Downgrade path.

42 is the answer to everything anyhow.

Bob,

I once bought a 42.5/140 combo while I was using SuperNait (1) with the N-Sats, to use it in the studio (btw, I tried different not expensive speakers and the best were rega Kytes). I then tried the 42.5/140 combo in the main rig in place of the SN (with and without a HiCap), and this brought to light each amp's qualities and flaws: the CBs were fun and cheeky and took me back to when sound from a HiFi system was tapping feet and smiles, but had less control on the musical structure and not so much grip on the Sats' bass (yes, they have some); the SN was, in comparison, a little grey and monochrome, albeit very authoritative and full of control and detail. This comparison ended up leaving me dissatisfied on both fronts: because Naim must have done some progress in 40 years, mustn't they? And yet, if you just put it in terms of fun, something was lost.

I solved my issue with some time, luck, (money) and patience, when – after many months of my last system: CDX2.2, SN, S-400s – I still found that grey monochrome something in the muscular SN, and the S-400s seemed to suffer from such masculinity a little. So I 'downgraded' to a Nait XS2 (after a home demo and the removal of all positive and negative biases), and all went in place.

I tell you this because I don't really consider yours a downgrade since the 282 is the son of the 82, rather a change in style. But the 180 is as different from a 300 as two amps can be, so this too is not a proper downgrade but a radical change in voice. I think – my humble opinion only – that it's anyhow true that perhaps smaller amps, with less components and less power, can sound 'better' when one is on the trail of more simple enjoyment and not pursuing perfection. I dare suggesting, though, that the 180 is a bit stiff and dry in comparison to other olive amps, and that you may try – if you have the luck to find one – a 140.

Best,

Max 

Bob I immediately thought of Max and his love of the Nait XS. But he posted already.

Mango Monkey has ventured into some vintage boxes after trying everything in the Classic and 500 Series.

HH has been up and down and up the ranges over decades . . . 

My "guess" is that what pleases any of us in the moment is a combination of what we hear, what we see (big rack full o stuff...small system punching above its weight...) and what we know we've spent. Psych-o-acoustics at work and emphasis on the psych.

It's all down to opinion of course but 82 is superior to 282 and 102 to 82 a much bigger upgrade that 202 to 282 so in that respect it isn't a downgrade but price wise it's quite a big downgrade.

Nac72 is where it is. I'm running a (s/h) Naim Dac (v1 - the original) into Nac 72 (rebuilt by Chris West) into a HiCapDR/Nap250DR in the study. Bog standard Optical cable.

Now, if one really wants to 'downgrade' to a musical upgrade - what I have at work is the best ever. NAD 3020D ($399 new) into Totem Kin Minis on my desk. You'll forget all about PRAT - and just fall in love with music all over again. It's just perfect. 

MangoMonkey posted:

Nac72 is where it is. I'm running a (s/h) Naim Dac (v1 - the original) into Nac 72 (rebuilt by Chris West) into a HiCapDR/Nap250DR in the study. Bog standard Optical cable.

Now, if one really wants to 'downgrade' to a musical upgrade - what I have at work is the best ever. NAD 3020D ($399 new) into Totem Kin Minis on my desk. You'll forget all about PRAT - and just fall in love with music all over again. It's just perfect. 

NAD 3045D looks very interesting. I may give that a shot this year. 

It does look very interesting. It also has a Phono Stage. Wow!

Surely if you want a downgrade ‘path’, it is simply the reverse of the upgrade path? And that varies from person to person...

Naim has recommendations, but of course they also want to maximise sales. Personally I have always preferred infrequent major upgrades to frequent minor ones, simply because it is the more cost effective way - and an important factor for me was getting great speakers early on. If I was to downgrade (and I don’t know why I would), then great speakers would remain to the end - and if I had to have physically smaller ones they might not represent any cost saving.

I have been on a similar journey to you Bob in that I got as far as NDX/252/Supercap/250 all on Fraim with hiline/powerlines which ended up in frustration especially with the vagaries of streaming.

I have gone back to a simple integrated amp and one box cd player on a Quadraspire rack.

Not sure this counts but I went from QUte feeding SN1 to just sing Qute. Much more enjoyable to my ears. Not a big fan of SN1. 

Bob, 

I do not question your findings.  I do question the VFM of trading down.  Most trades result in transaction costs of money and time.  Time = joy, if you have plenty of it to apply to this hobby of ours.  Money is another matter.  

IME, buying too high, and trading down is not the road to satisfaction.  Satisfaction is sweeter, if you believe you negotiated a good deal.

Who would be happy to discover they loved the Nait 5i best, after spending 3X the price to get there?  A better philosopher than I am!  Just an illustration.  

Nearly all Naim products have their fan-persons, and reasons for being.  Sometimes there can be a bad fit, but most common combinations should be capable of delivering satisfaction, correctly set up.  

In my world, every Naim piece qualifies as luxury goods, above the norm.  I have found each I have experienced to be a thoughtful, un-cynical creation, capable of exceeding my expectations, at the price.  

Competition is always out there, if you have the time.

With you in spirit,

Nick

The good thing about Naim is if you buy used and are sensible then you very rarely lose money I have only at least not got my money back just once when trading in a UQ2 which I had purchased new and so actually had money in the bank when I downgraded so I do get your point Nick perhaps If had lost a packet I wouldn't be so happy.

I will add that my downgrade path was by accident I was actually contemplating buying a Supercap for my 282 when trawling eBay one night I ended up buying a 102/180 and a 'broken' CD5 for just over £500 supposedly for a 2nd system but once I heard the combo in my main system with a Napsc and a Hicap I got hooked on the Olive sound.

I then broke my heel and had lots of time on my hands so decided to try out some other Olive kit ending up almost with my present system.

It is no secret that budget systems can be more satisfying to maintain. The higher end the system is, the more sensitive it is out of necessity. You can't make a hifi that is truly revealing and sensitive to the most microdetail in the recording but at the same time immune to racking, cables, mains quality, etc etc. And so the diminishing returns and endless tweaking begins. You spend all that money and now you have to also spend more time taking care of the damned thing.

Budget systems on the other hand, while less capable, are also not wrecked by having a Burndy on the floor or a substandard rack. The ratio of cost to time invested to enjoyment is very favourable.

That said, when I downgraded in 2001 to spend 13 years in the hifi-less wilderness, I found that my musical enjoyment fell off a cliff. I did not recognise this at first. After all, I still enjoyed my existing collection that was discovered on a proper hifi. But I was discovering less and less and what I was discovering was of questionable musical value.

Your downgrade is not as extreme as where I went. You've stayed with a very respectable system that is still high-end by many standards. I went from source to speakers Linn to Mission desktop speakers and Onkyo micro separates. 

I guess the point is, downgrading needs as much care and balance as upgrading does. If you misjudge it, music discovery will suffer. I find this even with my excellent UQ2 that counts for 95% of my listening. I still need my 2 racks of silly Classic Naim components in the main room to discover and actually "get" some challenging pieces of music. Once there, I can play them back on the UQ2 in the office and enjoy them. But without a doubt, I need the higher end system to really crack some pieces before they can be enjoyed elsewhere.

At what point would the main system be enough to open up my music though? That is a question I don't know the answer to. I expect (but cannot prove), that I could drop down a 2 box XS range system with my previous speakers (Twenty.23) and get the job done. 

If I was going second hand, I'd almost certainly do a UQ2 as a source into a 72/140. I just love shoe boxes.

Cheers, Bob.

Our experiences agree.  Many of my Naim acquisitions have been pre-loved, and, thus, have had low tx costs.

It is always a boon to stumble on gold in unexpected (and “humble”) pieces.  It is obvious Naim won me over, starting with my 112/150/CD5X set. I have not tried every combination possible, but have been increasingly impressed with every piece I have home-demoed.  I have not bought every one, but none has failed to impress with its capability and integrity.

Finding brands you can rely on saves a lot of time, which I appreciate at this time of little leisure, in my life.

Nick

Not quite a down-grade as such, but I pulled out my old A60 last night and hocked it up to the line out on my Uniti2 amd tried it as a headphone amp. It was surprisingly good.

Hi all,

Not so much a downgrade in performance but in box count. I traded in my CD5XS, ND5XS and nDAC for a NDX2. I still had the financial reserve to buy an naim fraimlite. It sounds very good and looks good too. Now looking for a NAC282 to swap with NAC202.

Patrick

The term downgrade in this instance I suppose is more to do with price than performance as my 82/SC costs 30% less than my 282/HC did but sounds 30% better IMO of course. 

My journey so far has been 1. Long upgrade path (20+ years) 2. Comparatively short Downgrade path (8-10 years) 3. Upgrade path again (5+ years).

I've reahed a plateau, and also accumulated a large numberof 'left behind' components that leaves me interested in experimenting, and ale to do so.

My preliminary observations about this interesting thread are:

1. At the end of the day, the speakers determine the overall performanceof your system. Downgrading with speakers unchanged will soon tell you how far you want to go - though clearly finances and health might change that, or even push you towards a downgrade speaker path as well.

2, I struggle to follow the assertion that a Nac-82 is 'better' than a Nac-282 on any basis that both pre-amps are being asked to perform at their best. Both are great pre-amps. The Nac-282 was the main reason I began my second upgrade stage, because it is/was simply so much better than the Super-Uniti or Nac-172/272 that I had previously. But my Nac-282 with two HiCap equivalents is definitely better in the same overall system than a Nac-82 with two HiCap equivalents. You would need to take a clapped-out Nac-282 and compare it with a newly serviced Nac-82 to overturn that.

3. The performance of individual components varies a lot through their life-cycle. New or freshly serviced components are frquently much better than more expensive components in the same range of equipment that have been used for many years without any service. In my experience, this applies particularly strongly to power supplies such as HiCaps, SuperCaps etc.

4, The general observtion that original Naim equipment represents better VFM than newer equivalents seems to me to be correct. That's why I held on to some examples of older equipement even when upgrading originally, so now have a collection of comparatively rare Naim equipment.

I hope this is helpful.

Two motivations I can see for downgrading (leaving aside a deliberate desire to achieve a lower SQ, which seems contrary) are cost and space.

Ive avoided the cost issue by sticking to the secondhand market and buying all Olive kit - maxing out eventually with 52/SC/135. This represented the zenith of Naim's offering when vinyl still reigned supreme (IMHO) and since I still listen exclusively to vinyl through the system  I'm happy to resist the temptation to move in to the later product ranges. I would certainly recommend this strategy to anybody downgrading for reasons of cost, though Ive no idea how the Olive range pairs with modern digital streaming kit.

Although SWMBO has lodged no formal complaint about the box count, it still strikes me as a little excessive that I require 4 standard Olive boxes (plus the Radikal) to get this kind of sound quality.  Ive been intrigued by alternatives like the Vitus integrated amp for some time but never been sufficiently motivated to actually go and demo one to see if it comes anywhere near the very impressive performance of what I already have.

It's interesting to hear the comments from those recommending the 42 and its like.  I had a 42.5/HC/110 through high spec LP12 in to Mk2 Kans in the late 80's and had enormous pleasure from the set up. Not terribly good with large orchestral but absolutely brilliant with rock and small group jazz.  Wouldn't be the end of the world by any means if I was marooned on a desert island with that kit.

Loving my little 110 still. Keep thinking about an amp upgrade (200 most likely) but then how would I fit it next to my V1?! Something to be said about those half size boxes... The 110 won’t make you think you’re hearing the Who at Wembley, but it does recreate nicely what it must have been like in Rudy Van Gelder’s parents living room. A Nap 200 in a half size box would be the ticket... (for the Who at least!). 

It’s all a matter of opinion and my opinion with both an early unserviced 282 and a two year old model is that for the money it is over rated.

An 82 powered by a Supercap for less than the bare early model and about half what the 2 year old model costs  is a better pre amp imo of course. 

But I do prefer the Olive sound and listen mostly to vinyl. 

Interesting Bob. My view on this was to stick. My system is unchanged since 2003 apart from the LP12 which I plan to upgrade a bit more in time. I simply love it. Yes, a 552 or whatever would be good. But I think my system is well balanced and is obviously here to stay.

Things I will do are to get bits serviced over time.

Things I should do but won’t are to get Fraim, better cables and so on.

A thing rejected is to downsize. Each to their own I guess.

Stu

More i listen to headphone more i think it is a very but veeeryyyy good sound for half price of SL cabling....

you will never get more detail from any speakers like you are getting from Utopia..... 

it is a different approach of downgrading.

Emre posted:

More i listen to headphone more i think it is a very but veeeryyyy good sound for half price of SL cabling....

you will never get more detail from any speakers like you are getting from Utopia..... 

it is a different approach of downgrading.

 

Great idea for clarity/detail because they effectively eliminate room effects, which is what muddles the sound to a greater or lesser extent with speakers in the majority of rooms. However the bass end can’t match - you can’t feel it!  I wonder what f anyone has tried headphones with a sub? Difficult to balance levels, and weird to anyone else in the house, but could be the way to go!

Due to moving into a smaller living space, in an older home with tenants below me, I also recently downgraded from the most musical Naim set up I've ever had the chance to own (272/555 DR/300 DR, Kudos Super 10 w/ Track Audio stands). to the new all-in-one Uniti Nova.  

It seems (and is) is a big step down but at the same time, I find the Nova very fun to listen to. It is currently connected to the smaller Iota Alphas but I've ordered a pair of Neat Iota Xplorers. I think this will be a better match with the Uniti. Funny that I say a big step down, a Uniti and Neat Xplorers retail in the$15K range in Canada.

Seeing it has only been a few weeks since setting up the new system, I sometimes miss the level of detail and power I had but at the same time, the Nova is very engaging and making music and who knows, maybe one day I'll get around to adding a power amp to the Nova!