Hi all, and welcome to this month’s article from us here at Audio T Brighton. I can honestly say that this month’s blog is going to be a bit special, in the announcement that we have taken delivery of the brand new Rega Naia.

To say I’m stoked at the arrival of this highly anticipated turntable would be an understatement. Spoiler alert, Rega have hit it out of the park with the Rega Naia! Let’s have a closer look and more importantly, a listen...

Rega Naia esquire...

Rega’s latest turntable, the Naia, is a fitting development to demonstrate how Roy Gandy’s engineering is at the apex of record player design after 50 years of his company’s existence. He should be very proud of his achievements!

Following on from the Rega Naiad, a limited production turntable at a stratospheric price and hand-built as a special order for well-heeled customers, the Rega Naia has evolved using “trickle-down” materials, engineering knowledge and manufacturing techniques to the point where it has become a more affordable production model, yet has sacrificed little of its illustrious predecessor’s audiophile qualities.

Rega Naia is sonically on fire...

To say that Rega have a game changer turntable would in our opinion be an understatement. Combined with a Rega Aphelion 2 cartridge, a Rega Aura phono stage and a Rega Aethos integrated amplifier driving either the Rega Aya floor standing speakers, the Neat Acoustics Motive SX2 floor standing speakers or the Neat Petite Classics on Solid Steel SS6 stands, the Naia turntable has had us all bewitched here in our Brighton store.

It has all the detail and dynamics you’d expect of a turntable at this level, it bestowed every record we played with a musical virtuosity and humanity we’ve seldom heard in a comparative system. We’ve literally been boogieing around the store like maniacs since its arrival, such is the musical involvement it deploys.

Another standout virtue with the sound from a Naia is it’s incredibly quiet background noise level. The Zirconium Alumina ceramic bearing, resonance controlled ceramic platter, RB titanium tonearm and low mass graphene impregnated carbon fibre skeletal plinth with Tancast 8 foam core graphene infused plinth, bestows this deck with a CD like quality in terms of noise levels, yet without that medium’s sometimes recognisable glare and digital quality.

Have you ever witnessed what I can only describe as cone-flap on vinyl record playback? Often this appears as unusually large bass-driver excursion during record playback and isn’t necessarily the result of bass-heavy music because it can occur during the lead-in and lead-out groove at the beginning and end of a record. The low-level rumble associated with record players can be emphasised by amplifiers, causing the cone-flap phenomenon, such that older amplifiers often had a rumble-filter to help reduce this. The Rega Naia has none of this, or at least none whilst I was listening, and may be part of the reason why this turntable is such a fantastic sounding deck. It allows the amplifier to play music rather than using amplifier power to try and reproduce low frequency noise, robbing the amp of dynamics because its power supply is drained by this low frequency noise.

One often hears the term ‘black background’ where digital playback systems are concerned, but not often with vinyl playback because of the often inherent noise of the medium. The Rega Naia is, to our ears, as close as one can get to mimicking the term ‘black background’ in analogue playback and a significant step forward in this regard.

In our experience, the only other turntable that comes close to the ‘black background’ quality of the Naia would be the Linn LP12 Klimax turntable with its Radikal 2 power supply and matching Linn Ekstatik cartridge, however that places it in a completely different price bracket.

rega naia with rega aura phono stage playing through a naim 300 series system

Personally, we all felt the Naia invigorated every system we played it through and sounded especially fine through a Naim 300 New Classic series system; composing of a Naim NSC332 preamp with Naim NPX300 power supply into Naim NAP350 monoblock amplifiers and ATC SCM50 speakers.

A Naia on perfect partner... the Rega Aura

The Naia needs a sparring partner and in this article we’re looking at the perfect one. Rega’s top phono stage, the Aura.

The Rega Aura is a moving coil only phono stage and a mighty beast at that. You’ll certainly know when you try to lift it! To compare it with other phono stages, read our blog here. To summarise, the Rega Aura was my favourite amongst them with a lovely, mellifluous sound and it should come as no surprise that it works so well with the Rega Naia.

This Rega turntable A-Naia-lates the competition!

All I can say is, I want one! The Naia is so stupendously good it annihilates the competition (pun intended).

It’s a beautiful design that is both complex and simple at the same time. Combine this with the humanity it brings to the records that are fortunate enough to be played through it, make this a game-changing deck for the money. Yes, it is a substantial investment, but if you value musical reproduction, you owe it to yourself to come in and give the Rega Naia an audition.

As always, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so get in touch to book a demonstration.

Thanks for reading.

Ade, John and Paul - Audio T Brighton

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