Naim is sub standard - allegedly.

Apols - edited accordingly.

The rest I think is best determined by your own ears and experience. One of the selling points of Naim amplification to me is its ability to handle transients cleanly as it has quite large power reserves compared to its RMS power rating. This makes the contrasts in music level 'exciting' and is part of the Naim charm. I used to get worried with my NAD amp when knowing a crescendo was coming up in a piece of music as the peak would become very harsh sounding despite being rated at a healthy RMS figure.

The first time I heard a Naim amp handle the same peak made me realise the difference in ability between different amps despite similar RMS power ratings.

There was a post here not too long ago where one of the members of this forum was upset that Naim was not included in the top ten best sounding amplifiers in the industry. I pointed out the obvious and stated that just maybe they didn't belong.

That's why Naimees are referred to on other forums as sheep. Not that I agree with the previous statements, just providing some info.

Trust your ears. Used to own Naim, sold Naim and tried other brands, tubes, but came back to Naim.

10 minutes listening beats an hour reading forum posts.  

I have always used speakers designed for domestic use and never thought for one minute that Naim amps were under-powered.

Naim amps have one main stipulation - nothing less than 2 ohms. That's it really. So long as the impedance of the speaker remains > 2 ohms through the frequency range, then the amp should be fine. So no Apogees please - the amp will heat up and switch itself off.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

I agree and that's the mantra I have always used.  I am just puzzled with the claims of it being underpowered etc when contemporary opinion suggests that the power is actually understated.

I am actually demo'ing the UQ2 tomorrow and am expecting its 'small' 30 wpc to do wonders.

It does.

Or 'they do' if you run two in parallel into a big speaker, anything over 12" high.

Seriously I found it impossible to get the better SQ for the money. Find it, post it here please.

Naim kit seems ot have plenty of grunt for the watts they claim.  The Qute 2 is anything but under powered, it filled my room with three different sets of speakers easily although its true to say that my supernait 2 controlled my Focals better.  Any 'normal' speaker that you would match with a Qute will be driven to silly volumes

Having read the thread now I've realised from Vlad that my Uniti2 is broken and I'm a victim of hype and shouldn't trust my own ears. I'm now distraught and I'm not sure what to do next...

They're the only pair of ears I've got and I've no idea how to change them to more accurate ears.

You probably need a power supply on them

There is a lot of drivel typed on social media... Naim make exceedingly good amps... But clearly tastes vary. I moved to Naim from another brand.. Yes my Naim amps have been less powerful, and possibly even less  dynamic, but I enjoy the Naim sound, and ultimately its gets me closer to my audio than any other amp I have owned..

So not everyone's cup of tea? Absolutely... Sub - standard? poppy-cock.

Simon

I've done some judicious editing here.  Could members please note forum rules, particularly with regard to bringing in discussions from other hifi forums and posting links to them here (neither is permitted).  However, the subject is perhaps one that's worth the discussion so carry on...

Would I get away with a non-DR'd supply do you reckon?

Also do I need one for each ear - and will they need SL interconnects if so?

Of course, they'll need to be on a frame too, otherwise they will fall off

In about 1999 my then 17 year old Sony integrated amp [40 Watts per channels and rather deceptively heavy, so older style Sony] was showing signs of giving up the ghost. 

I was not at all aware of the phenomenon of hifi as a hobby, and indeed had only heard of Naim in the same way that you are conscious of Bentley or Rolls Royce. They make very expensive things and I am not in the market for this sort of expense ...

So I was persuaded to visit a real hifi shop, and I had an idea that buying British might be nice. I duly arranged a shop demonstration of about £1,600 of Arcan CD player and integrated amp. that was a quite a lot of money 16 years ago. I thought so anyway, and when the dem was done, I thought so little of it all that I asked if there was any chance that the Sony amp might be restored. There was no chance. 

But clearly this was not all that satisfactory a dem for me. I asked that they box up the pair and I’d buy them anyway. But - and this is where a good dealer comes in - the two guys suggested a surprise. Just give this a listen and see what you think! I was aghast! This is going to cost me more than I want to spend. ... Five minutes later a Nait 3 and CD 3.5 was powering the same speakers. I had a nice pair of speakers, so was not going to buy a new pair, so I simply asked that a suitable pair of speakers be used ...

And it took all of thirty seconds to recognise that this was far better than the Arcam, and better than my sony set had ever been, good though it must have been to serve for 17 years.

I tentatively asked how much more these rather plain black boxes were compared to my target. Fifty pounds less!

I collected the new Naim pieces the following weekend. Saved £50 over what I would have bought, and  the rest is history.

After 16 years I still have a Naim based system. not high-end in price terms, and probably not very purist for those vinyl aficionados! A DAC V1 and and NAP 100.

Four years ago I scratched the itch of getting some ESLs - 57s - without really knowing their amplifier requirements, but having done enough research to discover that Naim amplification is suitable.

This is slightly at odds with the Naim philosophy or so I thought, till I discovered the Jukian Vereker used ESLs 57s with a voltage limited [factory modified] NAP 250, so I was content to let my then Nait 5i  run on them, and it was grand.

when I got the twins - the V1 and 100 - I really thought that was the end of my replay journey. I was never enthusiastic about “stereo” as concept, at least in terms of presenting music rather than film sound-tracks. I have done everything I could to diminish it ever since first getting the Sony set more than 30 years ago. 

But I had been given two ancient Leak Trough Line mono FM/VHF tuners - one working and one not. That was a four or five years ago, and a house move shortly after meant that I never really had a chance to make enough use of the working one to get what is so special about a vintage [but once arguably the best in world] tuner.

My new house was in such a marginal area for VHF reception that I never even attempted to set it up. At the minimum a massive chimney mounted aerial would be expensive ...

But I was handed the two back in August and as there was no expenditure involved I decided to try to make a high quality aerial with enough signal capture to allow the old tuner to work nicely. Early experiments showed me something quite unexpected. When faced with the inevitability of a mono source, I initially split the output to the two channels of the NAP 100. Then I experimented with feeding just one channels, and things really improved. Next was to bite the bullet and move the second speaker out of the room, and use just one channel of NAP 100. Of course the Forum came up trumps with the advice on how to get a MAC mini to sum the two stereo channels of iTunes to mono to feed the V1 in a fashion the produced two identical mono channels. The improvement in replay was far greater than any system change could be for me. Of course it helps that placement of a mono speaker [especially one designed specifically be by suitable for mono such as the ESL 57] can be easily positioned in exactly the optimal place with in the room, where as stereo placement is rarely symmetrical either physically or sonically. 

Heresy as it may sound, and the ESL being conceived for valve amplifiers, I am going to get a mono valve amp to go between the Trough Line and ESL for radio, and keep the V1 NAP 100 for the digital side. It will mean turning off the power amp in use and then making a different speaker wire connection. But this will never be more than a twice daily chore, and indeed it is likely to be less often. 

So after all these years do I thin k Naim is any good? 

Of course it is. I have my favourite models, and indeed my ones that I am not keen on. 

Which these are hardly matters. some people really like what I do not so much! 

Anyway, I am sorry for a long post that is probably of marginal interest only for most, but I think it does show that even with an open-mind and a questing approach to replay that respects no received wisdoms [such as the superiority of stereo over mono] I can find something very fine in many of Naim’s productions! 

Best wishes from George

In my experience a full Naim system is hard to beat, you only have to visit a HiFi show to realise this, not the best of settings granted but to my ears it's all there to hear 'loud' and clear.

Lovely post George. Thanks for taking the time. 

 Fantastic post George ....well said

Speaking of power, I owned a NAP 140 power amp with a 72 preamp many years ago. There was one piece of music that was always problematic - a Japanese singer doing a jazz trio version of a Stevie Wonder song. In it was a scalistic type run the pianist would do that would always distort. I first wondered whether it was a problem with the recording process, and also had my speakers (easy to drive 8ohm 88db Sugden S6) checked out for any problems. One day I upgraded to a NAP 180 (then later 250), and the problem vanished immediately. The NAP 140 had been recently recapped and was in excellent condition, but I think it was unable to handle the energy of the loud piano run in the recording.

As to the quality of Naim's sound, there is no other I've heard that can do what Naim amps do. You lose some qualities like more realistic instrument timbre and separation of instruments that good valve amps and some Class A SS amps reproduce well, but even the best of them can't do rhythm like Naim.

From what I gather and I'm no expert , Naim amps use less output devises than other amps in its class but with strong power regulation to put what output devices it has under tight stress load, general logic that less output devises worked hard = more dynamic transients and cohesiveness but less outright volume + also the reason why Naim amps need to be serviced every 10 years or so.

Big American amps of yesteryear that could drive 1 ohm loads to mega watts had large banks of output devices but although coupled to huge power regulation it could not bring them up to speed as such.

I believe this is a more historical perspective, what with Naim claiming to be able to shave silicon for its output devices from high close tolerances - hence the 009 .

Naim amps can swing transients in a way other similarly powered amps just cannot do. But that isn't the same as a 30wpc amp being equivalent to a 60wpc amp. The fact that a Naim amp can swing those big transients sometimes better than a more powerful amp leads them to falsely believe that their constant output is higher than stated - but it isn't. That misconception might explain some negative opinions. A lot of dealers incorrectly deliver sales pitches like "30wpc of Naim is like 75wpc of Arcam" which is nonsense. Maybe a Nait can deliver a big/ger bang like the 75wpc amp but sustained output is a different story. Musically it is also a less relevant story unless your recording has very poor dynamic range. 

The fact is, if you are driving a consistently hard load due to volume and/or speaker load, more power will be required and there is no getting away from that. Naim cater for that with increasingly more powerful amps and the ability to go active (or bi/tri amp simply for power reasons). It costs a lot more to do this with Naim than some others but I don't see a problem in that. They are not about functionality and convenience but about delivering the best you can get and if the design decision leads to more power requiring considerably more expense to do properly then so be it.

Naim isn't for everyone. But it works as described and I think the issues of tonal clarity being sacrificed in favour of musicality are largely a thing of the past ranges. The current stuff is very accurate and notions that Naim doesn't do soundstage are also outdated nonsense.

There will always be detractors. A friend once told me he would never buy Naim because he doesn't like the capacitors they use. He thinks they should use solid state Japanese ones that cost twice as much but have a 50 year service period. Okay fine, no talking to some people. He's happy with his system and I'm happy with mine - no need to agree. 

That's actually a really helpful post.  As I stated in the original post I am no techie but 'think' I have an adequate understanding of amp/speaker requirements.  I am looking at a couple of systems so rather than get into the whole maths of the thing I am just curious as to:

1 - Does the UQ2 have enough power to drive something like the Focal Aria 906 at reasonable levels (89.5 db/8 ohms).

2 - Does both the UQ2 and a 272/250 combo have enough to drive them and possibly Kudos Cardea Super 10 (87 db/8 0hms).

3 - Finally, if I go mad what about both of those with more difficult speakers like Dynaudio Contour 2 1.4 (85db/4 ohms)

I've been trying to get an answer to that for quite some time (not on here admittedly).

Thank you.

1. Yes

2. What do you mean by both? The 250 will be fine, the Qute won't

3. The only way to tell is by a home dem. Why would you deliberately choose a difficult speaker?