pricing and pre-orders, I suppose it is possible for Naim to expand the turntable product line in both directions.

We may even see something even more high end than "special" first. Limited? Ultimate? Plenty of other names to choose.

I am curious how the new phono stage compares to the Superline and its PS options.
 
Alan Sircom said:
All those who attended and got a chance to hear it were moved to tears. Of course, that didn’t happen, so only a select few of us outside of Naim have had a chance to hear it before it was launched.
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Of course I think investment in vinyl in general is good but forgive my cynicism. I recon if the deck was truly competitive they'd put in dealers and let people hear it against the competition before taking orders. As it is, if all of the available decks are pre-sold, pretty much no one has an incentive to say anything against the deck is it is short of brilliant.

I've seen magnetic levitation on platters before but I don't understand how that works without getting cogging as one magnet moves over to the next.
 
Robert M said:
Must be the end for the green logo and lights.
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Green logo and current classic style is nearly 20 years old, ancient for hifi.
If you work this out at £3.5k for the t/t, £3.5k arm, £3.5k phono stage, £3k PSU, £2.5k cartridge, and the other parts for free it's extremely good value.
 
Mr Pig said:
Of course I think investment in vinyl in general is good but forgive my cynicism. I recon if the deck was truly competitive they'd put in dealers and let people hear it against the competition before taking orders. As it is, if all of the available decks are pre-sold, pretty much no one has an incentive to say anything against the deck is it is short of brilliant.

I've seen magnetic levitation on platters before but I don't understand how that works without getting cogging as one magnet moves over to the next.
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Welcome to the modern world. Launch a thing and it gets bought up fast; long before people have a chance for hands on. I am not sure they are pre-sold; 500 Series dealers who have a Solstice are inviting people to listen, but orders are on a first-come, first-served basis. But people will put orders in anyway. It would be difficult for Naim to restrict pre-sales to those who had already auditioned a product, in an online world where people place pre-orders in seconds. However, given the Statement was supposed to be a limited run and it just keep making more and more because Naim keeps getting more and more orders…

At least those first 500 buyers will not be scalpers, who will then try and sell them on to the enthusiasts at inflated prices.

it’s not really ‘mag lev’ in motive terms (although that was where JV’s brain was going when we spoke), just a method of reducing bearing noise by having the bearing float in its housing.
 
G T Audio said:
You seem to forget the high end turntable market pretty much finished years ago. I would say around 2010 when most people interested in analogue had already bought their last turntable. There has been sales in the budget area and some mid fi turntables sold since to 40-50 year olds, but not a lot else...

Assuming that a lot of Naim owners will be using LP12's, do you think it likely that many of them will be chopping in their LP12's for the new Naim/Clearaudio turntable?
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One member of the Naim forum has done just that. He's sick of the tweaks, upgrades & fettling of his LP12 Klimax so it's bye bye Linn, Hello Naim for him. There will be others I'm guessing.
 
Rack Kit said:
One member of the Naim forum has done just that. He's sick of the tweaks, upgrades & fettling of his LP12 Klimax so it's bye bye Linn, Hello Naim for him. There will be others I'm guessing.
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Anyone serious about a high end turntable and have done their homework wouldn't be looking at a Linn or the Naim/Clearaudio. There are plenty of far better designs in the market place.
 
Rack Kit said:
One member of the Naim forum has done just that. He's sick of the tweaks, upgrades & fettling of his LP12 Klimax so it's bye bye Linn, Hello Naim for him. There will be others I'm guessing.
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I think there will be quite a number of these buyers if it really turns out that the user can do much of the fine-tuning and light setup themselves.
 
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