S1/S2; first opportunity to hear this in a domestic environment
Posted by: u77033103172058601 on 28 April 2016
Not my domestic environment unfortunately and not ever likely to be.
My local dealer has just taken delivery of the Statement power amps to partner the pre-amp he has had for a while. I had found an excuse to pay a visit and enjoyed an hour of listening to a variety of music.
I (actually we, because my wife accompanied me) have been very fortunate to listen to a number of high to very high end systems in domestic environments over the last few weeks. All the owners are on here and all have systems and rooms that work really well and offer fabulous insights into the music. Apart from the immediate effects of making my system sound just that bit small (I learned to avoid playing the same music too soon after any visit) these visits and listening sessions have been really enjoyable and an opportunity to share and discover new music. I had enjoyed many hours listening to the other systems and the owners' choices of music (many thanks guys, you know who you are).
The S1/S2 plus Titan 808s are in a listening room that is a completely domestic setting. The overall sound seemed, to my tired old frequency-limited ears, to be in a notch ahead to any of the other systems (and another league to mine), combining all of the good points of all of the others; weight, authority, deftness, insight into the music and musicality in abundance. I was only sorry that my wife came to collect me after about an hour after she had completed the shopping trip to Waitrose; she had drawn the short straw on this occasion.
My visit had been to lend him my speaker cables, thus rendering my system silent. Probably no bad thing after hearing the S1/S2/808s together. And this was, apparently, without the correct pre-power interconnect in place and without a functioning TT in play. I shall have to find an excuse to make another visit.
A good hi-fi system and music is (almost) life affirming.
Well I got around to also having a listen today to the Statement System at Signals with their new Statement Power Amps. I was very familiar with the system sound in their room over the years as different items of equipment and speakers have been on demo - and being very familiar with the S1 Pre in my own system running Active with three 500 (non-DR) Active into S800 speakers, I had my own reference to form an opinion from my initial listening session.
The session was split into two parts, due to something I'll discuss later. The front-end was NDS Streamer with two 555DR supplies and Speakers the new Kudos Titans - all super-lumina cabled and the Statements configured to run in fully-differential mode between Pre and Power. An interesting fact was that the Statement heatsink was quite warm, so it runs in more class A mode than the 500.
First impressions was of a much more fuller, easier more sumptuously easy-detailed presentation. There was nothing at all to draw you from the music playing - very confident authoritative presentation - possibly the best Passive system I've heard. How did it compare to my own Active system? Well I still get a higher performance in most areas, important to me, from my own system, but I could hear that the S1 Monoblocks were providing a much more clean and delicately detailed rendering than my non-DR 500 system did, despite it sounding a little rounded and a little too laid-back compared to the Active system. But I use a different source which when I last compared was a little better than the NDS and I think the S800 in a different league to the Titans, so that was there in what I was hearing.
But - I felt something else was not right - it should have been better - and from previous very negative experience with it, I asked Alastair to remove the link-cable that allows the S1 Pre volume to be controlled from the NDS. Immediately things improved rather a lot - now there was not the dullness and overly laid-backness I don't like. As an Active user with a preference to listening female vocal I preferred it like this. I could imagine this may not bother some users as much - but the Signals team did hear the difference and were immediately scheming of ways to implement the same functionality differently. As it stands, at this level of performance and financial outlay I would not mar the performance to have the ability to control the volume from the Pad App - the remote does the job well enough for me.
After re-listening to the set of songs I know well again I found it all rather wonderful and if I had the money I'd live to have the Statement Monoblocks - but I'd also not go passive to get there - but that is personal, others may easy feel otherwise, as what was being achieved musically was very special. Ergonomically the Statement full system wins too!
As to how much 'improvement' comes from the S1 Pre and the S1 Power Amps - you could say 50/50 or 60/40 each with people deciding one way or the other. The S1 Pre is the necessary precursor to getting the S1 Monoblocks, so it is good I can use that with my lowly non-DR 500 system and enjoy what it does to Active performance.
Naim have achieved a special and immensely rewarding performance from these system boxes. I wish the Power Amps were not five times the cost of the 500 though! 
But it makes the S1 Pre look like a bargain! 
My thanks to Alastair and Andy of Signals for their time and hospitality - very interesting!
DB.