Naim Audio
The Naim story begins with one man’s passion for music and weaves its way through four decades and a raft of iconic product launches to the present day.
Naim Audio founder Julian Vereker MBE (1945-2000) was a racing car driver, entrepreneur and self-taught engineer with a deep passion for music. Spending his spare time listening to and recording his friends playing live in the 1960s, Julian found that playback on his system at home fell woefully short of the experience he craved.
Not content with second best he decided to design his own amplifiers and loudspeakers, ignoring accepted wisdom and focusing on aspects of performance that made music burst to life. These first designs laid the foundations for a range of iconic and award-winning hi-fi products that would reach well into the next century.
In 1969, frustrated with the quality of music reproduction after recording his friends playing live, Naim Audio’s founder, Julian Vereker turned from building his own racing cars to experimenting with amplifiers.
In 1972, Julian won a contract to supply then start-up radio station, Capital Radio, with audio equipment. The successful design was a compact version of an early Naim Audio power amplifier combined with speaker drive units in one cabinet – the NAM 502.
Following the success of Capital Radio, Naim Audio was officially incorporated in 1973 with Julian Vereker and his co-founder Shirley Clarke as directors. Based in a shop in the centre of Salisbury, our first HQ had both manufacturing and demonstration facilities. Naim Audio's first consumer product for home use was launched in the year of our founding: the NAP 200 power amplifier. Originally designed in 1971, its descendant’s power amplifiers differ greatly technologically but still aim for the same performance goals of pace, rhythm and timing.