Naim Audio - Design Characteristics

Design Characteristics

Naim has a devoted following gained through a combination of its products' performance, build quality, upgrade and after-sales philosophy: Committed to after-sales support, Naim boasts they can service all products ever manufactured by them.

Naim's design philosophy is characterised by the incorporation of over-engineered power supplies to ensure fast and generous current delivery to the audio circuitry. Naim also market independent low-noise power supplies as an easy and effective upgrade path for their pre-amplifiers and CD players.

Their unique design approach can be seen, for example, by their use of materials – the semiconductors, heavy toroidal transformers, iconoclastic solid aluminium black cases – their obsessive attention to earthing, screening and isolation from electronic interference, through to their preference for XLR connector, DIN connector and the BNC connector (as opposed to the RCA connector used by almost all other manufacturers). However, bowing to market forces, RCA phono plugs are now fitted as standard, in addition to DIN plugs on most Naim products

The company's pre- and power- amplifiers, especially, are electrically matched and are designed to be used together. Dire warnings attach to experimentation with other manufacturers components, particularly in the case for some "high-end" loudspeaker cables, whose inductance/capacitance characteristics present unstable loads to the high-current devices used inside Naim power amplifiers – these have been documented to cause damage to same.

As with other brands such as Arcam and Cyrus, the company's instruction manuals state that "better and more consistent performance will be achieved if the system is left switched on for long periods."