I will probably be naimless in the next couple of weeks but have not gone down the Vitus route. Lots of choice out there.
I think one of the problems we have as audiophiles
is the sheer amount of choice. Having more choices appears to be appealing initially but too many choices can make decisions more difficult. There was a psychologist in the 1950s called George Miller who said that a consumer can only process seven items at a time. After that he/she would have to create a coping strategy to make an informed decision. This can lead to consumer's being indecisive, unhappy, and even refrain from making the purchase at all. Then the chap behind the famous 1970 book 'Future Shock' (Alvin Toffler) famously said that freedom of more choices becomes the opposite - the "unfreedom". And in the world of Hi-Fi the matters are made worse as sampling the available choice is not at all easy. The ways we have to navigate through the deep forest of choice are:
1.
Sampling the choice BUT demoing is not easy as there are fewer retailers around and home demoing even harder. And to genuinely compare products you ideally need different options in the same (ideally your own) room around the same time.
2.
Reviews BUT these are largely a waste of time as almost every review is positive. You can train yourself to look for odd words which at least describe the character of the sound, but it ain't easy.
3.
Forums. These can be good for helping narrow your choices BUT generally most people evangelically tell the world how great their own choice is.
4.
Hifi Shows. BUT the rooms are often poor and if you find a sound you like you have no way of knowing which element in the source/amps/speakers is contributing most to the sound you are hearing or if it is system synergy.
5.
Friends systems/Bake-offs. Good for hearing what others' real-world systems sound like BUT like (4) it is room-based and system-based.
6.
Buying and selling in the second-hand market. This is a good way of testing different options at low cost as you can often sell on for close to what you bought at, especially if you buy off people rather than dealers. BUT it is a huge hassle to do it and the costs of sale and shipping and resolving problems often make it just too much as a means of sampling products to find the best.
In my movement away from Naim I home demoed six different brands of amps, thirteen different pairs speakers (most at home), 5 speaker cables, 4 mains cables and 6 interconnects. It was an exhausting 18 months of my life. Enjoyable at times, but not something I would want to do again.
So this is why brands that offer you a way to limit your choice can be so successful. The Naim route of providing a single brand path to upgrading your amp is a piece of marketing genius: it limits your choice to a handful of upgrade options. All your upgrade choice is available within one brand of amps and power supplies. And one of the reasons I think that the Vitus philosophy appeals to those who are used to Naim is that Vitus also has a very clear path: from the
Reference series, to the
Signature Class A series, through to the
Masterpiece series. Yes I know most brands also have a range of amps at a range of prices, but not many have the clarity of upgrade paths that Naim and Vitus have: an upgrade path which reduces choice to a psychologically acceptable number of options.
But I think there is more than just an easily digestible upgrade path as to why Vitus is a natural upgrade from Naim. People often reference Richard from Lotus being the single person who has created this perception but I think what Richard did was simply to articulate (and he did it very well in his essay) what he observed was happening. And this is that there does seem to be a truth in the way someone used to the Naim sound signature would find a move to the Vitus amps appealing. Although they are very different in sound there is something of the 'Naim' sound in the Vitus sound, that lively leading-edge driven sound is there but then the Vitus amps take it and move it somewhere different, which many middle-aged ears with their maturing musical tastes find appealing.
).
