Hifi News Review of Naim Statement
- Thread starter John Channing
- Start date
Darth Vader
From the Dark Side
I have two amps one left and t'other right channel. Each has two separate mono blocks that I have wired in bridged mode. Each Mono block has a 1.6KVA xformer so thats 4 for a total input of 6.4 KVA.
Oh and unlike Naim those babies are silent!
Cheers,
DV
Darth Vader
From the Dark Side
I have two amps one left and t'other right channel. Each has two separate mono blocks that I have wired in bridged mode. Each Mono block has a 1.2KVA xformer so thats 4 for a total input of 4.8 KVA. Oh and a peak output of 150A into 1 Ohm. Boy those must but jolly good caps.
Cheers,
DV
Darth Vader
From the Dark Side
This is the mistake made by those who have never heard a really powerful amp driving good speakers. Its not about volume at all. Rather the dynamics and timbre of musical sounds. Its like being there.......
Cheers,
DV
S-Man
StrivingON
What is described in the review is the absolutely standard TO220/247 etc. >95% of all modern power amps use this type of package. See Fig 3 here:
https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/etit/le/downloads/amro/amro_pesc04_homepage.pdf
It's possible they used a DBC (Fig 2), nearly all power devices called "module" use this technology.
russel
./_dazed_and_confused
Was it SEMEFAB?
Yes the room can bump up the average level but it doesn't normally significantly bump up the level of the initial transient in the direct sound that the brain gives a lot of attention. So I would suggest an analysis of the short dynamic peaks probably should follow the inverse square law unlike an analysis of the average level.
Naim is targeting the plutocrat market - the superrich for whom sonics may or may not matter but price does. The more expensive the better because price is a 'signifier' and a high price shouts 'I can afford it and you can't!' Like Birkin bags.
There are brands that target this end of the market e.g. Vertere ($35k tonearms, yeah), d'agostino, etc. Their customers are not you or me.
There are brands that target this end of the market e.g. Vertere ($35k tonearms, yeah), d'agostino, etc. Their customers are not you or me.
Lets not kid ourselves here, as the name suggests the product (notice how I didn’t call it an amplifier) is not about HiFi or accurate audio reproduction. It’s about tapping into the aspirational luxury market. It’s a product that is desirable not because of its performance but because by being able to own one of these means you are a member of a select group of successful and wealthy professionals. The main trickle down effect of this product is getting your name seen in the market and being recognized outside the mainstream audio circle as the manufacturer of “that product”.
The 100 units already sold are to customers worldwide and that’s a very very small percentage of the world population, I also doubt very much that those sorts of sales figures will continue and I suspect that quite a few of those 100 units already made will be for demonstrating in various regions across the world and probably remain naim’s property.
I am also guessing, based on the background in the photo (notice the shelves are stack with various spare parts rather than finished product), that the units are not actually assembled in naim’s production facility but rather assembled on an Ad-Hoc basis in naim’s Product Development / prototype assembly area. This also reinforces my opinion that naim do not intend to manufacture these items in any large quantities nor would the market allow such a product to become mainstream.
If you want an accurate amplifier to drive a difficult speaker or fill a large room with clean undistorted sound, then there are any number of amplifiers that already do that. You don’t have to buy the naim statement combo. As someone who comes from an engineering background I can only only see a gross waste of resources and unnecessary solutions to problems that don’t really exist. But as someone who has delt with sales and marketing people, I can see the why the product was created. I say Kudos to naim for making such a product, it has been designed to raise the naim name in the public profile and I hope they succeed.
LPSpinner.
The 100 units already sold are to customers worldwide and that’s a very very small percentage of the world population, I also doubt very much that those sorts of sales figures will continue and I suspect that quite a few of those 100 units already made will be for demonstrating in various regions across the world and probably remain naim’s property.
I am also guessing, based on the background in the photo (notice the shelves are stack with various spare parts rather than finished product), that the units are not actually assembled in naim’s production facility but rather assembled on an Ad-Hoc basis in naim’s Product Development / prototype assembly area. This also reinforces my opinion that naim do not intend to manufacture these items in any large quantities nor would the market allow such a product to become mainstream.
If you want an accurate amplifier to drive a difficult speaker or fill a large room with clean undistorted sound, then there are any number of amplifiers that already do that. You don’t have to buy the naim statement combo. As someone who comes from an engineering background I can only only see a gross waste of resources and unnecessary solutions to problems that don’t really exist. But as someone who has delt with sales and marketing people, I can see the why the product was created. I say Kudos to naim for making such a product, it has been designed to raise the naim name in the public profile and I hope they succeed.
LPSpinner.
Rob400
pfm Member
Yes when I heard my Obs 2 bridged with 2 x HX100's as opposed to my one the produced sound was as you described.....
Suffolk Tony
Aim low, achieve your goals, avoid disappointment.
I'm also from an "Engineering background". I'd like to buy a Statement because it sounds super. I haven't got any aspirations for luxury.
Give it a listen. It's very good.
Alan Sircom
I dü werds, me
These two are not mutually exclusive. Someone who buys a Statement might be making a statement about their wealth. However, there are also audio enthusiasts who like Naim, want something better than the 552/500 combination, and have the wherewithal to afford that kind of product.
The 52 preamp happened because Naim users demanded something better than the 67 and 72 available at the time, but I don't think anyone expected it to cost so much. I was working at Grahams full-time then, and we wondered when it was launched if anyone would ever buy such a 'ludicrously expensive' preamplifier as the 52. it took less than six months before I was asked if there was an even better Naim preamplifier in the pipeline by one of the many 52 owners.
I am fairly sure the same thing happened when the 552/500 combination came out.
OK, so this time the jump in price is going to be too rich for many people's blood, but there will be some long-standing Naim users who both can and will jump to own a Statement. I know of a handful of UK Naim owners who have done just that. If someone started with a Nait in 1984, by the end of the 1980s had reached a 72/Hi-Cap/135s, then owned a 52/52PS/135s, then a 52/SC/135s, then a 552/500, and now have a S1 combination, at what point did they move from being 'wealthy Naim-using music lover' to being a way of being 'a member of a select group of successful and wealthy professionals'?
Tony L
Administrator
It's a tricky market position IMO. Traditionally 'statement' products have been made more as a proof of concept. A means for a company to show what they are capable technically and how that technology is trickled down into the affordable range. The idea of selling such things was probably very much secondary to their place as advertising material. I can think of many great products that fitted this description, e.g. the Nakamichi self-centering turntable or Dragon cassette deck, Tannoy Autograph etc. Hardly anyone ever bought these things, but they stood there in the brochures as a statement as to what that company was capable and much of the technology existed throughout the entire product range.
The problem for this marketing perspective in an ever failing, fragmenting and dividing economy where thousands of perfectly normal people are forced into usung food-banks is it can look exceptionally vulgar to actively chase what is widely viewed the footballer/oil sheik money. We just live in a far less optomistic time. It can also to my mind be viewed as a symptom of a failing audio market where increasingly few well established companies are chasing an increasingly wealthy subset of a declining and ageing market. Not a sustainable business model in any way. What's actually needed IMHO is Devialet-grade new thinking trickling down into sub-£1k products. In fairness I really need to read up on the new Naim as I'm not clear what new thinking it contains that can trickle down, nor how that technology would reveal itself in sound quality. I don't really know what this amp brings to the party that isn't already available from McIntosh, Krell, Levinson etc at a fraction of the price. Good luck to them though.
The problem for this marketing perspective in an ever failing, fragmenting and dividing economy where thousands of perfectly normal people are forced into usung food-banks is it can look exceptionally vulgar to actively chase what is widely viewed the footballer/oil sheik money. We just live in a far less optomistic time. It can also to my mind be viewed as a symptom of a failing audio market where increasingly few well established companies are chasing an increasingly wealthy subset of a declining and ageing market. Not a sustainable business model in any way. What's actually needed IMHO is Devialet-grade new thinking trickling down into sub-£1k products. In fairness I really need to read up on the new Naim as I'm not clear what new thinking it contains that can trickle down, nor how that technology would reveal itself in sound quality. I don't really know what this amp brings to the party that isn't already available from McIntosh, Krell, Levinson etc at a fraction of the price. Good luck to them though.
When the World, 52/52ps and I were much younger I can remember having my credit card increased to £2000 ukp and a good portion of that went on an IBM 8286 or 8288 clone computer kit and associated software. Not much today but way more than my Nait shoebox LP12 based system and yet attracted no opprobrium from others, same for OM2n, far flung photo trips and holidays. Once again kudos to Naim meeting a market need.
Alan Sircom
I dü werds, me
We have some of the best high-performance for low-money audio equipment there has ever been at the moment. Products like the DALI Zensor 1 and Q Acoustics 2020i are £200 loudspeakers that measure and sound a lot better than many £400 loudspeakers of 20 years ago. We have ProJect and Rega turntable packages that offer excellent performance at under £250, DACs from AudioQuest or HRT that deliver true high-end performance for less than £150, and great amps from Cambridge, Denon, NAD, Pioneer, and the rest for less than £250.
Although we can make systems costing millions, we can also still build an extremely good system for less than £750. And given if I had been saying this 25 years ago, I would have said '£600' (equivalent to around £1,400 today) for the same type of system with less good performance, I hold to the idea that things at the lower end have improved.
The problem is these things are all but invisible to the enthusiasts now, because we had a decade and a half of almost no new blood, and enthusiasts tend to upgrade and improve the subjects of their enthusiasm over time. I've striven to place more affordable items in Hi-Fi+, but the reaction to them is often hostile: "What is the point? My power cord is worth 30x more than that amplifier, and my son doesn't give a damn about audio. I'm just not that interested in low-end anymore." Granted, this is an extreme opinion.
And as things move from print to online, the higher-end audio reviews will only become more prevalent, not less. Clicks are king, and no-one cares too much if those clicks are coming from angry people or happy, contented music lovers.
davidsrsb
pfm Member
+1 and by paying a little more a modern UKP2000 digital system system can run rings round something costing far more 25 years ago. There must be a lot of mid price system owners who can upgrade by paying a lot less than they did before and that is an ego problem
S-Man
StrivingON
What £2K modern system would run rings round a Cambridge CD2 + any decent amp from 1990 and a pair of NS1000s or Gale 401s????