The 300 has landed...out go the 270 (2x135s)

Patience is its own reward they say. But patience is only a virtue; it cannot propel a pulse of well tempered electrons through the voice coils of my DBLs. For that I required not merely patience, but its fruits.

I had ordered the NAP 300 at least six weeks ago and it has been at the dealers (Sound Image, Atlanta) for several weeks as Richard nobly volunteered the loan of his NBLs full-range load to allow the 300 to 'season'- a term I find rather more appealing than 'break-in' or 'burn-in'. In its fully unseasoned cold-out-of-the-box state he professed it to be initially 'nice' but hardly earth shaking-in ways both figurative and literal. But as has already been pointed out, its big brothers seasoning period is more akin to that of a new preamp (i.e. weeks) rather than that of a power amp.

And indeed as the days slipped into weeks it was apparently becoming obvious that if I left it chez Richard much longer, I would have to eventually prise it out of his cold and lifeless fingers. So rather than having to perpetrate this act of dealercide we agreed that today would be the day of delivery.

Eleven a.m. eastern standard time eventually arrived and with it both Richard and Lawson. The two shipping boxes were brought upstairs and the ritual of unboxing commenced. The two chasses (the power amp itself and its seperate remote power supply) are identically sized to the 135s they were destined to replace. The similarities did not end there- they too rang in a clear bell-like tone when the upper chasses were (gently) percussed with a curious fingertip. Hopefully there were greater electrical sonic differences than there were between their mechanical sonics.

Dont ask me why, but I expected a stereo signal input cable, a la 250/200/150 etc- but there were two nice, shiny and seasoned mono cables, just like the 135 cables I already had inserted into the Snaxo. So initially I used the input cables that were already there. Two sets of speaker outputs at the back- no suprise. The speaker cables were than plugged in, not without some anticipatory haste, but remembering to invert one of them to maintain the +--+ configuration common to all of the NAP stereo amps.

One or two tracks were played to make sure that their delivery had not resulted in stillbirth-which it hadn't. The very early impressions were quite favourable, but I did not have time to analyze just where these obvious benefits were occuring for we had another appointment to meet- lunch and a trial of a pair of different subwoofers in an active Tukan system that was at least an hour away from here. So with some reluctance I exited from the music room while rationalizing that the ensuing period of absence would only allow the 300 to warm up and sing truer upon my return. The subwoofer tests were equally as interesting and very instructive. I will have to distill our experinces there into another thread for this one is already being spun into a yardage of yarn.

Anyway, my period of absence (?seperation) was about seven hours. A good chance to let the NAP300 start its process of warmup. Bear in mind that even a vintage 52 once powered down can take days to 2 weeks to come back to full tune. I expect the NAP300 to require a similar period.

So, it was time for me to relax on the sofa and go though the agonizing decision of just which one of the many, many CDs would lead off. After scanning several alphabetized rows of disks my eye settled on McLachlan, Sarah. It would just HAVE to be her Fumbling towards Ecstacy album, specifically the track 'Ice'.

For those of you who have experienced the 552, or at least digested one of the reports of it on this very forum-including one by yours truly- those adjectives are certainlly not misplaced when describing how the 300 outperforms the 135s even when powering only a pair of tweeters.

The first thing that struck me was the very wide range of frequencies that appeared to have been affected. If for instance you turn off the amps powering the bass drivers and the mid drivers, you hear only a tsssk.... tssssk....fssssst disembodied type of sound that in contrast to the tones outputed by the midrange drivers are barely recognizeable. Indeed it is possible for some folk to blow a tweeter (or two) and not pick up on it for some time.

How then can improvements in this bandwidth manifest themselves far, FAR lower down the audio spectrum. Sure, things sounded much cleaner, sweeter, articulate and unforced at the upper registers- no less and probably more than you would expect. BUT the midrange took on a very natural, uncolored and beautiful aura to it that greatly reminded me of the qualities passed on the the mightly 552. Even more counterintuitive was the bass now appeared even tighter and more tunefull! How can this be- the DBLs 15 inch bass driver does not even stir until about 300 Hz or so....WAY lower than the highpass point the Snaxo sends the tweeter. I had to play 4-5 disks to convince myself that I was hearing large improvement apperently in the entire audio bandwidth.

If I had to attempt to explain this, I would note that even intruments with very low fundamental tones have harmonics far higher-in multiples of octaves even. So by improving the clarity and leading edge of the HF you can conjure up a clearer midrange and a snappier bass. Well, thats MY explanation anyway.

Soundstaging was good.. very good by DBLs standards, yet I felt that something intangible was awry. I got out a test disk and played the channel identifying tracks. Sure enough when the voice was supposed to be coming out of the left speaker only there was some of the 'tssssssssk, tssssssssk' sounds coming from the right tweeter while the left tweet was silent. A quick flip through the manual revealed the cause. I had the 135s stacked up (on a rack) that when you faced them the right hand column fed all three drivers of the right DBL and the left column nourishing the left DBL. So when I connected the 300 up, I put the speaker cable to the right tweeter on the right side of the amp; and the left to the left side. And of course Naim stereo amps have the left speaker on the RIGHT side of the rear panel (when facing the amps from in front) with the left channel being on the right side. This then was responsible for the tweeter channel inversion. Well at least I didn't connect the tweeters out of phase.

Once absolute laterality had been restored the soundstage became rather more defined and-dare I say- solid; in a way that one does not expect from the DBLs.

In this very preliminary digest, it is quite obvious that the NAP300 is in an entirely different league than the once-revered NAP135. The king is dead...long live the king!

More to follow.

Ron
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