Coming into my home soon — the Naim DAC V-1

Hi! I discovered this forum a few days ago, and followed with interest two of my favourite topics. The conversation about Mac OS X Music players, and the conversation about the Rega Dac. In regards to the latter, I've really tried to love my Rega dac. I've owned Naim equipment most of my life, and really like the Naim 'sound'. Up until recently I owned a Naim CD5i CD player and a higher end Naim CDX2 CD player. A few years ago I decided on the Rega Dac for my introduction to Dacs and computer audio. I did not have the opportunity to do much auditioning because of my disability (I have difficulty being out in public) so I had my Naim/Rega dealer drop by with the Rega dac. It sounded pretty good, not far off the sound of my Naim CD5i CD player so for $1000 I thought it was a good deal, and would hold it's value well. I've owned Rega products before. The Naim dac was just too much money and just not the kind of dac I wanted. I've enjoyed the Rega for the past 14 months or so. In the absence of both of my Naim CD players however, there are certain aspects missing from the music and I find I'm needing more that the Rega doesn't seem able to provide. So I was struck by the recent announcement by Naim at CES that they are introducing a USB asynchronous dac with up to 384khz/24bit resolution (and a headphone jack). The price here in Canada has not been released yet, but I'm going to take an educated guess at around $2500 before tax. It's going to be unveiled at a flagship Naim dealer here in Toronto in about two weeks and available for purchase around the beginning of March. I'm building a new system at present, based around a Naim Nait XS integrated and I have Naim speakers (nSATs, Credos, and Intros). I'm planning to get phones (Sennheiser) and restore an LP12 and of course I'm looking to get a better dac to plug my Mac into. So I'm pretty excited about this dac. I dreamed about this for the longest time...shoebox size, reasonably priced, and my prayers have been answered. I hope. I hope I''m satisfied with the sound. I'm just not ready to jump into their streamer products or all in ones. So I'm dying to find out what it sounds like. And I'm wondering what others feel about Naim's introduction of this product?  

Yes, there's always the little details that bother me with Naim. The lack of a headphone capability has been one. I'm not as bothered about power with items like the UnitiQute. Naim amps punch much above their weight. It appears though, that the new add on amp (and I could be wrong) may, like the UnitiQute, and older amps like the Nait 2 and 3, have the speaker connectors soldered directly to the PCB, rather than firmly attached to the casework. In my experience, that has meant having a dealer open up the amp every few years and re-solder the speaker connectors to the board, because the solder connection cracks, and you get intermittent sound. This is made worse by having to use Naim speaker wire, which is stiff and puts a lot of torque on the speaker wire connection to the amp. Much care is needed in 'dressing' this connection. But I've overlooked this if the sound is glorious. The new amp has a tremendous amount of power into 4 ohms. But, I have all the amp I need, I found the Nait XS a few months ago, only four years old, in mint condition, for $1700, a huge bargain and great VFM. The XS is crammed with features like a powered input for a Naim outboard phono section (found one used a few weeks ago) and connections for a sub. Very versatile amp into the future. So I'm hoping the glorious Naim sound has been achieved here with this new DAC. The Rega just does not have enough boogie factor for me. I've been getting some amazing music lately from people like Cookie Marenco, and I've been playing around with Audirvana Plus and Pure Music and Amarra Hifi, and frankly, there's just something missing in my system. This DAC won't be cheap, at something like $2500 plus tax, but it's not a ridiculous price either, IMO. I remain optimistic!

rwa, thanks for your response. Here is my (I hope) brief take on Naim. I've owned a lot of nice sounding stereo (I think) in my time. Some folks would call it "HI-FI". For me, it was fun, and it played music well. I went through the Technics, Denon, Thorens and Rega turntables, finally settled on Linn LP12s. I went through Marantz amps, Spectro Acoustics Amps, Carver Amps, Quad Amps, then finally Naim amps. I went through Celestion speakers, Kefs, then Naim. The Linn/Naim thing came from meeting a dealer in the 1980's. We became friends. I eventually moved far away to another city. I stayed with vinyl long after CD came into view, and one day he talked me into buying one of his customer's trade ins. It was a Naim CD3 CD player, and I stayed up all night listening. I didn't know that CD could sound so good. I bought my first pair of Naim speakers, Naim Intros, having not heard them, just on trust alone. I was blown away at how they handled deep bass. The equipment has been reliable, there have been issues, but they have been attended to. The company does things like buying large inventories of spare transports for their CD players, they service their amplifiers forever (recapping, etc), and they are different, but not for the sake of different. DIN connectors, etc. Kind of reminds me of my old VW bug. They don't do change for the sake of change every year. Mostly though, and I hate those useless subjective adjectives, the sound is...well I found after I got into the LP12 table, or the Naim CD player, I would want to listen through my entire collection. Things just seemed more involving. In terms of buying online, well, my take is this. You can have the nearest Naim dealer ship it to you. Of course you won't find this used for a couple of years. But if you are patient, don't be afraid to buy Naim used. Naim owners are reliable, and a lot of the streamers and digital is showing up used now (UnitiQute, ND5XS, etc). Good luck!

I didn't realize that someone started a similar post on January 18, so I've moved my post to that thread...my apologies.