Hi Andrew,
I didn't think you were one to buy things on spec. I thought you preferred to audition things first.
Maybe at < £1K its worth a gamble, but personally I'd want to hear how it works into my pre-amp, and with my CD [or DVD] transport as a front end.
I guess I also have itchy feet with the whole Naim thing. They used to specialise in High End with the odd foray into entry level (ie the Nait), but these days they want to be total generalists and they don't stand out as much as they used to in the high end any more.
I do wonder, though I haven't tried this yet, whether a really good DVD plus AV amp combo might not in fact be as good as or better than a CDS2/52/500. The Arcam FMJ DVD player, AV controller and multi channel power amp springs to mind.
One little experiment I did the other day makes me wonder whether even the mainstraim Japanese kit isn't also as good as the Naim gear these days.
I took a 4 year old Pioneer high end AV amp (which broke 2 years ago and took me a year to get round to getting repaired) and I plugged it in in place of an Arcam AVR200. It has such good synergy with the Ruark Vita speakers I use for my DVD/TV system, that I also tried out the pre-amp out into the Naim system - its more than a little good, I have to say.
At the risk of wasting a little time over the next few weeks I plan to try out a few different high end Japanese AV set ups (probably with UK speakers) by comparison to the Naim 5 series AV set up and the FMJ's.
At the end of the day, I suspect just buying the DAC and then adding the transport and amp components might be a dead end, given that the DAC capabilities of most high end AV amps is based on the same sort of components as the DAC1 anyway - aren't they ???