A little green box that makes your headphones come alive and show up in their Sunday best.
Every now and then, one gets to review something special. A
product that not only talks the talk, but stomps all over everything in its
path. The problem is that many of those products are very expensive and made in
very limited quantities.
Audio reviewers love to wax poetically about such products
until there is no more room on the page. One would get the impression that they
are being paid by the word. We tend to gush about such products to the point
where readers start to wonder if we actually work for the manufacturer.
While I have never worked for Naim Audio, I did once live in
Chicago and do
consider the fine people at Naim Audio USA to be friends. Chris Koster and
Chris West run a very fine ship, distributing and supporting one of the best
high-end audio brands in the world.
Naim’s kit works.
It all kinda looks the same and needs to be connected in a
very specific manner to sound its best. Having reviewed more than my fair share
of it over the years, I have come to understand its idiosyncratic nature, its
good points, and its bad points.
There is madness to the entire thing. The cult of people who
love Naim and dream of upgrading to the next level is not insignificant and I
am sure that more than a few of them will harass me about this review.
Naim gear is about pace, rhythm, attack, timing, and that
crazy thing that makes music so wonderful…passion.
The Headline is a very simple piece of kit. It has one input
on the front for your headphone plug. It has a volume control. The rear has an
input for your source, or if the signal is coming from your preamp, and it has
an input for the power supply.
Ah…the power supply.
Naim does this crazy thing with external power supplies.
It offers different versions that improve the sound quality
of the component that it is powering.
They range from affordable to incredibly expensive.
How expensive? Your first car may have been cheaper.
The Headline can be used with the i-Supply or the NAPSC
external power supplies.
The more expensive NAPSC makes a huge audible difference.
Everything sounds bigger, bigger, and bolder. It is like
pulling out a V6 engine and replacing it with a V12.
When fed a signal from my Wavelength Brick USB DAC or Audio
Note DAC Kit 1.2, which are both connected, to music server, the Headline does
some scary stuff with my Sennheiser HD650s, Ultrasone HFI-700s, and Grado SR60s.
Music has a degree of vibrancy that few audio systems can
touch.
Vocals explode inside your head and you lose yourself in the moment. There is a richness that you can reach out and touch.
It just flows. Magnificently. It oozes out all over floor
like the blob and eats you alive.
When you see it coming…do not run. Let it take you.
It is as good as it gets.
The Verdict
