New NAP300DR - not a rant

Looking forward to your review of the results.

DB.

Bet there'll be a burndy or 2 missing!  Tehe Peter bring it on 

.. but they all have the same serial number, i.e. 23!!! so there will be only one pair of Burndies...

sorry, my idea of a joke 

perhaps i should go to bed now...

anyhwow many congatulations Graham!!! looks awesome, and i know it will sound awesome too -- though i cant imagine what that means from the memory of hearing your system with demo S1 early this year (time flies, etc. !!)

enjoy

ken

Enjoy.

Do us all a favour - if there is anything missing DON'T start another bloody rant.  

I can't believe the other one has run to 7 pages 

Hi Graham,

I did contribute to the other two 300DR threads currently running, but, having had my new 300 DR running now for about 24 hrs., I can confirm that, contrary to received wisdom, it does actually sound great fresh out of the box.

If there's more to come over the next few weeks, then I'll be very happy indeed.

I see you're running the Super Lumina XLR's.

I've gone for both the speaker cables and the interconnect, but that's the only thing I haven't got round to doing yet, so is the improvement worth the extra investment?

Regards,

Dave.

Hopefully, everything which should be in the box will, in fact be present and correct............sorry, couldn't resist! 

In my view when you have the other SL cables it is. They are a lot of money, but they open-up the dynamics and perceived linearity throughout all frequencies. Bass is far better controlled and less congested.

Run-in is not nice though and they can sound bright for a few days then rather brutal for a few weeks, but after a few months they settle-down and work well - at that point they seem well worth the cost.

DB.

as i recall, wisdom here suggsts that XLRs are best done as last in the upgrade sequence i.e. IC, Speaker, XLR... but of course views may differ on this. i only have the SL IC so cant really say one way or the other...

enjoy

ken

You are spot on Ken, I think it was fortunate that the SL cabling was staged for release in that order. ATB Peter

Ahem...shouldnt one be in bed by now as one has a long day tomorrow. Not enjoying ones self on the forum 

As you were gents, nothing to see hear...see what I.....

Looking forward to pics n review Graham, bring it on!

Not bad for "middle-of-the-range 300DRs" one would guess...

This just got interesting. All the best with it. Looking forward to hearing how it develops.

Lucky I have three 'spares' then!

I won't be.  But equally I'm not going to criticise the author of the other post.  People react differently to situations and who am I to judge right from wrong?

But let's not make this thread about that. 

Looking out of my office window and it's grey, windy and raining.  Seems like ideal weather to fettle the hifi!

I tried a brand new 300DR for a couple of weeks a little over a month ago.  It was an interesting experiment but running two non-DR 300s and one DR really did not work well because the sonic signature of the two were quite different rendering the overall effect odd.  You could hear improvements from the DRed version but the whole was not cohesive.

As for the SL XLRs, Gary has already replied.  Which is just as well because mine were installed at same time as my S1 pre, so I'm not able to say how much of a difference they made individually.

I hadn't planned to, simply because everyone knows what a NAP300 looks like.  But I might take a few if there's interest.

Couldn't agree more on both points..

Indeed.  Am waiting for Peter to tell me my old ones are broken

Hi Graham, Congratulations on your new amps - would LOVE to see some pictures, AND how it all sounds !

Regards,

Al

Sorry Graham. The moment you switch off the old ones, they are going to sound broken.

(homage to Peter)

Easy to fix though with the new ones 

best regards from another 300DR Fanboy!

Ian - have you taken the plunge?

Not yet Lindsay.

This year's major investment has been the new Vertere turntable & tonearm.

Once the piggy bank is replenished, next will be a posh cartridge and appropriate phono stage - you may recall me trying the Superline a while ago but the new TT intervened.

Only then will the power amp be a consideration.

In the meantime, its going to concerts & playing a lot of vinyl and some CDs for me.

Funnily enough, with the new TT, vinyl music now sounds so very right, so very involving & enjoyable that I'm very content with my lot.  A properly serviced & updated 52/135 amplifier is capable of carrying quite a good tune, especially when that music emanates via the ARTs.  So there's no rush to change now, even though I rate the 300DR very highly indeed.

Best regards, FT

Yes please - From behind would be good 

Well well, each to their own!  Enjoy Peter

OK, so around 2:30PM Ian and Norman from UHES arrived and the first thing we did was unload their car.  Shortly there after our hall looked like this

I don't think I've seen six NAP 300s in one place before.  The old non-DR ones are on the left, new DRed versions on the right.

A few light dents in some of the boxes.  I dread to think what UPS, did to them when transporting them from Naim to UHES...

Here's the starting point of the system

The cat is actually an easily repositioned room sound optimisation device (well, easily repositioned for her).

As part of the install we decided to increase the gap between the Fraims and the S1.  Unlike 6'2" Ian, being 3 inches shorter meant that I can't reach the connections and power switch at the bottom back of the S1 by leaning over it from the top and the gap down the sides was too narrow for me to get my arm through!  We didn't think of that during the original S1 install.

Ian started removing 300s from the Fraim while I was then cleaning and packing them up ready for subsequent sale.  Next up was to start unpacking all the new amps.  This was going fine until I got to the second amp which was packed at rather a jaunty angle

OK, thanks UPS!  They must have really thrown this one around for it to slip within the foam inserts.  Luckily being lighter than the power supply probably saved it from puncturing the cardboard box.  We gave it a close examination and all appeared fine.  Just as well because as a matched set if it had been damaged what would we have done then, send them all back for repair and rematching?

Missing a Burndy?  That's because I have them all!  Muhahahaha

Nothing was missing and everything was working as planned.

Breaking the system down removing the old 300s, repositioning the right hand Fraim and S1 and reinstalling took about 2.5 hours in total.

Here you see Norman hard at work directing Ian!

This is what the system looked like once completed.

The cables are inevitably more visible than before but on this occasion I had decided to put practicality ahead of cosmetic beauty.

One benefit of this is that the cable dressing has improved.  Everything is off the back wall and the Burndies still have a bit of flex left in them.  It's really hard to get a decent photo of this so here's my best attempt.

On to the listening.  We powered up each amp individually and did a left/right balance check to ensure everything was wired up correctly (of course it was, Ian can do this in his sleep). By this time dinner was ready and knowing that brand new equipment doesn't sound great without any discussion we simply left it to play for a little over an hour while we ate.

On returning the initial thought was that it sounded as good as the old system had done.  That's no small achievement given that we're comparing a nicely bedded in, warm system (old) against new amps, power supplies, Burndies and an S1 that had been powered down for around an hour.

The 300DR is claimed to have a much lower noise floor than the previous design and this got me wondering whether this part of the audio delivery is there from day one.  Does the noise floor improve during burn in or remain constant throughout?  If it's constant it could account for the fact that many people have commented that the DR amps sound great straight out of the box.

Within a few hours there was already a noticeable improvement.  Clarity and detail previously missing had now revealed itself.  Hearing how a string is being plucked and how it reverberates took on an uncanny accuracy in some tracks.

My previous audition of the DR upgrades was limited to one unit mixed with two non-DRs as part of my active set up and while you could hear the improvement the overall sound was not cohesive due to the different timing of the amps.  With the consistency of three of the same type (and having been manufactured as a matched set) the cohesiveness is back.

About five hours after initial power on I switched from streaming on my NDS to Tidal.  You may have seen my earlier comments that I have found Tidal SQ to be somewhat variable from track to track and that it never bettered streaming of a ripped CD.  By the end of my listening session I would say that Tidal SQ with DR bettered streaming CD SQ of non-DR which again is an impressive result.

I expect the burn in of the amps will take at least two weeks likely with some big initial gains.  So let's see how today goes...