500 DR upgrade time

John.

Sounds even more promising 

Richard

J.N. posted:

Day ten, and a big snarling beast is emerging.  ....

John.

well put John! 

enjoy

ken

J.N. posted:

Day ten, and a big snarling beast is emerging. The sound has fleshed out, gaining balls, weight and clout. The soundstage has become wider and deeper too. All good so far.

John.

Thanks for the update John, I really look forward to hearing the beast in action on Wednesday.

ATB.

Rob.

Well my 500DR has arrived back home and is installed in the system which has been switched off for six weeks as we have been on holiday while the  amp was away.

It was superb right out of the box and I confirm all the findings of other posters to this thread are being shown in my system too. Wonderful clarity of vocals and instrumental lines, no hint of sibilance and a wonderful breadth of sound. If this is only the beginning of the warming up process and there is more to come which of course there will be I am very pleased.

Well done Naim for a very significant upgrade to your 500 power amplifier. 

congratulations Michael! let us know how it settles over the next few days/weeks.

enjoy

ken

Good stuff Mike. I look forward to hearing the DR-fettled beast in a few days time.

John.

Firstly I just want to thank JN personally for your hospitality yesterday, as always a real pleasure to spend quality time with the like minded, oh and the little added bonus of listening to the Quad ELS was the icing on the cake.

Now onto Johns 500DR, I will try to put into words how I felt listening to his system but I don`t find it easy to come up with the right words to describe this kind of stuff so bear with me as I will try to do my best. 

The first thing that struck me by comparison to the original 500 was the total lack of glare at the very top end of his system which was apparent to me on one or two recordings on my last visit instead everything just sounded very open and smooth with a crystal clarity, all in a very natural un-HiFi kind of way. The remainder of the frequency range was equally well represented in a totally balance way and with a wonderful transparency and insight, the whole sound was beguiling almost holographic in nature, I think its very much a case of less is more in that everything just sounds very natural and right. As the evening progressed the system just got better and better, I'm sure as things continue to run-in there will be even more to come.

To sum up I really was in HiFi heaven listening to Johns system and could have just continued listening for hours and hours, I commented to John, on my last visit I was listening to his hifi which was nothing short of spectacular, this time around that simply wasn't the case at all in so much as I was so completely captivated and immersed into the music and his "system" just got out of the way, to me if a system can do that, even with unfamiliar material then you really know your onto a good thing. 

ATB

Rob.

Mike, congratulations on the new DR`ed 500 and good to hear it`s doing the business for you, having listened to john`s I am sure you are going to be more than a bit chuffed with what it brings to the party! keep us posted as things progress.Good listening.

ATB

Rob.

Great , and mine is going to The Sound Org (York) this Saturday on it's way to Naim 

Richard

Rob T posted:

Mike, congratulations on the new DR`ed 500 and good to hear it`s doing the business for you, having listened to john`s I am sure you are going to be more than a bit chuffed with what it brings to the party! keep us posted as things progress.Good listening.

ATB

 

Rob.

 Thanks Rob hoping you will be able to come for a listen yourself soon... an evening of mainly jazz sounds very appetising!

 

Michael posted:

Rob T posted:

Mike, congratulations on the new DR`ed 500 and good to hear it`s doing the business for you, having listened to john`s I am sure you are going to be more than a bit chuffed with what it brings to the party! keep us posted as things progress.Good listening.

ATB

 

Rob.

 Thanks Rob hoping you will be able to come for a listen yourself soon... an evening of mainly jazz sounds very appetising!

 

 

Mike...thank you for the kind invitation I would love to come over for a listen...an evening of mainly jazz sounds suitably appealing too! I look forward to finally meeting up.

ATB.

Rob. 

I spent a good chunk of yesterday in the company of Michael's newly DR'd 500 system. It had only been re-powered for about 48 hours, following a 6 week-dormant hiatus. From the first couple of notes I was hit with the same delicious lift in clarity I heard from my own freshly installed DR'd 500.

I was gratified to hear exactly the same type of improvement I'm hearing at home; emphasising the fact that this amplifier is not really a NAP 500 any more. It's a very different beast. General resolution, detail, layering and spatial presentation are in another league. The loudspeakers disappear and the sound hangs in space around them. The music is sweeter, more integrated, more natural and less forced/stressed. Vocals (in particular) seem to be lifted out of a fog, and the digital hash and mush of disappointing examples of recent recording/mastering of popular music is ameliorated. Mike has a 'Coldplay' album on CD which was hitherto, pretty much unlistenable. The DR'd 500 resolved it so much more effectively. We were actually able to enjoy the music.

And as for well-recorded vinyl. Whoa Nelly!

Think '552 DR upgrade' and multiply it by about a factor of three. There will of course, be more to come as the weeks and months pass.

Joyous.

John.

Thanks John for your excellent appraisal of yesterday's extended listening session. I have been listening to a some classical music this morning and the way the symphony orchestra is portrayed is quite sublime. You could shut your eyes and be right there in the concert hall. Delicate passages on the strings and woodwinds came  across  with such beauty and delicacy with the much lower noise floor the DR and new transistors bring and the full orchestra with pipe organ at the end of the Saint-Saens Symphony No 3 had sheer majesty.

Only day three folks and this just gets better and better!

I have long considered the mark of a good amp to be its ability to draw the listener into the music and minimize the "difficult recording" obstacles to listening. More about the music than the HiFi.

Sadly, there are some recordings that just sound worse as you improve the playback system.  But happily not many in my collection.

No doubt the DR upgrade is doing wonders across the line.  I was in Bristol the other week and sat through the session (with many others) that had comparisons 250-250DR, 300 - 300DR and 500 - 500DR.  Every time the effect was precisely as described above - but to my ears just more pronounced in the 250 and 300 comparisons than in the 500 comparison.  it may have been due to the 'unusual' piece of music played - Trentemoeller - that basically only had lows and highs...  but hey, I don't want to spoil the party here : let's keep on partying on the DR upgrades : the 500 is the beast !

how did they make the comparisons?

Did they take out the 250.2 and then put the 250DR in place?

or did they have multiple systems running in parallel?

Mike & John

thanks for this report! i am pleased to hear the NAP600 (oops sorry!) NAP500DR is settling down well and delivering the music. I can well identify with your experience of a particular piece of music Mike -- on numerous occasions after an upgrade -- i have sensed a significant and positive transformation of familiar pieces. 

is the amp changing significantly as it runs in/warms up? i am glad to hear there are no negatives so far...

this is of course an upgrade very much on the cards for my system --- but i have to gather enough goats first and then herd them towards Salisbury...  :-)

enjoy

ken

is the amp changing significantly as it runs in/warms up? i am glad to hear there are no negatives so far...

Ken I wouldn't say there have been any dramatic changes so far as we experienced with the SL cables, more just a opening up of the the sound and gaining more weight in the bass department but in a very gradual and subtle way. 

J.N. assures me more will follow over the coming days, he reported a very positive step on day eight earlier in this thread. I am on day three!

Analog,  the swapped the amps on 250-300, for the 500 they had a different source as well. 

Michael posted:

is the amp changing significantly as it runs in/warms up? i am glad to hear there are no negatives so far...

Ken I wouldn't say there have been any dramatic changes so far as we experienced with the SL cables, more just a opening up of the the sound and gaining more weight in the bass department but in a very gradual and subtle way. 

J.N. assures me more will follow over the coming days, he reported a very positive step on day eight earlier in this thread. I am on day three!

looking fwd to your furtther update after day 8 then ...

honest, i am not green with envy... 

enjoy

ken

I visited JN yesterday to hear his DR 500. I know his Reference system with Titan speakers fairly well, so it was always going to be interesting. I have heard the DR 500 at my Dealer a few months ago, so know essentially what it does over and above the standard 500, but a more extended demo over a few hours was always going to be better to soak it in.

It took me a little while to get my mind around the changes, as it was very different. The performances are now tighter and the instruments all seem better-tuned and more 'pure'. There is a clarity and lack of noise which makes intention on vocals when there are pauses very striking - essentially the 'stop' moments in music are handled much better. Also when there is a louder instrument that suddenly plays and then stops does not interrupt the flow of quieter instruments in background - the 500 always did this well, as it was already way ahead of the 300 in that respect, but the DR 500 does this with a crisp cleanness that reminds me of how it is done in an Active system, with which I am very familiar.

In fact John's passive Titans did many things I usually associate with Active systems. There is also a new sense of 'quality' to the rendition - this is harder to describe, but since I recently changed my 552 for Statement S1 and have been running-that in for about 9 months, it was of that nature. A smooth silky handling of the higher frequencies that make the former equipment sound rather rough and ragged in the comparison. The image-stability is much improved also - very clearly-defined images with depth are there; the 500 always did this, but now they are cleaner and more focused.

Focus perhaps the word that describes the 500 DR. I did not want to use words like 'control' or 'grip' as that implies perhaps something may be lost to get it - the DR 500 did have these qualities, but actually they don't describe what I heard well. The quality of the presentation really expressed itself in a seamless naturalness - nothing was doing anything it should not have been doing, we just had music. The quality of the bass allowed the 'shapes' played in synth and bass percussion to be clearly defined with start and stop - but more than that it was that in-between the lower-level harmonies were not crushed to get this. A very natural presentation with authority and insight into what was happening.

Overall it reminded me of the Statement S1 changes I have been living with and enjoying for many months now - less HiFi and more music, but until you experience this it perhaps has little meaning, but the DR upgrade does this for the 500.

Overall - very impressed!

Now I really have to get my set of three NAP500 done.
...but I hope I will forget enough of the experience soon to allow me to put that off until my finances recover some more.

DB.

I like the way you, Mr DB, have described the improvements that the DR upgrade has made to a 500. However, having just made the (relatively small) DR jump to my lowly 300 (and just committed to a 552 and a few other bits and pieces), I am dismayed to read the following

"Also when there is a louder instrument that suddenly plays and then stops does not interrupt the flow of quieter instruments in background - the 500 always did this well, as it was already way ahead of the 300 in that respect, but the DR 500 does this with a crisp cleanness that reminds me of how it is done in an Active system, with which I am very familiar."

I am now going to be thinking of all the ways in which my 300DR is deficient every time I sit down and listen to some music! However, it would have been very very naive of me to hope that the 300DR got some way close to 500 non-DR levels. 

Naim offer a hierarchy of equipment - it would be shocking if items lower down sounded better than items higher costing three times as much!
Hard to compare if you can't describe the difference you hear.  

DB.

Nick from Suffolk posted:

I like the way you, Mr DB, have described the improvements that the DR upgrade has made to a 500. However, having just made the (relatively small) DR jump to my lowly 300 (and just committed to a 552 and a few other bits and pieces), I am dismayed to read the following

"Also when there is a louder instrument that suddenly plays and then stops does not interrupt the flow of quieter instruments in background - the 500 always did this well, as it was already way ahead of the 300 in that respect, but the DR 500 does this with a crisp cleanness that reminds me of how it is done in an Active system, with which I am very familiar."

I am now going to be thinking of all the ways in which my 300DR is deficient every time I sit down and listen to some music! However, it would have been very very naive of me to hope that the 300DR got some way close to 500 non-DR levels. 

 

Darke Bear posted:

Naim offer a hierarchy of equipment - it would be shocking if items lower down sounded better than items higher costing three times as much!
Hard to compare if you can't describe the difference you hear.  

DB.

Nick,     I understand how you feel being a fellow 300DR owner, but DB is right.

Even DB is now one level below what is achievable ( or is that 2 levels (3x500DR; S1's). I suppose we have to live within our own limits. Maybe the answer is don't listen to anything else unless you can make the transition.

Don't feel too bad Nick and Graham. All things are relative. Gary treated me to a Statement pre-amp versus 552 demo when he had both at home. You don't want to know!

I didn't.

John.