Connecting CD to unity Atom

I have a question on connecting an old-model CD player to the Naim Unity Atom. Can I use a Y-shaped RCA cable to connect the player to the Unity using the Digital Input 1 socket?

A regular RCA cable will be fine, or DIN to RCA if it’s a Naim CD player.

That sounds like you plan to use the analog out of your CD player into a digital input on the Atom…

If using the analog out from the CD player you need a regular set of RCA cables into the analog in on the Atom. If using a digital output on your CD player, you’ll need the appropriate cable (optical or coax/single RCA) between that and the digital input on the Atom.

You have 3 options depending on your cd player.

  1. rca to rca
  2. coaxial to coaxial
  3. optical to optical

Depending on your cd player, it’s very likely you can do option 1. Options 2 and 3 might be possible if the cd player has those outputs.
No other combination will work. (in other words, 1 and 2 and 3 cannot be mixed and matched).

As Chris suggests, if your cd player is a Naim one, then it will have a DIN output, in which case you can use DIN to 2x rca.

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If your CD player has an s/pdif digital output, either coaxial or Toslink optical, then connect that way as you will then avoid an additional A-D conversion stage.

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Thank you all for your answers, especially Robert H! I’m going to try your Option 2, Robert, coaxial to coaxial with a Y-RCA cable from my old model Denon CD player.

You’ll want a 75ohm coaxial s/pdif cable for this connection.

I’m not quite sure what a Y rca cable is exactly, 2 into 1? As long as you have a single channel cable with rca plugs both ends then I think you’ll get sound. But as Richard says ideally you need a proper 75 ohm spdif cable. It’s all to do with the impedance or something, it’s not just the cable but the plugs as well. Anyway you can find an atlas mavros for £370 or you can find an amazonbasics one for £6.50. Choice is yours!

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A y-cable makes it sound as if you’re planning to plug it into the normal analogue rca outputs. You’d need to use the digital output - just a single socket.

I think we have a terminology problem here…

What sockets are on your Denon CD player - and how are they labelled?

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Fingers crossed it will be something like this, and therefore pretty obvious what connections can be made.

image

As I mentioned previously, you can’t mix these up. ie if you want to use coaxial input on the atom, then the CD player must have coaxial output. If it doesn’t, then you can’t, simple as that.

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