NAC-N 272

JGOLF53,

My NAC272 + XPS DR is driving a Bryston 4BSST. ..

SPEAKER WISE, I had a set of Wilson Bensch Curve speakers which I  wanted to improve on and tried Focal Sopra 2... (really nice sound, but the looks were unacceptable), also tried  B&W 802s, (but didn't work in my room), then tried Wilson Sabrina (again nice sound.. and sounded good with a powerful amp.. but didn't like any of the colours - no wood finish)... finally ended up with a pair of Sonus Faber Serafinio  - I love the sound, great detail, good solid bass and looks fabulous...

They also thrive on good clean power to get the best out of them... in the shop they were demoed with  NAC272 + Chord power amp... at home demoed with my Bryston backend... I did try the speakers with my friends Naim 250 (non DR).. but to my ears this could not drive the bass as well as the Bryston did... to be fair I  think I  was asking too much from a 250 to drive a £18k speaker... maybe a Naim power amp higher up the range is what we needed.. 

My advice would be demo first... there is nothing wrong in mixing brands, if it works for your specific requirements..

Interesting combination!

Do you use the analog in of the N-272 or only the Streamer and DAC section?

I use all three the analogue inputs - Turntable, AV Pass-through and for the SACD/CD player..

I found that the addition of the XPS-DR made an improvement to both the digital and analogue performance...

Fernar, i would be interested how you connect and use the AV pass-through and how user friendly it is in terms of switching between the sources. Thank you.

In the setup for each of the analogue inputs you can change the naming of the input, trim the gain or set it as pass through..

Specifically

* SETUP (the spanner symbol on the remote)

* then go to 'Analogue Inputs'

* then on the specific input which you want AV passthrough, set 'AV Fixed Volume' to 'Yes'

WARNING

Make double sure that you are setting this to the correct analogue input, since when you set this the specific analogue input it is passed directly to the power amp bypassing the N272 volume, so also turn down the volume of your AV processor.

Hope that helps..

Thank you!

Very flexible! So you have setup a specific input to passthrough and adjust the input volume.

once you choose this imput on the remote it goes automatically to pass through. If you go back to another input it goes back into normal mode.

Once setup correctly there should not be a volume problem? Only if you switch around input cables at the back? Fool proof?

Easy to use when set up correctly!?

In my experience the amp speaker room relationship is hyper critical .... I am not saying the source is not ....important. I have had problems in the past getting synergy ..... get those 3 things right fundamentally .... and the rest will fit together...... you need to talk and visit a good dealer...

I would add to the above list, for stand mounts, the speaker stands are critical for room/speaker/stand coupling...

 this of course a massive advantage for standmounts giving greater flexibility, but yes, at the expense of something else to get right.

Jorgjean

Very flexible! So you have setup a specific input to passthrough and adjust the input volume - yes it is

once you choose this imput on the remote it goes automatically to pass through. If you go back to another input it goes back into normal mode. - correct

Once setup correctly there should not be a volume problem? Only if you switch around input cables at the back? Fool proof? - correct

Easy to use when set up correctly!? - yes it is - but in passthrough mode, the volume of the speakers are controlled by your AV amp. So you will have to set up the multi-channel speaker level and timing from within your AV processor.... in case of my AV preamp, I have to do this with a tape measure and sound meter.... but if you have a more modern AV processor there may be a automated process to get you started and if the sound setup is not ideal, you should be able to make fine adjustments... 

Today was the auditioning session. The dealer took the trouble to bring the electronics to my house and we spent 3 hours listening and comparing. 

Remember my chain is Bluesound Node 2 streamer, Rega DAC, Audiolab AP8200, AVM M3ng Monoblocks, Dynaudio Sapphire. Speaker cables inakustik LS-1102 with WBT plugs.

I suspected the Audiolab to be the weak spot in the system, sounding a bit thin. We therefore put the N-272 in its place replacing Streamer and DAC at the same time. 

Yes there was a clear difference from the streaming side. The rhytme was surefooted,no stumbling, each instrument, voice distinguished and colorful and authentic. Fuller and richer. 

I also connected my Rega RP7. The analogue section sounded very natural. 

What surprised me most was the spotify streaming section. With CD quality it sounded overwhelmingly good. Spotify from my ipad to the Bluesound Node 2 was underwhelming. It was not possible to modify the sound quality in the app because it was „playing to a different device“. Spotify in Naim in its own app is playing to the same device and therefore with a fantastic soundquality.

We then hooked up a NAP300 non DR version. That was another step up from the AVM, no wonder at triple the price. While the AVM had enough muscles to drive the Sapphires with no distortion, the NAP300 tranformed the room (nearly) in a near classical concert hall. Again, sounded much more authentical.

The Sapphires on the other side conveyed everything effortlessly also at very elevated listening levels. A very special and capable speaker!

Conclusion for me: The NAP 300 is great but hugely expensive and i could easily live with the AVM as the difference is only apparent woth very high quality recordings. The N-272 I need to think about it. Great product, great built quality, nice flowing sound. But is the upgrade worth the price of 3000 pounds for me?

I have not arrived yet in the Naim community.

Thanks for this good write-up. Glad to see the audion went so well and you were able to hear the various components. And what they can and cannot do.

Do remember that - the Naim community is here should you need some more advice. Or indeed decide to join.

Enjoy the music.

Adam

Interesting write-up.

I borrowed a 272/250DR a few months ago to compare against my DAC-V1/Cyrus x200 sig setup. I listened to a fair amount of stuff and concluded that, to my ears, the Naim was only marginally better and to swap would cost a lot of cash.

I used a Cyrus CD XT Sig as the source, plus Tidal on the 272. When the 272s DAC was bypassed, the sound from the V1 sounded better. The Cyrus CD sounded better than the 272 streaming Tidal. I originally did the test to determine if I should ditch the CD for streaming.

The 272/250 looks lovely but my mix of V1 and Cyrus bits was better to my ears.

ymmv

I should clarify my last statement. What I meant to say was that the Naim gear was only marginally better considering the extra cost, although I guess the Cryus amps were £4K when new, and I didn’t feel it was worth upgrading for. 

It seemed to me that in order to whip the V1/Cyrus gear you would have to move to the next level above 272/250 in Naim

If you were comparing Tidal via the 272 to a CD, then you were hampering the 272, as the data feed from Tidal (despite being 16/44.1 FLAC) is known to not be as good as a ripped CD (this is believed to be due to the inconsistent data feed rate across the internet).

Interesting, so what format and delivery method is the 272 good at? 

I have a Cyrus stream x sig playing tidal to the V1/x200/PMC Twenty5.24 and it sounds pretty close to the CD to me, to the point where I’ve stopped comparing and don’t use the CD these days.

The other method I use is Audivarna/Tidal on a MBP sent out over a wired network to the streamer.

I assume that solves the “Tidal data feed issue”...or are you saying that there is a fundamental issue with Tidal where it never delivers the advertised data rate to the client, be that Computer or Network player?

I googled this and can’t find anything

Paul

Hasselblad100 posted:

Interesting, so what format and delivery method is the 272 good at? 

I have a Cyrus stream x sig playing tidal to the V1/x200/PMC Twenty5.24 and it sounds pretty close to the CD to me, to the point where I’ve stopped comparing and don’t use the CD these days.

 

It's not so much what the 272 is good at, it's a matter of having a data feed of a quality that's good enough so that the 272 can use it to really show what it can do.

The best way to show what a 272 can do is to use data stored locally, either on a UPnP Media Server (e.g in a NAS) or on a USB memory stick out into the front port of the 272.  In both cases the best file format is WAV and even better if it's also HiDef - 24/88.2 upto 24/192).

Can anyone answer my Audivarna/Tidal question above? 

If the only way to get a streamer to deliver a  good (better than CD) result is to buy a load of hi-res music and put it on a USB or NAS then that’s very expensive and totally negates the convenience of being able to browse the online catalogue of tidal/qobuz etc

??

To deliver better than cd results...then yes you will need hi Res downloads

To get very acceptable results then use tidal or NAS ..

Is there any way of measuring the file quality being ingested by the streamer, versus the advertised rate...I assume any rates shown on the streamer app are read from metadata in the file sent by Tidal/Qobuz server?

There are ways to read the actual data from the file and from that infer the real resolution of the data, but you need to understand the nature of the data and how it's used in the file to be able to interpret this correctly.

The data rate shown on the streamer and the app are read from the physical resolution and data rate of the data stream being processed by the streamer, not just from the metadata.

Hasselblad100 posted:

Can anyone answer my Audivarna/Tidal question above? 

If the only way to get a streamer to deliver a  good (better than CD) result is to buy a load of hi-res music and put it on a USB or NAS then that’s very expensive and totally negates the convenience of being able to browse the online catalogue of tidal/qobuz etc

??

In reality, I haven’t found that hi-res music is necessarily better sounding than CD. I prefer to use a NAS/streamer rather than a CD player, but the majority of my collection is from ripped CDs. I find this generally sounds a little better than a CD quality stream from Tidal, but an expensive hi-res download does not necessarily sound better still. 

Hi Chris,

thats interesting and summarises my findings too. I have bought a few 24/96 albums and attached them to the streamer via a usb stick and I find it hard to tell any difference. 

What streamer do you have? It seems that many people agree that streaming scores well on the sq/convenience factor but struggle to hear a big difference in pure SQ.

Paul

ChrisSU posted:

Hasselblad100 posted:

Can anyone answer my Audivarna/Tidal question above? 

If the only way to get a streamer to deliver a  good (better than CD) result is to buy a load of hi-res music and put it on a USB or NAS then that’s very expensive and totally negates the convenience of being able to browse the online catalogue of tidal/qobuz etc

??

In reality, I haven’t found that hi-res music is necessarily better sounding than CD. I prefer to use a NAS/streamer rather than a CD player, but the majority of my collection is from ripped CDs. I find this generally sounds a little better than a CD quality stream from Tidal, but an expensive hi-res download does not necessarily sound better still. 

That has been my general experience as well. The 24 bit downloads I have don’t really sound any different on my 272 based system to their CD 16bit equivalents. 

Has anyone compared a config like those discussed above to the output of a unitiserve/core ripped files?...Uniti is very convenient ripping/cataloguer