My 2 cents. I enjoyed and probably still do enjoy the Naim sound. I will honestly hand that to them without hesitation. But, the company executives and various representatives are literally insufferable, except for Jason Gould. But they aren't as bad as the Design and Engineering team, who are smoking the really good stuff.
For example, their wonky engineering voodoo beliefs about DIN connections, mystical earthing design, always imminent Sword of Damocles RECAPPING holy grail obligations, the endless PSU upgrade path to empty your pockets further while proving that they should've designed proper power supplies in their units in the first place (like practically every other manufacturer on the planet), the mysterious admonitions about proper cable dressing, the unethical and wasteful requirement to leave their units powered up 24/7 in spite of eco-concerns, worldwide inflation and skyrocketing electricity costs, the unnatural, illogical and most probably ill-fated marriage with Focal, under the Vervent Audio holding structure, which gives way to a sonic nightmare of epic proportions and the incessant Marketing propaganda that suggests the opposite was a bit much for me.
There are two remaining straws that finally broke the camel's back:
1. Naim has always erroneously and dishonestly insisted that their cheapo ALPS Blue Velvet potentiometer implementations, which are systematically skewed off-balance, be it for volume of balance control on the integrateds and preamps, are "the best possible" because Steve Sells declared "they sound better". What a load of cr@p. I even had a major retailer tell me that if there is the (typical) imbalance then "you aren't using it as intended". LOL, obviously.
2. Probably the worst yet is the Naim forum and the Chinese-style censorship that is routinely practiced there. This is a well-known fact far and wide to both Naim users and non-Naim users. Free speech on internet forums does require some moderation, but an all-out metamorphosis into gigantic propaganda machine where only monolithic inputs conforming to the Party line are tolerated has turned theirs into a vast wasteland of self-congratulating fanboys.
So, not necessarily hating on Naim, just calling out things as they are. Your experience may be different.
