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One Shade of Grey….new Naim bestseller!?…

I find it hard to engage. Naim is now a lifestyle brand and I wish them well. I really enjoyed my Naim (mostly Olive) years. My head is in such a different space. It's like cars for me, I'm sort of done; drive a ten year old Golf now. Like looking at the garden, spin the odd record on the Amadeus and when the Orfoton Cadenza Blue gives up the Ghost I've got a Denon 103 in the drawer...and I go about the village now as B. Botany, Esquire.
 
Mr Pig said:
I've only heard Focal speakers a couple of times but yes, they did sound really bad. Not just not to my taste but shockingly bad.
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I’m listening to my Focal Kanta No1 speakers right now and they sound fantastic. Maybe not to your taste (whatever that might be) but they’re absolutely fantastic…
 
chris geary said:
As a side note, i find the Naim forums somewhat tiresome - the negativity there is hard to push through sometimes. Still not as bad as the sheer idiocy in the Audiogon forums, tho.
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The Naim forum is awful in so many ways. Anyone seeking advice is really in for a trip, as the answer is always "spend more money on more Naim gear". You could ask about advice for a TT cart and come away needing a HiCap/SuperCap/new preamp/new poweramp etc etc. but holy hell it better be Naim, because heaven forbid you stray outside of the pack. If you went by that forum, I'd say about 90% of people's problems would be down to not owning a NDX2.

That said, I had a peek at what they were saying about these over there and jeez, they haven't gone down too well. The faithful are getting restless.
 
“Tin” aside, the biggest issue for me is that these are all designs which are now very, very old. There won’t be any unique value in this combo in a few years when I expect they update their pre-amps to have similar tech/approaches to their all-in-one units (which are great, I have an Atom and it’s a super unit).
 
Naim is a very interesting brand. I can see how some owners could be cornered into believing there were no rivals, especially on the Naim forum. Some clever marketing did well to cover what could be seen as limitations. The invention of PRAT/Flat Earth anacronyms( if that’s the right word) were genius really. I ended up with an Olive 82/180 combo. Though there were some things that sounded good, I was never truly satisfied with the set up. There was always some niggling issue or suspicion. The thing I did like was its solidity on smaller scale recordings. Once I went big with orchestral the limitations were more obvious. It lacked scale, transparency and subtlety. Since moving on to other hifi waters I have much less uncertainty and a more satisfying sound.
 
Del monaco said:
Since moving on to other hifi waters I have much less uncertainty and a more satisfying sound.
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Totally agree with this although I do think the whole 'PRAT' thing is useful and largely correct. For example I have a Collaro LP12 mat which is without question better than the standard Linn mat in hI-fi terms but I've ended up back with the Linn mat as I just find it more engaging. The PRAT philosophy works as it helps you to understand that there are different ways in which you connect to music.
 
It's a great marketing move if you ask me. You have to buy the entire system in one go to make it all match. You wouldn't want to buy only some of it then, gasp, add a black power supply later would you?
 
PS. I hate it.

Mind you I didn't like the Olive series when it replaced the CB look. It grew on me though.
 
I think that this is not aimed at those that frequent forums. I would imagine a large part, by value, of the HiFi market is to people who've never even been aware of forums, let alone posted on one. That kind of buyer may well be interested in a high performance music system that requires little/no thought. Buy one, have it installed and off you go.

For the remainder of the market, it depends if Naim are going to make this colour an option on their other products. Imagine a future scenario; buy this kit but then after a couple of years, upgrade time comes along. Who is going to want to buy a used component in this colour? It seems to me that more or less the only market for these is to other owners of grey kit. That will be a small number. OK, some potential buyers won't mind mixing colours but most hifi nerds, sorry enthusiasts, exhibit OCD behaviour, often in the extreme. Having different colour boxes in a system will drive these types nuts!

Naim is rapidly becoming a 'lifestyle' type company, trading on a past reputation. The only advances they have made is in streamer technology, with that being driven by the lifestyle Uniti range. Their amp designs are old with virtually no development going on. Old designs which are just becoming increasingly expensive and ever poorer vfm. Venture capitalists will, of course, want maximum return on their investment, understandably. I've no problem with that, but there are still people around who seem to think that they're the old enthusiasts' Naim; they're not. Their main driver is now maximising profit, be under no illusion.
 
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