Is there an idiots guide to Naim power supplies?

How about "when you've spent as much money on it as you can justify to yourself"?

My Naim trip started a few years ago when my old Audiolab amp blew up.  I went to the dealer to listen to a UnitiQute which did not quite do it for me, and bought a Uniti.  Managed to justify the extra £1,000 for that. 

The Uniti sounded great - better than anything I had previously, and it got me wandering how good it would sound if I went the next step up the range.

So we moved house and I bought a SuperUniti and a pair of £3k Audiovector speakers.  Up until that point, I never imagined justifying £6k on hifi, but I managed it (and could afford it), and oh my it sounded good.

Move on a couple of years, and courtesy of the forum I then get wandering how good it would sound with a NAP250DR.  So another £3.5k is justified and holy moly it sounds fantastic.  So of course I'm now thinking about a 272, and after that no doubt it will be an XPS.

What has surprised me about my various upgrades is just how much of an improvement you get.  I thought I would be firmly into dminishing returns by now, but the change wrought by adding the 250DR to the SU is glorious. 

So I guess my point is that you won't know your destination until you find the point for yourself where you decide you don't want to spend more.  And that will probably be influenced by other things going on in your life.

David

I think that you may have hit the nail on the head David.

I've used the journey analogy before, because it would seem you can go as far as you want..... providing you are willing to pay for the ticket. 

I too have been very surprised at just how big each improvement has been (in sonic terms).

Steve.

The XPS I brought home for demo a couple of weeks ago, that kept blowing fuses has just been delivered back directly from Naim (great service). Looking forward to plugging it into my 272 later and seeing what it can do.

Please let us know how you get on.

Will report back (for clarity it's a non DR XPS).

Having owned a non-DR XPS and later 555PSDR, I believe the XPS-DR is the most value PS in the range. When I replaced my XPS with the 555PS, my reaction was, 'meh, is that it?'

The Flatcap can power two items, but none of the other supplies can do so. The supplies do change from model to model. The flatcap, hicap and supercap can provide 24V supplies for preamps and simpler CD player circuits (the Supercap has 2 such outputs but for earthing reasons should only be used to power one item). The other supplies (XP5XS/XPS/555PS) have multiple voltage outputs designed to hit particular parts of the circuits for which they're intended.

So it's not quite as simple as you seem to be thinking. This isn't just a question of replacing the original supply by a better version of the same thing. You're actually delivering different voltage rails to the various parts of the circuits. Normally, when you have the link plug in place, the basic power supply in the NDX/272/CDX2/CD5XS routes its power through the link plug in a broadbase approach. When you remove the link plug and attach an external power supply, you are supplying several different feeds directly to specific points in the affected circuits.

The standard power supplies in the items in question are already more highly specified than much equivalent equipment. The external power supplies are that much more highly specified again and provide much better control at the various stages of the circuits, something few other manufacturers (if any) offer.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

hey Frank

thanks. this explains things quite a lot.

But still leaves the one big question:

Wouldn't be possible for Naim to fit PSs with one -or two- über power output links (plugs), smart enough to understand what the requirement the other end is?

Like so Power supplies would be universal (within the Naim ecosystem), and only differ in terms of physical size and/or component quality.