120 vs Supernait/HDX

[PhilP]

Interesting? Thanks. Did you listen with the power up first of all before lowering it or did you just lower it immediately without listening? If the former then what differences did you note? Given the reviews of the 120 et al I would expect it to significantly out perform an XS. There are people claiming it can outperform amps much higher up the Naim chain.

I did the standard setup first. then I find soul is either shouting or whispering. Then I played with the configurator and found i could dial down the output power. i pressed the power output to 60W (cause I think naim xs is ~60W), it worked. didn't complain and started listening. i don't think it is a fair comparison for devialet with naim. Naim is a completely different animal - its about the warmth, the musicality, the ability to drive emotions. Devialet is pleasant, neutral, and engaging.

I would agree that some Naim equipment has a warmer sound than Devialet though I wouldn't describe some of their products for example the NAC 202, CDX, CDX2 and most of their speakers that way My NDX has a much fuller sound than my iMac/iTunes/Qobuz which is why I've kept it even though it has been boxed up for sale a couple of times.

What made me move to Devialet from a sound quality point of view (from NDX/XPS2/HILINE/282/HICAP /200) was that it was possible to hear so much more of the music through the Devialet. I could follow instrumental lines much more easily, I could hear new instruments on tracks that I thought I knew really well, it became much easier to understand lyrics, and bass lines went deeper and were much tighter. The overall sound was more natural. The whole character of some recordings changed - I must say not always for the better - but I think the result is probably closer to what the musicians intended. The very top-end Naim systems - NDS/555/552/500 can deliver similar levels of detail and accuracy to Devialet whilst keeping the Naim sound albeit at a much higher cost (2x the price of an 800). The lesser Naim models are far behind Devialet IMHO - certainly at equivalent price points.