Naim at the Bristol Show

Will post some pics when I'm there tomorrow 

I will be their tomorrow,  so hopefully their will be lots to report on....

Liked what I heard today Fogotton its name(sorry!) already but it's the top model in the new Uniti range

I was there today. Some very impressive set ups.  Front of mind remains the fabulous Kudos Titan 707s driven by a 250DR and NAC252 / SCDR with NDS and LP12. Simply superb.

I was also impressed with the Russell K room. Slightly underwhelmed by the Naim offerings on the terrace level but I knew it would be the new Uniti range only. They had some cool Focal headphones running with N272s and the Utopia  was very detailed.

Had a good morning down there today and went to the naim closed demo - the format was tracks played on the Uniti Nova with (I think) Focal Sopra 2's. In between music Jason spoke & outlined the features, history etc. behind the new range. I have to say it sounded pretty good but with unfamiliar music, room and speakers difficult to draw firm conclusions.

Drifted around a fair few rooms without much focus, the Wilson Benesch suite featured a laser cartridge I believe at £20k and a (v ugly) rack system at £5k a shelf...

Dynaudio room were running some high end naim gear to demo their new kit and to their credit Proac were keeping things simple with just a cdx2 and nait5 for their standmounts. Sounded good, as did Neat room as usual. Plenty of vinyl on offer and Melco and chord dacs featured heavily in demos. 

All in all worth a visit, unless like Alester from Quadraspire you were stuck on the M32 for three hours..I'm told the traffic issues caused by 'Doris' should be ok now.

S3 posted:

I was there today. Some very impressive set ups.  Front of mind remains the fabulous Kudos Titan 707s driven by a 250DR and NAC252 / SCDR with NDS and LP12. Simply superb.

 

Any pictures ?. Kudos don't seem to want to put news on their own site 

I did take one. I'll post it later.

Ta 

Had a good visit today must agree with S3 the Titan 707s were stunning just shows how good the 250dr is.

Quite suprised at the amount and price of vinyl being purchased all in all an interesting day.

Yes the prices on the vinyl stall were pretty extortionate.

Cheers S3 - they look good  

Did they mention price ?

I also visited today. Really really liked what the 707s were doing in spite of a brand new cartridge on the LP12. Will be investigating these further, together with the other Kudos developments that are upcoming. As already said, the Naim gear (NDS, 250DR etc.) worked exceptionally well with them.

Didn't visit any of the Naim demos as, sadly, there was nothing that interested me so got my fix from the other manufacturers using Naim kit.

Other notable mentions included the Spendor A2s, fronted by a "low" end Rega amp and - sorry didn't capture the name - streamer. Making fab sounds on a budget. Bargain. Also, the comparison between "old" Chord Super Sarum and the new Sarum T.  Wow!! And, as ever, available as an upgrade to existing Sarum users apparently  (damn it!! An absolutely necessary expense I hadn't anticipated).

Diverse Vinyl damaged my wallet.

Didn't catch price of the 707s (others will know I'm sure) but they did mention a smaller version which is in the later stages of development which will be circa £8-9k. 

S3 posted:

Didn't catch price of the 707s (others will know I'm sure) but they did mention a smaller version which is in the later stages of development which will be circa £8-9k. 

I did ask they said 13k

The LP12 in the Kudos room was fitted with a Tiger Paw Tranquility. Unfortunately, there was no opportunity to hear a with and without back-to-back demo, it being primarily a demo of the 707s, but the whole system did sound quite convincing. 

One closed room demo which I really did enjoy was Chord in room 112. They were using a NAC272 and NAP300 into a small pair of stand mounted Neat loudspeakers. The system was being used to display the benefits of its new Chord Sarum T Super Aray speaker cable. In fact the whole system was connected with this grade of cable. It was a very musical sound. I wish I could get such a good sound at home from a ripped CD.

This was my first HiFi show; very interesting and enjoyable experience.  Among other brands I visited the Naim Uniti and also noticed Naim equipment used for Dynaudio, Kudos and Proac.  In relation to Naim I enjoyed the Proac room most because I felt the entry level Naim amp and Cd blended so well with Proac DB3 speakers.  Another speaker which maybe be worth listening to is the Scansonic M-6 (same people who make Raidho speakers ) a slim Compact 2.5 way floorstander speaker (£1200)  . Serious bass & treble. I wonder how a Naim/Scansonic combination would sound?

Dave J posted:

Also, the comparison between "old" Chord Super Sarum and the new Sarum T.  Wow!! And, as ever, available as an upgrade to existing Sarum users apparently  (damn it!! An absolutely necessary expense I hadn't anticipated).

Wow! indeed. As I tried to imply above, the Sarum T Super Aray is one hell of a good cable loom and probably an absolutely necessary expense as you say. Damn it! I only upgraded my LP12 to Sarum Super Aray at the end of last year. 

Clive B posted:

Dave J posted:

Also, the comparison between "old" Chord Super Sarum and the new Sarum T.  Wow!! And, as ever, available as an upgrade to existing Sarum users apparently  (damn it!! An absolutely necessary expense I hadn't anticipated).

Wow! indeed. As I tried to imply above, the Sarum T Super Aray is one hell of a good cable loom and probably an absolutely necessary expense as you say. Damn it! I only upgraded my LP12 to Sarum Super Aray at the end of last year. 

Yep, really intrigued with this Taylor stuff. I'm mainly using Music but all my mains are the old Sarums and, clearly, the eradication of PTFE is a must (horrendous crap that it is).  Pleased to see they were using Naim gear too. Shame that Naim don't use Chord cables and stop wasting time with SL.... ha ha

Pcd posted:

S3 posted:

Didn't catch price of the 707s (others will know I'm sure) but they did mention a smaller version which is in the later stages of development which will be circa £8-9k. 

I did ask they said 13k

Heavens - Perhaps the 606 then...

Dave J posted:

Clive B posted:

Dave J posted:

Also, the comparison between "old" Chord Super Sarum and the new Sarum T.  Wow!! And, as ever, available as an upgrade to existing Sarum users apparently  (damn it!! An absolutely necessary expense I hadn't anticipated).

Wow! indeed. As I tried to imply above, the Sarum T Super Aray is one hell of a good cable loom and probably an absolutely necessary expense as you say. Damn it! I only upgraded my LP12 to Sarum Super Aray at the end of last year. 

Yep, really intrigued with this Taylor stuff. I'm mainly using Music but all my mains are the old Sarums and, clearly, the eradication of PTFE is a must (horrendous crap that it is).  Pleased to see they were using Naim gear too. Shame that Naim don't use Chord cables and stop wasting time with SL.... ha ha

Taylon.... bloody spellchecker!

Romi posted:

This was my first HiFi show; very interesting and enjoyable experience.  Among other brands I visited the Naim Uniti and also noticed Naim equipment used for Dynaudio, Kudos and Proac.  In relation to Naim I enjoyed the Proac room most because I felt the entry level Naim amp and Cd blended so well with Proac DB3 speakers.  Another speaker which maybe be worth listening to is the Scansonic M-6 (same people who make Raidho speakers ) a slim Compact 2.5 way floorstander speaker (£1200)  . Serious bass & treble. I wonder how a Naim/Scansonic combination would sound?

I was at a demo in the Raidho, Aavik, Ansuz showroom, all 3 brands are run by the same people. They have what they call a small system with Naim electronics and the smaller Scansonic stanmount speakers. When they demo they start out with that system hhidden behind a curtain, and it sound very good! But as I wrote in another thread part of the Raidho/Ansuz magic is the cables, powerstrip and Darkz isolation system. Often in their demos the cables, and isolation used in the setup is more expensive than the electronics, but if you forget the price it works, and works very well with Naim, not surprising since the thinking and sound ideal is very close to being the same.

Claus

Clive B posted:

Dave J posted:

Also, the comparison between "old" Chord Super Sarum and the new Sarum T.  Wow!! And, as ever, available as an upgrade to existing Sarum users apparently  (damn it!! An absolutely necessary expense I hadn't anticipated).

Wow! indeed. As I tried to imply above, the Sarum T Super Aray is one hell of a good cable loom and probably an absolutely necessary expense as you say. Damn it! I only upgraded my LP12 to Sarum Super Aray at the end of last year. 

What are the benefits  with Sarum  T over standard Sarum. Actually I do not want to know with 4 Sarum cables in my  system.

Claus

Clive B posted:

Dave J posted:

Also, the comparison between "old" Chord Super Sarum and the new Sarum T.  Wow!! And, as ever, available as an upgrade to existing Sarum users apparently  (damn it!! An absolutely necessary expense I hadn't anticipated).

Wow! indeed. As I tried to imply above, the Sarum T Super Aray is one hell of a good cable loom and probably an absolutely necessary expense as you say. Damn it! I only upgraded my LP12 to Sarum Super Aray at the end of last year. 

That Chord seem to change their cables more often than a student changes their pants seems to be a good reason to avoid them. If they can improve something so soon one wonders why they didn't bother to get them right in the first place. Surely it's not simply a ploy to generate more revenue....

Hungryhalibut posted:

Clive B posted:

Dave J posted:

Also, the comparison between "old" Chord Super Sarum and the new Sarum T.  Wow!! And, as ever, available as an upgrade to existing Sarum users apparently  (damn it!! An absolutely necessary expense I hadn't anticipated).

Wow! indeed. As I tried to imply above, the Sarum T Super Aray is one hell of a good cable loom and probably an absolutely necessary expense as you say. Damn it! I only upgraded my LP12 to Sarum Super Aray at the end of last year. 

That Chord seem to change their cables more often than a student changes their pants seems to be a good reason to avoid them. If they can improve something so soon one wonders why they didn't bother to get them right in the first place. Surely it's not simply a ploy to generate more revenue....

On the other side second hand prices drops everytime there is a new version of Sarum. Chord could just as well have kept taylon for the Music series, tempting Sarum owners to upgrade to Music. If people want to keep Sarum nobody forces up to upgrade to the T model. It is the same with Dr upgrades or any other upgrades.

Claus