Well, the judges have handed in their verdict and the Vinyl wins by a nose.
The Superline had more bass but the Vinyl was more relaxed and open. In comparison the Superline sounded a little congested and like it was trying too hard.
I found that I after listening to the Vinyl for a while I would start thinking it was time I fired up the Superline again but when listening to the Superline I would start wondering how what I was listening to would sound on the Vinyl. I think I was simple just enjoying listening to the Vinyl more. However, it took a lot of effort to work out what it was different about them since they were, on the surface of it, very close. I suspect that with a Supercap attached the Superline could well prove the better unit but by then it would be around 3x the price of the Vinyl, plus taking up a huge amount of shelf space.
After some experimentation, both units ended up with a 220 ohm load. They were located beside each other on the same shelf with the PSU for the CDP below them and the pre-amp above them. The Superline was plugged into what some think is the better input in the pre-amp (can’t say I have verified this though).
Both are well designed and superbly built. The Naim unit was a lot heavier, probably due to the suspended circuit board mechanism it employs, but it fits into the rack a lot easier. However I could never take it (along with the TT) off to a friend’s house as I would have no way to power it unless they also owned Naim gear.
RFI. I have not known my place to be particularly subject to RFI but these units have proved that to be wrong. The Vinyl produced a motorboating like hum when I switched out the capacitive loading and according to the product designer this is due to a local TV station still transmitting analogue TV. The Superline would periodically dump pops into the system, which I had to increase capacitive loading to, almost, remove. Reading on the net this is also caused by RFI. I could probably have completely removed it by increasing the capacitive loading further.
I don’t think I have the energy to try out any more of these things, so now it is just a matter of accumulating the pennies.
Steve