Naim 32 or 72- Can't Decide!

Neither is worth a huge sum to sell, so why not keep them both and bring out each in turn to enjoy?

And if one should require a little servicing, then you have the other while the work is done.

Best wishes from George

I think I would get the 72............or maybe the 32! Sorry.

George Fredrik Fiske posted:

Neither is worth a huge sum to sell, so why not keep them both and bring out each in turn to enjoy?

And if one should require a little servicing, then you have the other while the work is done.

Best wishes from George

Did your lottery tickets just come up trumps George ?

mikeybaby posted:

A late 84 Naim 32 with a Hicap or a late 80s 72. Both sound very good. I cant tell which I prefer. System is a 1984 CB250 /CDS2/SBL. The 32 breathes a bit better with a flatter more analogue sound, but the 72 has better bass and grip with a slightly warmer presentation. Which is the better preamp? Which should I keep?

 

 

 

In my experience the 72 is slightly better suited to CD replay and the 32 is possibly slightlybetter suited to LP replay. But there isn't much in it. I always felt my 72 was better than my 32.5 in all respects so i would go for the 72.

If the 32 is a plain 32 as opposed to a 32.5, then I would definitely buy the 72.

I would agree with Don’s post immediately above. Agree in all aspects.

Don’s post two up really does not need a serious reply! If I had won the lottery, then I would need to have bought a ticket, and it goes against the grain to gamble on such odds for me!

Best wishes, G

I always thought the 32.5 was the 'warmer' pre, but its been 26 yrs or so since I owned either! I do remember that cold December though when I got the 32.5/HC/250. Nice memories.

George Fredrik Fiske posted:

I would agree with Don’s post immediately above. Agree in all aspects.

Don’s post two up really does not need a serious reply! If I had won the lottery, then I would need to have bought a ticket, and it goes against the grain to gamble on such odds for me!

Best wishes, G

Good advice George. As others have said on this forum, the Lottery........... "is a tax on the mathematically challenged". and they are right, OTOH, I  look at it as a donation of £4 pw to charity

But you were spending Mikeybaby's money as if you HAD won the lottery

I've had a 72 for the past 10 years and I love it. Great with both LP and CD replay.

The actual version of the Daughter Boards is just as important as the choice of pre-amp

Don Atkinson posted:

Good advice George. As others have said on this forum, the Lottery........... "is a tax on the mathematically challenged". and they are right, OTOH, I  look at it as a donation of £4 pw to charity

So you spend £14.28 a week on lottery tickets? 

I had a 72 for a while with a Hicap and a 110 uprated to 140 at Salisbury HQ. 

It was my my favourite Naim amp combo that I ever ran. My trading of replay components is based on a very careful budget, and the truth is that I could never really afford any of it in the cold light of day, but I am glad to have had the experience of a 72 pre-amp, which I really enjoyed. Before it and after it, I ran a Nait 5i [Nait 5i - italic after], and it is not something I would have expected without the actual experience, but I preferred these to a 52 that I ran earlier. 

I am not saying that an old 72 is better than a 52 in the absolute sense, but certainly I found it more enjoyable day to day over an extended period. Just me reporting my experience.

I hope nobody minds me reporting here my experiences.

Best wishes from George

ChrisSU posted:

Don Atkinson posted:

Good advice George. As others have said on this forum, the Lottery........... "is a tax on the mathematically challenged". and they are right, OTOH, I  look at it as a donation of £4 pw to charity

So you spend £14.28 a week on lottery tickets? 

Most charities have operating costs. And some have to make a contribution to the Tax-man.

A few direct all their donations to good causes and relay entirely on volunteers to organise and run them.

It's a mixed bag, so quoting what is donated is probably the only consistent figure ..............and it helps the conscious mind even when it's unjustified in reality............

Back to the OP: which is the better amp?

Only you can decide. I love my 32.5 which suits analogue and digital replay. I can't afford an upgrade for a while, although with my Naimed LP12 being the top end for me I  have been advised many  time and oft to keep the 32.5 as it was taylor made for the Aro, Geddon et al. The important thing is to make sure yours are serviced and that they have the best boards inside.

I had 32.5 and 72. I kept 72. I always can replaced cards729 by cards 324 to sound close friend 32.5.
With Vinyl and CD, nac 72 is excellent !

Which 72 is it - ?  The early one with 2 sets of BNC's - or the later one with just one set....? Guess its the earlier one - as the 72 was made from 1989 to 2000 - https://www.naimaudio.com/product-history. 

Do the 324 boards improve things? They seem to sound a little flatter but more analogue than the 729s but the 729s have more grip and bass.

PS. Geoge Frederik has the best answer. Thanks George.

mikeybaby posted:

PS. Geoge Frederik has the best answer. Thanks George.

Dear Mikey,

If you can keep both, i really do think that is the best solution.

I have heard Frank’s 32.5 on his 250 with Hicap powering the pre-amp, and he owns my former 72, which I know is good!

So if you can have both variants, as Frank notes, having a spare for when some little servicing is needed is a fine position to be in!

I may be guilty of suggesting the less economic route, but as i observed earlier, this is nothing like as a expensive a sort of option as going from an XPS 2 to a 555 PS or whatever!

Small beer money-wise, but huge pleasure can be yours with both!

Best wishes from George

Back in the day , there was a fair amount of variation between different examples of the same pre-amp . According to Julian . It would seem which manufacturer of mother board used was just one veritable , also any thing that old will sound different now to how it sounded new. I used to have a 42 that I preferred to my mates 32  . Doesn't mean the 42 is better than a 32 just that I preferred my 42 to his 32 . 

I would go for the 72 , much better than a 32 . A tweak popular a few years ago was to plug the CD player into the Tuner input . It was a  shorter cleaner signal path and did sound better . 

Martin

I have never had nor heard a 32/32.5, but I still think my 72/HC/250 was my favorite system I have had since entering the Naim fold, and the 72 was no small part of that.

Frank F posted:

Fredrik, I sold your 72 last year but I still have a Naim employee built one (no serial number but has been serviced) - hope it's not a Richard one!! 

I still have the HiCap though, another item that is worth having in duplicate to power all sorts of things.

FF

Sorry to the opening poster for this slight aside, but to 

Dear Frank,

These days my replay has taken a different direction to what I would have foreseen four or five years ago. 

It started when the ESL 57s came, and made me realise that there are many different paths towards musically involving replay. Though I have not finished getting to my notion of an ideal system, currently I have the MAC Mini feeding iTunes to an asynchronous DAC that would not be recognised here as any good, which itself feeds a Little Dot Mark Three [valve] headphone amplifier and pre-amp. Then the NAP 100 onto a single ESL. Only one channel of the 100 is used of course.

My ideal would be to get a newly made Quad 2 [Classic as the new manufactured amp is called] which is the same design as the original Quad 2, and use a Tisbury passive pre-amp fed by my DAC onto the Quad. Strangely to me as a mono enthusiast the [mono-block] Quad 2 [Classic] is sold and priced in pairs, but just the one would be affordable by selling my double bass bow, and a few other nice things, that are really only futile possessions that mean nothing to me by now. 

The Tisbury has two outputs, one volume controlled and the other line level, so that the Little Dot could revert to headphone only duties in this scenario. 

I have the Mac summing stereo to mono, which works [in the digital domain] very well. so that the result is pure mono on only one speaker, and dual mono on the headphones. Of course there are stereo recordings that do not demonstrate mono compatibility, but none among those I have. 

So you see that I have drifted a long way from what would be considered, here. to be typically great Naim values in replay. But it is a paradox that the system does demonstrate all the good characteristics of a well set up Naim system in that it is articulate, and superbly and lucidly musically balanced, while it brings something else as well, and that is an extra-ordinary precision of timbre that I suspect is mainly due to the ESL. If the ESL is fed with a precise signal, it maintains this precision, and as things are now, I find that valves are significantly more precise as to timbre [especially obvious on the quality of the violin family, from growling double basses to the highest violin tones] than anything I have come across with transistor based amplification.

Of course transistor amplification has certain advantages. It is capable of very much more power delivery, but as the ESL is not capable of consuming more than 16 Watts, then the point becomes moot! The limitation on the maximum volume of the ESL has never been a problem for me, so the aim is to make an ideal amplifier match for the ESL rather than search for more power and quality with transistor amplification. Of course the very powerful Naim amplifiers such as the 300 or 500 actually do possess very similar qualities of timbre to a good good low power valve amplifier, but the risk is a bit of over-enthusiasm on the ESL leading to speaker damage or amplifier shut-down due to the clamp on the circuit in the ESL ...

I hope that forgive this post.

Best wishes from George

Well thanks a bunch Frank!  

(Actually, quite right, anything with RWD on the boards should be consigned to the bin immediately - luckily what little I did build likely never made it to an end product.  I was always very careful as to who would ask to build my own kit - main thing is that it was never myself!)

George Fredrik Fiske posted:

I am not saying that an old 72 is better than a 52 in the absolute sense, but certainly I found it more enjoyable day to day over an extended period. Just me reporting my experience.

I also possessed nac 52. A few years later I returned towards nac 72 fed by Scap 250 and SL2, I always appreciate them !

Alto

Frank F posted:

Hi Richard, LOL but you did post the admission some time ago which is why I referred to it.  Presumably the motherboard and cards will have initials on them even with a Naim build?

FF

Yup, all boards have the initials on them of the person who populated the PCB, whether staff build or regular production build.