Re: Smart speakers?
"Ahh but as with all Naim gear, do you then have to add the optional £800 power supply and £200 power cable to get it 'sounding right'?
Like an item costing several hundred or thousands of ponds shouldn't sound right out of the box on its own."
I don't think Naim has ever claimed that. I think it's fair to say that if it doesn't sound right out of the box, no amount of tinkering with upgrades is ever going to fix that. There is a lot of misinformation peddled in places like hifi forums, but it's usually from fools with too much money.
While a beefier PSU can improve things like headroom, other "upgrades" such as expensive speaker cables are complete snake oil. Due to comb filtering in a room, moving your head two inches is going to change the perceived sound more than changing a cable could ever do, which is why people swear they can hear such differences.
In actual fact, the main issue in the vast majority of cases is the listening room. I'm sure that a £1000 system in a properly treated room, which needn't be ugly nor expensive, will piss all over a £10000 system in a typical living room.