Now this is a serious hi-fi system – built with the latest 21st century technology in mind. For the best part of seven grand in the UK (nine in the US), you will have a system that makes your music truly sing; and as luck would have it, in this instance, we do have a full house of current What Hi-Fi? Award winners to boot.
While it is by no means always the case that simply bunging a gaggle of Award winners together will produce a system worthy of the name, here there is no bunging together involved. This is a trio of equipment that fits together beautifully and fully justifies the individual awards given to the component parts. Synergy at its finest, if you will.
The system
- Music streamer: Audiolab 9000N (£2499 / $3499)
- Stereo amplifier: Naim Nait XS 3 (£2499 / $2999)
- Speakers: Epos ES-7N (£1890 / $2850)
- Total: £6888 / $9348
Audiolab 9000N
We kick things off with the stunning Audiolab 9000N streamer. Despite its hefty price point, the 9000N still managed to come away from our Awards with not only the Best Buy in its category but also the overall Product of the Year gong. When you consider that it was up against some brilliant opposition, in the form of some Cambridge products we highlight elsewhere in these systems, and a fabulous budget WiiM streamer, that just shows how superb the Audiolab is.
The 9000N is an impressively transparent streamer and seems able to shift character depending on the recording being played. It sounds clean and uncluttered even when confronted by a complex piece of classical music, and retains an enviable degree of composure when music jumps quickly from quiet sections to full-bore crescendos. “Tonal neutrality is impressive,” we say in our review, “as is the streamer’s ability to resolve the finest of details. Instrumental and vocal textures are rendered with care, and its confident handling of dynamic nuances keeps the listener gripped.”
The streaming platform used in the 9000N is from high-end specialist Lumin, and it brings most of the functionality you could want. It can play music files from across your home network and stream songs from the likes of Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, Qobuz and Tunein Radio. The platform is Roon Ready and Plex compatible. File compatibility is extensive, taking in 32-bit/768kHz PCM, DSD512 and MQA. That should be enough to cope with most people’s music collections.
One obvious omission is Bluetooth capability. Audiolab claims that it doesn’t have a place in such a premium streaming product due to performance limitations. Well, perhaps, but we do love the convenience when it’s required; but we take the point of it being less capable.
Naim Nait XS 3
We have married the streamer with a great favourite of What Hi-Fi?’s – the Naim Nait XS amplifier, now in its third iteration. The XS 3 is classic Naim, which can only be a good thing. This is one of the most musically enticing options at its price, and Naim’s commitment to getting things right is obvious when we listen to the product. While the sonic differences between this and the XS2 aren’t massive, they are enough to keep Naim at the cutting edge of performance at this level.
“The Nait sounds energetic and entertaining. It takes the multitude of musical strands in Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa and combines them to deliver a musical and emotionally absorbing performance, to quote our Naim Nait XS 3 review. "Detail resolution is good, but it’s the amplifier’s ability to assemble all that information into a cohesive whole that really impresses.
“There’s a generous dose of dynamics, the Naim tracking the slow-build of the music well. The result is composed too, with a good degree of refinement when required.”
One of the more useful upgrades from the Nait XS 2 to 3 is the inclusion of a very decent moving-magnet phono stage that proves to be a punchy and detailed performer; it will, of course, allow you to upgrade this already impressive set-up as and when you have the funds and inclination to include a turntable.
Epos ES-7N
The third member of this wonderful system is the newest kid on the block. The Epos ES-7N are little standmount speakers with a very neat trick. It takes the form of a metal toggle switch on the ES-7N’s back panel. Click it up and the speakers are tuned for what the company calls a semi-free standing position, with the speakers on taller 70cm stands, typically 30-50cm from the rear wall. Most alternatives tend to need around 20-50cm more into the room to sound right. Move the switch down and the output through midrange and treble frequencies is raised relative to the bass, giving a surprisingly even sound when the speakers are used up against a wall or on (or even in) a bookshelf.
Hardly any other standmount speakers have this facility and it is a really useful way to ease placement difficulties. We definitely recommend using decent stands and allowing the speakers some free space, but the compensations if you cannot do that are not as severe as they inevitably are with most of the 7N’s rivals.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. With a speaker as small as this, there are of course limits when it comes to bass weight, overall scale and dynamic reach. But these little boxes do so much well that we don’t really mind any losses.
They are bold and confident performers that resolve high levels of detail and organise it in a cohesive and musical way. Taut and punchy, they deliver the likes of Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us with a real punch, relaying the song’s jumpy rhythm track in a wonderfully surefooted manner.
Having mentioned those unavoidable bass limitations, and considering these are small speakers with a modestly sized 13cm mid/bass unit, it is surprising just how solid and full-bodied they sound at low frequencies. Playing classical music and movie soundtracks, the Epos deliver broad dynamic sweeps and emotions superbly. The stereo imaging is expansive and precise, and tonally, the ES-7N have a smooth, surprisingly full-bodied balance.
Which is why they are an entirely appropriate choice for this wonderful premium streaming system. Combining the skills of the streamer, amplifier and speakers we definitely come up with a system that beats even the sum of the individual parts. And when each of those parts happens to be a What Hi-Fi? Award winner, that is really saying something.
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