Sources, Turntables
Naim Audio Solstice Special Edition turntable system
Naim Audio Solstice Special Edition turntable system.
The Naim Audio Solstice is the new turntable system from Naim. It is the first full turntable from Naim in their 48 year history. They have made turntable components before but never a full deck. Most of you will be familiar with their components for the LP12 such as the iconic Aro tonearm and Armageddon power supply. Now it is time to see what Vinyl will sound like through a full Naim Deck.
The Naim audio Solstice system is made up of several parts. This system comprises of the deck itself, the Aro 2 tonearm, Equinox MC cartridge, NPX TT power supply and NVC TT phono stage. The power supply and phono stage come in a brand new for Solstice case design. The new Aro 2 features a larger diameter carbon fibre arm tube, magnetic anti skate and also a lift lower.
The deck itself featured many innovative features. It has been designed by Roy George in conjunction with clearaudio who are the manufacturing partners for it. Roy was technical director at Naim for many years. He worked on many of the Naim products we know and love and brings his unique talent for problem solving to the table. Like most Naim products decoupling is a key priority. Isolating the motor from the bearing and power supply is achieved with the use of a clever internal sprung system. This is not dissimilar to the system used on the DBL midrange driver. Slots are milled into the plywood core of the plinth which isolate the two elements.
The Aro 2 is a brand new version of the Iconic Aro. It brings it right up to date with new features such as a carbon fibre arm tube, lift/lower device and a brand new custom decoupled arm lead.
The brand new Equinox MC cartridge is designed by Naim and made by clearaudio. It features a machined from solid alloy body, boron cantilever and microline stylus.
The deck connects to the NPX TT external power supply via a multiway Burndy cable. The power supply also supplies the NVC TT phono stage via a 7 pin din connector.
The NVC TT phono stage can be set to suit and cartridge loading
For more information please follow.
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Solstice
A New Dawn For Music
Naim Audio has proudly designed and handcrafted music systems in the historic English city of Salisbury for almost 50 years. Just outside the city lies the World Heritage site of Stonehenge, its Neolithic standing stones perfectly framing the movements of the sun. We didn’t need to look far for naming inspiration for this very Special Edition, nor did we need to deviate from our own heritage: although Solstice is our first turntable, we have been venerating vinyl since the genesis of Naim in the late 1960s.
If you love the organic authenticity of vinyl, you can now finally enjoy it with the musical purity and passion only a Naim system can deliver – welcome to a new dawn for music.
Limited to just 500 units, this Special Edition includes the Solstice turntable, a next-generation version of the iconic Naim Aro tonearm, an Equinox MC cartridge, Solstice Series Phono Stage, Power Supply and bespoke accessories set. The Solstice turntable combines core Naim design philosophies, such as multiple levels of mechanical decoupling, with a celebration of beautiful materials. It features a magnetic bearing supporting a high-mass, highly polished aluminium platter, with a unique, self-calibrating motor drive system, meticulously delivering the Naim sound.
The Special Edition package also includes a commemorative book, plus the Naim Records True Stereo album – a curated collection of superb-quality True Stereo recordings, newly remastered for vinyl.
Naim products aim to be both timeless and contemporary. Our designs eschew unnecessary visual adornment that do not serve performance goals. Solstice Special Edition design is functionally coherent, encourages use, sharp – almost brutalist – and wears its innovative materials and design solutions with pride.
Our founder, Julian Vereker often considered a Naim-designed turntable. Tragically, he never realised his plans before his untimely death in 2000. However, his legacy lives on with this project and the team behind Solstice Special Edition.
Even after the arrival of CD in the 1980s, Naim continued to champion vinyl, producing the iconic ARO tone arm in 1989. Aro has always set a benchmark in terms of delivering incredibly natural, organic and lifelike musical performances. It design allows the cartridge to extract enormous amounts of the information from the grooves of a vinyl record, but with an incredible sense of flow and correctness to the resulting sound.
Updating Aro for Solstice Special Edition involved retaining the original’s design principles and excellence, but boosting performance further still by using improved materials – including tungsten and carbon-fibre – and adding an all-new, no compromise bias, arm height and azimuth adjustments.
The Equinox cartridge’s Moving Coil (MC) inner assembly sits in a solid aluminium housing machined from a single billet. A raked silver polished chamfer passes over the black cartridge edges, simultaneously communicating the unseen facets of the diamond stylus and giving a nod to heritage Naim ‘chrome bumper’ designs.
With the goal of making a glorious-sounding phono stage that was also easy and flexible to use, we referenced previous designs such as SuperLine, but also the pinnacle of Naim engineering: our Statement amplifier. The Solstice Series Phono Stage is the first to feature the Discrete Regulators developed for that flagship.
Led by our Technical Director (Electronics), Steve Sells, Naim’s expert engineers designed simple but elegant circuits, fed by our acclaimed high-performance DR tech, which provides the smooth, stable power supply that’s vital for next-level performance. Our production technicians then take premium components and fanatically measure, select and match them for ultimate accuracy.
The Solstice Series Power Supply is a bespoke design that powers both the turntable and the phono stage. For the ultimate performance, these two different power supplies are completely isolated, with no risk of interference.
While the Solstice Series NVC TT phono stage and NPX TT power supply are hand-crafted in Salisbury, the NVS TT turntable, ARO arm and Equinox cartridge are exactingly manufactured to Naim’s unique design by Clearaudio.
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