The Naim Power-line is Naim Audio's new and first ever high end mains cable. It comes as standard with all 500 series 'reference' components, well, at least with ones that have a mains feed. As with the Hi-Line interconnect that comes as part of the deal with the CD555, it is also intended as an upgrade across the board. It costs £390 per two metre lead.
And here we go with another Naim product that has been in the offing for so long we'd almost given up hope. In this instance, we have had constant reminder's of its abilities on various listening opportunities since March 2008. Saturday 11th October is in my diary because it's the very first time I've been able to hear the effects on home turf of a full set of them. A total of six are in use, one feeding the mains distribution block and one each for the CD555, NAC 552, NAP500, Supercap (for the phono stage) and HDX.
They work too (phew). I mean really work, the improvements are quite dramatic. It's the three 'r's : refinement, resolution, realism. Tonality is improved, with everything sounding just nicer. They present the music with greater scale, imaging and yet maintain, or even improve, on the strengths of timing and dynamics. It's win / win, wallet drain excepted.
Seasoned Signals watchers will know that we've been here before, of course. Adding oodles of even more expensive Nordost mains leads was a party trick demo with the Neat MF7 loudspeakers. With Focal speakers, the high end Music Works are the thing, although you might decide to pass on them when it comes to the NAP500. With Naim's own speakers, in this case the SL2, and some others, Kudos for one, these funky mains strategies can do more harm than good. This is the first 'serious' mains lead that I've heard actually improve this all-Naim system.
Hands-on over the past few months has shown the Power-line to be extremely consistent. In fact it has proved to be very beneficial in some completely non-Naim systems. Weird huh?
And all the 'wobbly' references?. There will be plenty of sceptics out there who find it hard to accept Naims assertion that the key to this cable is de-coupling from micro vibrations and that the expensive custom-designed alloy connectors with suspension, rather akin to the system used on the Hi-Line audio interconnect can do anything remotely worthwhile. If you simply want to listen to the results, give us a call. We are happy to arrange for home trial or even good old-fashioned sale or return.
OK, so putting a £400 lead on a Nait 5i is going too far. Maybe. But it is a no-brainer with a CD5x/122x/150x. Or a NAIT XS. In fact with one of these smaller systems we tried a little experiment. Standard mains fed from the wall through a twin-outlet unswitched Crabtree socket versus two Power-lines. BIG STEP.
Then another single Power-line to a Wireworld block and two more Power-lines to the amp and CD. Even better. Makes no sense. But my goodness it works. Welcome to the parallel universe!
I'll quote a customer:
"In a word - Phenomenal. More than I expected. Initially, one PL in my spare spur socket (on the 555) was a clear upgrade, but ..................... next day - still just one PL on the 555, but from the WireWorld D block - Wow! - lift off. Gobsmacking lifting of veils. So .................. now time for the PLs on the 552 and 500 in one move. Nowhere near as dramatic as the single PL, but about half as much again. So my finding is that the first PL (on whatever) is a great upgrade if you can only afford to buy one at a time.
I'd like to keep the three if I can . . . "
I should add that he ended up with four!
Arcam, Audio Technica, Creek, Chord Company, Eichmann, Dynavector, Epos, Focal / JM Labs, Grado headphones, Harbeth, Hutter
Isoblue (and special branch), Kudos Audio, Lyngdorf, Lyra, Michell Engineering, Naim Audio, Neat Acoustics, Nordost, Origin Live, Ortofon, Nottingham Analogue, Partington, Primare, Rega, Roksan, Rountree Acoustics, Sim2, Graham Slee, Shahinian, Something Solid,
Stands Unique, Stax Earspeakers, Sumiko, Trichord, Wireworld, Wyrewizard
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