Audiophilepure

Naim Audio Solstice turntable system

“Not all these advances made it to market – though they certainly got a lot of use in our personal systems! – but they all helped maximise the music source to enable the design of better pre and power amplifiers. I still often think about Julian, and how he would have regarded the products we have designed since he died. I was a Naim customer for 11 years before I joined the company, so I’m well and truly steeped in the Naim vision. I believe he would have very much approved of the engineering solutions and final performance of the Solstice Special Edition.”

Solstice has got that combination of drive, excitement, foot-tapping energy, dynamic punch. Sure, it’s more even-handed as befits the more 21st Century approach to music replay and also the way Naim sounds today… but it’s also got that ‘put a smile on your face’ love of music that permeated really well thought-through ‘chrome bumper’ Naim products of yore. Which fits the only sadness I feel about the Solstice; those who are no longer around who would have absolutely loved the deck. Listening to the Solstice makes me think about the late Malcolm Steward shoe-horning in a pair of SBL loudspeakers into a room only slightly larger than the boxes in which they were packed, and playing Gregson & Collister and Richard Thompson albums at ‘Def Con 1’ levels on his Pink Linnk’s, Aro’d up LP12.

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