"Them which is of other naturs thinks different," said <I>Martin Chuzzlewit</I>'s Mrs. Gamp. If that is true, then Naim's Julian Vereker must be of a very different nature indeed. Vereker&mdash;and, by extension, Naim&mdash;has never done things the conventional way. Take, for example, power regulation and stiffening power supplies. Long before the rest of the world was taking them seriously, Naim offered upgrades to their components not by changing the audio circuitry, but by adding stiffer and stiffer outboard power regulation.

"Them which is of other naturs thinks different," said <I>Martin Chuzzlewit</I>'s Mrs. Gamp. If that is true, then Naim's Julian Vereker must be of a very different nature indeed. Vereker&mdash;and, by extension, Naim&mdash;has never done things the conventional way. Take, for example, power regulation and stiffening power supplies. Long before the rest of the world was taking them seriously, Naim offered upgrades to their components not by changing the audio circuitry, but by adding stiffer and stiffer outboard power regulation.

"Them which is of other naturs thinks different," said <I>Martin Chuzzlewit</I>'s Mrs. Gamp. If that is true, then Naim's Julian Vereker must be of a very different nature indeed. Vereker&mdash;and, by extension, Naim&mdash;has never done things the conventional way. Take, for example, power regulation and stiffening power supplies. Long before the rest of the world was taking them seriously, Naim offered upgrades to their components not by changing the audio circuitry, but by adding stiffer and stiffer outboard power regulation.

"Them which is of other naturs thinks different," said <I>Martin Chuzzlewit</I>'s Mrs. Gamp. If that is true, then Naim's Julian Vereker must be of a very different nature indeed. Vereker&mdash;and, by extension, Naim&mdash;has never done things the conventional way. Take, for example, power regulation and stiffening power supplies. Long before the rest of the world was taking them seriously, Naim offered upgrades to their components not by changing the audio circuitry, but by adding stiffer and stiffer outboard power regulation.

"Them which is of other naturs thinks different," said <I>Martin Chuzzlewit</I>'s Mrs. Gamp. If that is true, then Naim's Julian Vereker must be of a very different nature indeed. Vereker&mdash;and, by extension, Naim&mdash;has never done things the conventional way. Take, for example, power regulation and stiffening power supplies. Long before the rest of the world was taking them seriously, Naim offered upgrades to their components not by changing the audio circuitry, but by adding stiffer and stiffer outboard power regulation.

"Them which is of other naturs thinks different," said <I>Martin Chuzzlewit</I>'s Mrs. Gamp. If that is true, then Naim's Julian Vereker must be of a very different nature indeed. Vereker&mdash;and, by extension, Naim&mdash;has never done things the conventional way. Take, for example, power regulation and stiffening power supplies. Long before the rest of the world was taking them seriously, Naim offered upgrades to their components not by changing the audio circuitry, but by adding stiffer and stiffer outboard power regulation.

"Them which is of other naturs thinks different," said <I>Martin Chuzzlewit</I>'s Mrs. Gamp. If that is true, then Naim's Julian Vereker must be of a very different nature indeed. Vereker&mdash;and, by extension, Naim&mdash;has never done things the conventional way. Take, for example, power regulation and stiffening power supplies. Long before the rest of the world was taking them seriously, Naim offered upgrades to their components not by changing the audio circuitry, but by adding stiffer and stiffer outboard power regulation.

Because I'm suspicious of just twiddling knobs to make the sound "nice," I didn't rely solely on my ears when I used the Z-Systems rdp-1 that I review elsewhere in this issue for speaker and room contouring. Instead, I used the ETF speaker/room-analysis software from <A HREF="http://www.acoustisoft.com">Acoustisoft</A&gt; to help me manipulate the equalizer properly. This program can measure the first-arrival, on-axis speaker response, as well as the room response with its early and late reflections and its resonances.

For the last few months, random postings kept appearing on internet newsgroups and in my e-mail box: "Anybody know what happened to Counterpoint?" At last count there were 10,000 Counterpoint preamps, power amps, and loudspeakers fanned out across the planet, some dating back to 1977, when the company launched its first product: the SA-1 tube preamp, designed by Ed Semanko.