Naim NAC-N 272 Streaming Preamplifier

...the lack of a powered input for a Stage- or SuperLine puts me off a bit....

I've never understood why so many knock the 172, it's a really neat product in it's remit and equally as good as anything in the uniti range and besides surely Naim would drop it and not go to make a 272 if naim thought there was no mileage in producing a 272.

It's what I've been waiting for, as much as I like my 172 I will take a listen to the 272.

The only area I felt my 172 was not as good as my supernait was in the treble, 172 being a bit softer and less detailed which is no bad thing with some speakers it would probably get married to.

Don't knock it, Naim must believe in the 172 & 272.

I suspect most who knock it haven't heard it, have something more expensive which they hope wouldn't be shown up by a mere 172 or just like to follow the flock.

Better to listen with ears than eyes 

As a 172 owner . . . for me it's a lovely sound, and more than capable of living with a more expensive power amp. I actually prefer my 172/Nap100 combo to a Uniti, and with a better power amp it would be better still - although a very different nature to a SuperUniti, which I like a lot but would describe as more 'in your face' somehow than the more reserved 172. 

Again, I can see a future where Naim don't make any standalone pre-amps below the 300 range - they'd all come with a DAC and streamer. This would help to lock in customers to the Naim family, and add perceived value, perhaps without adding huge cost (I'm guessing on that).

Bart, let me stress again that, in the post you refer to, I have not given any recommendation, let apart one to "build a pc server or Debian box". I kindly ask you to take my posts to the letter. Gratuituos assumptions and interpretations based on misreadings do not help a fruitful discussion. Best, nbpf

Are you including DAC-V1 in that statement?

I'm not sure I want to feel I'm a "locked in customer" to a Naim streamer solution either. Reservations regarding the software, and availability of music streaming services, has been widely discussed already on this forum.

Dave

+1

Wow, have to be very careful with your (or is it our) language on here nowadays 

@dayjat - it's a ltitle known fact that these forums are the more public meeting place of the English pedants society and the National semantics league!

@dave4jazz - my perhaps badly put point was that given the huge price difference between a 272 plus power amp option and the optimum (aparantly) current Naim system I would rather spend the money on music than boxes. I should perhaps have added, assuming the 272 is as good as or superior to, say, a Uniti plus power amp or similar. As I mentioned earlier in this topic, a friend of mine has gone for the logical path of 282, HDX etc etc and with all the bits spent around £16k - if I had it I'd do the same in all probability but I don't and I'd sooner divide my resources more evenly between striving for a great system and actually being able to afford material to listen to!

@Dave4jazz again - I know we're being somewhat tongue in cheek here so my point about multiple systems was really that in all the years I have subjected myself to audio temptation I have always been aware of the differences between design and performance philosophies. I've spent considerable time in the past listening to quite different kit and a lot of it is decidedly beguiling. That same kit tends to polarise opinion and many are very ready to declare another brand rubbish whilst a loyal band of purchasers just can't comprehend the comment. 

If I had loads of money I'd not have just one car either - I know it's not entirely in accord with this thread but there is an element of there is only one way here.

Daunt

I was only commenting on your Naim/PMC ownership (see my profile). At least that was the intention.

Dave

@nbpf - I agree with what you say and the control app does present our collections in a rather uninspiring and one dimensional way. I love streaming though and given my current modest system it out performs the Uniti CD player by a big margin. Iwith the exception of my downloads, pretty much my whole CD collection is in the listening room and it is to that I more often refer than the app when wandering around musically. I think it would be quite difficult however good the firm/software was to approach the way we personally organise our physical collections anyway, we will always find apps lacking in some way.

the more technical dialogue here is interesting and I understand the points raised and am largely in agreement too. Technology, in the HiFi world is moving fast again after many years of improvement of established technologies. I think in some ways that this topic demonstrates that everyone will be playing catchup a lot more in the foreseeable future.

ultimately Naim will make what they can sell and that will be led by us but also by those adopting more high end systems because of the very technology that is moving under us so rapidly.

@Dave4jazz - ah I see, a fellow fan  We are in a minority but I love my 24s so there. I spent some time at BBC Maida Vale last year and loved their so what more expensive ones.

after hearing mine, the friend I mention promptly bought some and then 26s - love em. But that's off topic so, you'll be pleased to read, I will shut up!

I'm saving for PMC Twenty.23's.

Dave

Good point.

However, this doesn't seem to be the case for Chord Electronics to serve  customers without a network end point.  Three new products launched (Including the one that the NAC N 272 is ained at, as you have pointend out)

Hell, they even admit misgivings in their design (I.e. the use of batteries in the Hugo and Hugo TT) publicly.

Jude

The Chord stuff would not be on my list, largely because their notion of system control is woefully third-world (with apologies to the African subcontinent).

Agree with on the control issue.

Turming back to Naim, if the 272 trend is extended, my guess/speculation is that a higher spec streamer-pre wouldn't have an inboard PSU .  

Also, can it be too much cost, to produce an option with  asynchronous USB or network streaming, as  Naim is quite capable at system control?

Jude 

I do not really care about detail features or minor software deficiencies. It's the basic design which is defective. Any decent MPD client allows one to search and browse a music collection according to five to ten fixed criteria. This is crap and yet still better than what most UPnP servers support. Players like Audirvana, Quodlibet, Jriver and many others support customizable tags. That's the fundamental difference. Adding support for customizable tags to a UPnP server is not that difficult. Once done, users are free to organize their music as they like. Or to just apply standard settings. If Naim had shown some commitment towards developing a decent UPnP client-server software solution, there would be little to criticize in its streaming strategy. But selling a lousy software in a pretentious, glossy envelope is an art that that only a few companies master. And Naim is not Apple. Best, nbpf

If UPnP / DLNA servers are so substandard by your measure, why was mpd-dlna incorporated into MPD (from version 0.19 onward)? Must have been some sort of demand for that functionality....?

Of course there was: the integration makes it possible for UPnP / DLNA clients to interact with the mpd-dlna server. This is fine for users that want to deploy UPnP clients, what's the problem?

The major advantages of a pure MPD system against a UPnP-based streaming solution are, to my understanding, bandwidth savings and stability. I can control my MPD server from a client (for instance one running on an iPad) as I would do with an UPnP server. But an MPD system does not rely on transferring music data over Ethernet at replay time: you get the same flexibility of UPnP-based streaming solutions but you do not need wired connections to the router. This is, for many users living in old buildings, an important advantage.  One advantage of UPnP vs. MPD is probably in multiroom replay. Although one could implement MPD based solutions for multi-room replay as well.

But both MPD and UPnP currently lack support for customizable tags.This is the common and most crucial limitation. Both MPD and UPnP are acceptable for occasional listening and mass consume of musical contents. They are fine for playing background music in a shop, for instance. But the view of a music collection they present to the user is hardly less primitive than the view presented by an iPod or an MP3 player. Even for classical music, let apart opera or more specific musical interests, they are essentially unusable.

I know that it is not that difficult adding customizable tags to MPD (I have spent one afternoon hacking the sources and I managed to add an arbitrary tag to the server and to make a client search for the files tagged with a given value of that arbitrary tag) and I am convinced that it would not be very difficult for Naim to implement a customizable MPD or UPnP server and one or two customizable control applications.

I'm wondering if it will comes with remote. 175 have?

Not necessarily true nbpf. The JRiver UPnP server does allow you to add your own tags, including ones based on expressions (even regular expressions), and will present views of your music based on those tags to a control point. Also it allows you to apply filters at every level. So if you wanted to see a tree in your control point of let's say all the Haydn String Quartets you've bought in the last two years but not listened to yet, split by artist, then you can have it, easily.

Very interesting likesmusic, thanks for the precisation! Do you have any experience in using the JRiver UPnP in conjunction with Naim's control app? Does the app honour JRiver's support for user-defined tags? If not, which control applications on which devices would you suggest? Unfortunately I have little to no experience with Windows systems. But if the JRiver UPnP server can act as the engine of a flexible client-server solution, I would certainly like to learn and test it. Many thanks, nbpf