Hicap or 82 ?

Posted by: Simon Jenkins on 06 March 2001

I feel my next attack of upgradeitus comming on. My system is currently :

72/180, LP12/Ekos/Lingo/Dynavector 17d2/CD5 and IBL's NACA5.

I'm looking at either adding a hi-cap and buying plenty of records or going to an 82. Is the 180 power supply really adequate to drive an 82 or would I be better off getting the hi-cap and adding an 82 later ?

I guess that the 82 would show the difference between the LP12 and CD5 more, but as the CD5 is purely a secondary source I'm not to concerned about this.

Any suggestions welcome, except for the usual but some M***. No thanks. Hutter is next, before either the 82 or the hi-cap.

Thanks

Simon

Posted on: 06 March 2001 by Mike Hanson

A Hi-Cap will transform your 72! If you decide to go to an 82 after that, the Hi-Cap will still be a cherished part of your system.

Now go out and buy some more records!

-=> Mike Hanson <=-

Posted on: 06 March 2001 by Phil Barry

Wow! Mike and I agree! This can't be the first time, can it?

Start with the hicap. It will...do exactly what Mike says it will. Your soul will thank you.

Phil

Posted on: 06 March 2001 by Simon Jenkins

Thanks Mike, Phil & Phil,

Perhaps I should buy two hi-caps and a prefix ? Then an 82. Decissions, decissions. Guess I'll just have to do some dem's.

Was thinking about a separate phono stage before, but never got round to it.

Anyone got any ideas about the differences between a Linto and a prefix/hi-cap ? Or alternatly if I get a stageline and a flatcap 2 can I power the CD5 and the stageline of the flatcap ? Then I can add a hi-cap to the 72 as well, then upgrade to an 82 later.

Unfortunatly second hand has now become a slightly harder option. It was OK when I was living in the UK, but I would imagine that the Dutch second hand market is probably a lot smaller(would be happy to be proven wrong on this one).

Well I guess I'm just going to have to listen.

Simon

Posted on: 07 March 2001 by Rico

I ran my 82 directly from a 140 for a while, before jumping all the way in with a Supercap. While the 82 certainly benefits from *PSU (name the Naim pre which doesn't!), you can run it quite happily on your power-amp pre-psu.

The two upgrades you suggest are quite different in nature... the 72/Hi/180 will give you much greater punch and detail over your current 72/180 setup... your front-end's definitely up to an 82, which would give you a bunch more music.

I was stunned at how much more music was in my CDX/82/140 system compared with my CDX (72'd)32.5/140 setup (and later CDX/32.5/Supercap/140 setup. It transformed my thinking that used to be along the lines of "No Naim Pre without at least a HiCap".... that, and available funds, led me at the time to 72/Hi/250.

The bottom line is that you'll have to demo them both to decide. Me? I'd go the PSU-less 82 route again, given the choice (and no difficult speaker loads, or rooms conditions). HTH.

Rico - all your base are belong to us.