Nap 300 into Briks - oh yes!

Elsewhere in other threads, I have alluded to my upgraded system, so I would like to clarify and enlarge the hints in the other posts. I also want to avoid posting in George's thread and inadvertently either skewing or unintentionally high jacking it .

History: My system is a little idiosyncratic. It suits me, which is all that matters. For many reasons, I prefer simplicity and a minimal box count. I also enjoy a digital source only, my Mac Mini with its associated iTunes which I control from my iPad. Actually, it is not quite a single source as I feed my television digital out into the V1 for the fairly infrequent times I watch television.

The system originally consisted of the Mac Mini, into the V1 then a 250.2 into PMC OB1i’s. A pleasant and enjoyable sound. However, things were about to change.

Whilst browsing on eBay, as one does, I found an offering by someone who was selling a pair of refurbished Isobariks. The photo shots showed what looked like an immaculate pair. He claimed they had been completely refurbished and they looked it. He offered a free delivery and install service, so after a chat I bought them. A rather spur of the moment decision, but that is the Celt in me.

Simon, the seller, turned up at the agreed time to install and did a very meticulous job. It took him well over 2 hours with just short breaks for coffee. As an aside, he even gave me a written 5 year Warranty, with a promise to do any needed work by returning to my home. He comes across as a keen enthusiast for the Briks in particular and for Naim in general.

I was utterly gob smacked by their sound. No way was I expecting such an improvement. These are 25 years old for goodness sake. My only caveat was their tough load on my 250.2. I was told by Naim this was perfectly OK and if the worst happened it would shut down to protect itself. Fortunately, it never did shut down. I have no doubt they know what they are talking about, but I did not want to provoke it into doing any such thing, so I kept the volume reduced on heavy Rock. There was no noticeable heating on other genres, such as pop, jazz or classical.

This heating continued to be a small but niggling irritation to me, so being a man of extremes  I decided to do something about it. After exchanging Emails with people and reading a lot, I decided to upgrade to the Naim 300, just to reduce this heating effect. On paper the 300 has only an extra 10 Watts more power, but I was assured by J.N. to try it. He promised to eat his hat if I did not notice any SQ improvements, quite apart from running cooler. A risky thing for him to say, but as it turned out he was safe.

Then fortuitously, I was offered a 300 from someone who had upgraded to the 500 series. As long as it runs cooler I thought, I would be satisfied. I totally under estimated the 300 amp. I should have been prepared for what has happened. The difference was immediately obvious and outstanding. After installing it last night, I switched it on with some trepidation. Just a quiet almost muted thump from the Briks. I left it for a few minutes to settle down, then using the HIFI News test disk, I checked phase and left/right settings were all correct before trying it out.

Better? Oh yes, better in all sorts of ways. The most obvious to me was a greater sense of depth, even to really old recordings. On went some heavy rock, first Pink Floyd, The Wall, followed by AC/DC, then Talking Heads, then Metallica, etc. BTW, I am not primarily interested in Rock, I ordinarily prefer old 1960's pop, AOR, jazz, and classical. I just wanted to reassure myself my original reason for the upgrade was valid, which it certainly was. The 300 ran cool throughout my session. I was impressed.

More importantly, the 300 was a very real improvement in SQ. On Rock the bass was noticeably tighter, yet somehow deeper. Maybe this is because the tighter control was allowing notes to be more clearly discerned. That was just one obvious manifestation of the many all-round improvements I was noticing. It is possible that part of this improvement is despite the heavy load the Briks impose, the 300 has far greater reserves of power and can handle it all without strain.

I still insist the 250 is a very good amp and can handle the heavy load, but runs a little hot under hard driving into the Briks, whereas the 300 not only runs cool under heavy load at volume, but sounds absolutely brilliant - another step up the ladder. Remember, this is with supposedly just an extra 10 Watts of power availability. Of course, that is not telling the whole story. There is much, much more to the design of an amplifier than its published power rating. All this is why I would never replace my Naim with any other amp. (Aside: I very nearly deleted that last sentence for fear of it being interpreted as a sycophantic rant about Naim - it is not intended that way at all. It is just the way I feel about my system.)

On another note, my V1 appears to hold its own very well here. I believe it punches well above its weight and if you are an analog fan and wanting to try digital I am sure it is well worth your time auditioning. I am not doubting the system would receive yet another nudge in performance if I were to go after say, the NDS - no way, I cannot afford it .

I can say with absolute certainty, that what I have suits me perfectly.

Here is the final system:

https://imageshack.com/i/f0pAymPYj

The full story is here:

https://imageshack.com/user/GW3NCT/a

Happy listening

Richard