Naim staff alert, so take it as is. CI102 I personally have a soft spot for, and a lot of competitor products come in my direction.
The hard stats on the important bits as there is a lot of rogue info going around on various forums. We are watching :
Streaming core: iMX8 quad core 1.8GHz processor with Wifi6 2x2 and high quality Gigabit Ethernet. This is our latest platform .
SHARC 21563 DSP. Processing chain uses a mix of 64bit and 40bit processing. Its the first time that Naim have used 64bit processing, but this tech also went into the Focal Diva Streaming Active Speaker.
ESS 9033Q DAC’s. 2x
MUSES 72320 Analogue domain precision volume controls. State of the art for this type of this product.
TPA3255 class D amps in parallel bridged mode with the good Japanese output inductors and a lot of love and attention to make it sound right.
PSU - Custom switch mode. Rated at 1.2KW.
Dante built in with high qiality Ethernet gigabit stack, so won’t packet overflow in a hurry.
Sound wise - lets put it like this, its shooting well above the standard for a CI product. It will happily give a black eye and broken nose to most Hifi products based on similar tech and price range. Good as an Atom? Depends on your priorities. The Atom being a classic class AB design does have that lovely relaxing analogue vibe which is so hard to recreate with class D. The CI102 is perfectly listenable but it lacks the relaxing finesse of an Atom… however, power wise it’s on another level so great for rock / electronic dance music. Just my opinion.
CI102 party tricks - it has a really nice processing chain. Couldn’t spec it better myself Dual output, fully configurable filter set, output limiters, time alignment, subwoofer filters, night mode, it goes on and on. Plus had I mentioned 64bit processing which makes this super transparent when dealing with the lower and higher frequency extremes.
The benefits of this precision processing is that if you have the patience is make a so-so set of speakers sound pretty good based on tuning with the dealer app. It can dial out so many issues.
Welcome back @Stevesky, I hope your health has improved right now.
Thank you very much for your direct reply, it’s highly appreciated. I’d really like to test the CI 102 and compare it to an Atom. It could be a very interesting choice for a second system for instance.
I suspected that, good to know. I guess it could be a bless if you can’t acoustically treat a room for aesthetic reasons.
Thanks a lot for the details @Stevesky! Now I have a bit of understanding regarding CI 102 vs. other Uniti products. I did n’t realize it was Class D, which does n’t mean it can sound amazing. Y’all at Naim are clearly all proud of this product. I also saw a video of Jason talking about it with pride.
One forum user has it driving Harbeth P3ESR and very happy.
If I downsize and move into a flat , there is no guarantee of Sat TV so it may go to hi speed broadband - in which case the Sky streaming box comes with HDMI only .
There are many, many amplifiers from Naim’s competitors that do not have HDMI inputs .
My dealer said if you can see past its intended market it is a very good product .
In reality I will probably buy an Atom, use the pre-amp out into my Nait 50 whilst feeding the Atom via it’s HDMI input
there is one comment I picked up on “lacks the relaxing finesse of an atom” in the end I can see the appeal of the new unit, but I still want my amplifiers to be class A/B (and I use a Chord Dac as a source even to watch movies, gives movies a nice cinematic sound that way, to my ears at least - in some ways better than the actual cinema which sounds great but again, they don’t use a Chord Dac for decoding so I can hear the difference at home)… but… anyway it is worth an audition. I did use a Naim DAC V1 for watching movies also, and they did sound great on the Naim source too.
What I am really saying is that what Steve mentioned about relaxing finesse, is not something to be underestimated, you get what you pay for.
How awesome it would be if Naim could made a HDMI input 5.1 DAC… @Stevesky
Is the link to the Dealer App software mentioned above, including the user manual, for folks interested. Seems optimised for Focal speakers, but also hints (IIUC) that the profiles are just pre-sets for parameters that are individually configurable for a non-Focal speaker… if you know what you’re doing.
I haven’t tried it, but I found my N-Sats rather lifeless with an Atom, and much better with a more powerful amp, so I suspect the CI-102 might be a much better match, at least in terms of power output.
No idea what it does, or if it is selectable with the user app, but it is selectable with the focal naim manager software. The manual for the manager software doesn’t really tell you all that much. I wonder if dealer training is provided, or there’s more detailed instructions available to professionals.
CI102 I personally have a soft spot for, and a lot of competitor products come in my direction.