I've just repaired Quad 909 and I am impressed on how good it sounds, I repaired years ago a Quad 303 also impressed of it's excellent sound, I have not heard the Naim but I doubt it can reach the sound of the Quad
I replaced my Quad 33/303 combo with the Quad 34/405-2 combo during lockdown. The 405-2 was so much better in all the critical areas than the 303. I recently replaced the Quads with a Willsenton R8 and I now realise that despite the Quads being extremely well built, clean and powerful, they aren’t even close in sonic abilities to the Willsenton. I expected better midrange but I was very surprised to have improvements in the bass. The Quads will stay but not as my main system 🎶🎵
Another great video Kelvin ,I have 2 rb850 power amps rotel preamplifier rc1590 there top one and cambridge audio cxc cd player ,would love to try the Naim 100 with my set up oh sorry linn index 2 speakers biamping ,😊😊😊
hi music lovers I have been using the quad elite qsp power amp with hegel hd12 preamfi for 3 months, my speakers have atc scm11v2, quad elite qsp has its own current dumping technology, and it has A and AB class sound quality, although the amp is no signal after about 30 minutes after first opening. Even (without music), coolers reach a certain temperature and reach their top performance for listening to music, thanks to the warm operation, the quad qsp sounds almost the tone and taste of the lamp, you can listen to music in the quality of audiophile for years without paying the lamp and excess electricity with the QUAD ELITE QSP amp, quad I love the amp and the sound, quad elite esp power 2x140 8 ohm, 2x250 watt 4 ohm, thd 0.004% (100W @ 8 Ohm; 20Hz - 20kHz)
I have both those amps, the difference is subtle. Naim more rounded so sweeter in the ears. But to drive Quad ESL 2805, no match. More powerful QSP, more authority and fullness
Good point made about much the misunderstood wattage phenomenon. A doubling of wattage will add 3 decibels (3 db) to the vollume possible, but considering one decibel has long-ago been scientifically worked out as "the smallest difference in vollume the normal healthy younger human ear can possibly detect & hence 3 decibels is not a large increase at all. You'd have to have (i'm guessing) 20 or 50 times the amp's wattage to technically & actually double the vollume possible. (If listening at an eardrum destroying 180 db is you're bag. I said, if listening to....) Then there's the fact that most or near all amp manufacturers now no longer give "THD" parameters (distortion levels) when stating their amp's max vollumes output. An amp that gives say 50"watts at 0.1% THD can be set to give 100"watts at a dirty sounding, ear-fatiging 15 or 20% THD, one needs distortion parameters to tell how many "Clean" sounding watts you could get. Oldies like me will remember the "DIN 4500" Audio Spec's Standard, that manufacturers unaminously stuck to, where watgage was always given with a max' THD figure to tell the truth. Without DIN standard, you get nonsense like ultra-budget cheapo amps rated at: " 1000 Watts music power / 12 Watts RMS. The 12 watts may sound clean at 0.1% T.H.Distortion but the 1000 watts (if it was even possible) would be at 99.999% THD!!! & worse than some fiendish torture method of old
Hi another excellent review of two very very nice amp. I am sorry but i missed which preamp did you use for your evaluation ... imhe preamp also plays an important role. Kind regards, gino
Hi, very nice! I had Nad 325be with Keff q5 and sold. Now I got leak and Rogers ravensbrook with Rogers ls4 and Harbeth p3esa. I dont think i ever sell them. People looking for more power to drive Harbeth?. My15W !! The best for Hatbeth! I even have more bass i need. Do you think I will have some new retro interesting sound with Naim or Guaq amplifier to my collections? I like midrange and spaces between instruments. Sugden amp- bass and next voice is not for me. Thanks
People forgot a out room acoustics, floor coverings, curtains heavy curtains wood flooring etc & age of property stone floors reflective surfaces windows so much to consider, Quad tends to be neutral in sound I do like it personally because i am fussy on the build quality & I did sell quad, repaired the Quad valve amplifiers & 303 in early days,
Hi -you select a very nice topics . British HIFI I drive BC1 with a NAIT2 CB - second set is a NAP250 olive with Harbeth M30 one question - the NAP100 is not really vintage - anyway oldschool and nice my question: any experience with supernait 3? how would you rate the difference in sound to a NAP250 olive paired with a NAC peamp olive?
Sorry my friend no experience with those components K By the way are use that Naim amp to sort of compare with the modern era and I figure it’s a fairly well respected company part of the subject area I’m getting at here is what are the improvements over time
Thank you for a detailed review! 😊 Any opinions on the Quad 405-2 amp? I have the possibility to get either a 606 or 405-2, both are the same price. I will be using a Quad 34 preamp and Aurum Cantus Leisure 2 SE speakers.
Love Florence turntables by the way yes I’m in the world of guessing here but because you have the 34 preamp I’m inclined to think the 606 because it’s a bit younger and I think you just might be losing clarity with those two older units the 405 didn’t gain the reputation that the 303 did which I would respect the 303 That’s my best guess
My quad 44/405's ( bi-amped)sounded uninteresting until they were upgraded with modern caps opamps dual mono psus. B&W matrix 3e's My brother who's super critical reckons I'd have to spend >20 grand to improve the sound and I agree. The stage is simply massive, 3d. You cant hear the speakers; what you hear is glorious full range music delivered as if you were sitting live in Abby road
Thanks for the review. You said a few times in the vid that on some systems the midrange on the clash song can sound garbled. Recently one of my close friends lent me a preamp which has a circuit based on one which John Curl designed and then published. So anyone can build it if they like. What I found that although tonally it was very similar to my NAD it seemed to have the ability to separate the voices of performers from the background so that the lyrics were easier to understand. Even on records which I know really really well I heard words sung which were much clearer. Honestly I am at a loss to understand how that can actually happen (and am I imagining it?) Ps I even took the outputs and fed them into my headphone amp and it was a similar story there too....
Naim is a well regarded brand. Quad is also great. I think you would have got much better results with the Quad power amp using one of their preamps like the Quad 99. Thanks for the info provided.
@@milosdunjic8718 Hi there. Have a 909 and a CDP-2. Wondering about upgrading to a DAC/Pre as I only stream music these days. Without a Quad Pre with Quad Link, do you have to turn on the 909 manually at the back every time you want to play something?
With regards to power ratings for amps, there's additional factors that also need to be considered. To start with, there's no standard that manufacturers use to rate an amps power, so each company does it however they see fit. Because of that, you can have an amp rated for 50 watts that puts out more power than one rated for 100 watts. Here's an example. All power ratings have distortion ratings ties to them. If you gave the same amp to two different manufacturers to rate, company A may rate the amp at 100 watts with 2% distortion. Company B may rate the same amp at 75 watts because 2% distortion is too high for their standards. 1% may be the limit on what passes for acceptable distortion, and that will automatically lower the power rating. Not all watts are created equal. A watt is volts x amps. 10 volts x 10 amps = 100 watts, 50 volts x 2 amps = 100 watts, 2 volts x 50 amps = 100 watts. The one with 50 amps will be a lot more powerful then the first two. Power ratings are always tied to a resistance rating. There's usually 2 resistance specs listed. A nominal or average ohms rating tells the overall picture. Then there's the lowest resistance that the amp can safely put out. The lower the resistance, the harder the amp as to work. One amp may be rated for 100 watts at 8 ohms nominal, and the lowest resistance its capable of is 4 ohms. A different 100 watt amp at 8 ohms may be safe to use on a 2 ohm load. The amp that can drop down to 2 ohms is a lot more powerful than the one that does 4 ohms.
@@stereoreviewx cool ! If u want to come to Brilliant Corners this wed 04th march i'll be there spinning some records with a friend of mine from Japan. It's a great Sound System: 4 Klipsch Klipschorn speakers, 2 Mcintosh MC-275 MC275 Vacuum Tube Amplifier, rotary mixer. It's a nice place, not a club. It's in Dalston btw (8pm-12) Free entry. Thanks
On the lower setting I bet, lol over the years I’ve tried several speakers on my 606 , but none have handled the power, so only used on the lowest power setting..
@@promethiousb1489 Same trouble I had, even managed to get hold of a top,of the range AR’s (Acoustic Research) a few years back op wetter smoked just like a Cigarette! Never seen a speaker smoke like that! Would love to have a room large enough to try the Quad speaker Elrostats
@@stereoreviewx well in a development yesterday I found a very good condition 303 (late production 80's with IEC) re-capped by Quad 10 years ago. The seller wanted £175 so I just bought it on the spot!
@@stereoreviewx you really need to try the quad 306 if your unfamiliar, a real gem. and you can get your hands on one. 50wpc current dumping power amp with lots of authority. very musical. I'd love to hear your thoughts. it pairs pretty well with most pre amps in my opinion. great channel .
for a speakah, high impedance [eg 15 ohms] and a benign phase characteristic is more important than high sensitivity [eg 100 dB]. If you avoid speakers that are otherwise then our amp needs only a 1 or 2 watts, or get up 15 watts/ch, like the 47 Labs stuff. Or you take my Naim XS2 with a whopping 70 watts /ch. More than that is silly.
@@stereoreviewx What do you think of the old school Julian Hirsch objectivist contention that properly designed amps sound identical and that any differences audiophiles claim to hear is imaginary? His claim is (was) that in his own experience and in the many blind tests which he's conducted no one was able to distinguish between amplifiers with flat frequency response better than random chance. I'm not saying I agree but I do have to admit It is hard to tell preamps/amps apart when compared under blind conditions. But when I know what I'm listening to it seems easier. What is going on here? Are we really hoodwinked by preconceived biases or is there a problem with blind, instantaneous A-B switching that doesn't allow for best discernment?
socksumi Okay yes very interesting last thing first I think Switching from one amp to the other is misleading and not a good way to reveal the truth . It’s very hard to articulate this idea properly. But it’s something like you notice most what’s changed . Now I don’t know this Julian guy but I do think there are always differences with amps and preamps. We basically end to hear the world of psychology I guess meaning are we influenced by what we know we are looking at and what we have been told its properties are. And I have got to say I am not sure completely and I was thinking of doing some proper blind tests and truly I was a little bit worried I thought my God imagine if it’s all illusionary.. Ultimately I don’t think so I mean something that is interesting is that certain components Say the kef Ls50 speakers . Well where ever people say about them in magazines and how great they look no one I play them to order file or not male or female nobody likes them. So there is consistency there. It’s a longer rabbit hole than it looks this sound business
@@stereoreviewx You know what I think the issue is? It's not the blind testing... it's the instant switch over. We simply don't have very good discernment at an instant. The ear tends to pick up major shifts in tonal balance on quick switch overs but not so much subtle distortions. Those take a bit longer to pick up on. Listen long term, even blind is okay, and I'll hear differences I never noticed on first listen. That's why it's better to try your gear out a week or so before deciding to buy. Just like when I first meet identical twins it's hard to tell them apart but after getting to know them, telling them apart becomes easy. Same with audio; live with your amps a while and you soon latch on to their sonic signature. Then hearing differences gets easier. Lesson being... long term listening reveals things that instant switch overs can't. Blind or sighted.
Yeh... Y'know... Yeh...Y'know...Yeh... Y'know... (repeat with heaps of highly subjective wordes like:- "bigger... fatter... cardboady".) Well done for making an effort and having a go.
NAIM amplifiers are not good amplifiers. I have nap250 and it does not have good sound. especially in bright areas it struggles a lot compared to many other amplifiers!
