Advice needed: Nait 5i vs Nait 5 vs Nait 3

I would like to know your (subjective) opinions about these integrateds, as I'm probably going to try the Nait 5i. Thank you.

 

probably get more response about naim kit on the pinkfish forum.

 

Ive heard good things about older Naim stuff in terms of its VFM.

It might be good to ask if an older/better Naim pre-power could be had for similar cash?

 

nait 3 - very 'in your face' not very powerful but tends to punch above it's weight due to stiff power supply. a bit raw but fun.

nait 5 - smoother than the nait 3 and more flexible. can be upgraded with an external psu and can power a naim phonostage by itself. still not very powerful but again has stiff psu so punches above it's weight. has a resistor ladder volume which can cause issues with noise and some think it egrades quality.

nait 5i - basically a nap150 with a passive volume control and switching. not as flixible as the 5 but regains some of the magic of the older naims. more powerful but still no krell, but once again it has a decent psu so punches well. not as flexible as the 5, no external psus and can;t power a phono stage but the volume control is from the top end 252 which means some think it sounds better. has a definate 'new naim' sound i.e. smoother than the old and some would contend less fun.

best nait is generally accepted to be the nait 2. these can be found occasionally for about 350+ quid.
cheers


julian

 

"nait 5i - basically a nap150 with a passive volume control"

Thank you Julian that's all I need for a start... Are you talking about the old or the new nap150?

 

the old one - although i just meant they are the same output power. i believe the 5i uses a different amp circuit and output transistors.
cheers


julian.

 

Can you know for sure?

 

not for sure but i'm pretty certain they changed the transistors in the nait 5i (and not to the bad boy 007's either).
cheers


julian

 

nait 2 by fat the best, after a few mods almost good too

 

Wm,

20W won't do it with the yammies... I like it loud, very loud...

 

BD, I cant imagine any of the Nait amps would be suitable as they are not the most powerful of amps. I would have thought you would be looking at at least the NAP250 level, or even better a nice powerful digital amp. have you tried mikes DIY amp?

 

I've managed 42w without the use of one of my off board psu's, its very groovy and bouncy almost approaching my old wadia 15 for those traits. without the detail, bass etc, but good fun none the less

 

Robbo,

The Rotel is rated at 60W per channel and is doing quite fine...

As for digital amps I wasn't really impressed and I don't believe in it... PWM is like a one-bit DAC with a sampling frequency of around 500 kHz, too far from PCM equivalent resolution, at 2.89 GHz.

SACD is equally made from bitstream but with a much higher sampling frequency than 500 kHz, 2.8224 MHz, and nevertheless it sounds... well, "too detailed" (remember "excessive detail"?) and utterly boring...

You see Robbo, Wm likes old (PCM) multibit Wadias above everything else but then he losts that extra resolution with PWM amps... but then again, "hearing is everything", so...

Calm down now Isaac, will you... SACD also uses noise-shaping, do you like SACD?

 

Bm,
One day you will actually realise that our systems are the sum of the parts rather that just spec sheet choices (s/f is actually 1.2mhz for the pwm I use).
Still as they say in hairy goat land, It's good to munch

 

Like you say "hearing is everything"...

As for the sum of the parts... I can see no better reason to have Mana up to the roof...

But, why don't you keep your s/f as low as 500 kHz... those MOSFETs must be expensive... (at least they are good at 1.2MHz).

 

BD,
Just the way Its been configured, for me its works the way I like it, though very special attention has to be paid to the supply rails to the actually dsp chip itself, also with voltage regulation.
The newer versions allow adjustable negitive feedback if you so wish, imagine having that on a RC array driving a PC based measurement network anayliser suite, oh the things it could tell you

 

Any digital amp will need that because of its low PSRR...

I'm all ears...

 

See, we told you hearing is everything!

 

But I've not heard nothing relevant yet... I guess I'll try the top shelf magazines...

 

Well if you've been listening to the RA1062 I can understand that