Hi. I bought a Naim Atom Uniti this week. When I turn it on there is a light hum from the amplifier. When I put it in standby, it will go completely silent. However this does not happen when the selected input is HDMI. When I turn it off /put it in standby with the HDMI source selected, the amplifier keeps humming and stays warm. I tried several things (different cables, different output sources), but it does so even if there is no input source or speaker cable connected. As the HDMI source is my preferred source in the evening I find this very annoying. Is this a known issue? Can it be resolved?
Hi, and welcome to the forum!
In general, there’s two variants of “standby” on the Unitis: with switching to a separate power-supply (it should be cool and silent here) or with keeping the main power-supply active (it’ll stay hand-warm - the “hum” seems to be somewhat system and environment dependent).
I guess, that’s the difference you describe.
There’s a couple of reasons, why the main power-supply stays active (e.g. with a USB drive attached, with the dedicated “server mode” (which is slightly confusingly named, and only makes real sense, when a USB-drive is connected anyway), …).
A way to completely avoid is, is to “switch it off” via a longer press to the power button on the front - with the effect, it will have to “boot up” again afterwards (taking much longer than waking) and will also be booting only when pressing said button. (You cannot wake it from network or remote.)
So, it seems like, your Atom keeps the main power-supply on, when you send it to standby with HDMI input active. I haven’t used the HDMI input in ages, but I guess (or: think to remember), that’s because the Atom keeps the HDMI connection “active”, so you can wake it from the TV. (TV on → Atom on.)
What you can try:
- Go to the system settings in the F&N app.
- Go to the inputs.
- Go to the HDMI input.
- Check the last option, which controls, when the Atom will switch to the HDMI input, when getting an “I’m active” signal from it. → Try switching this to “off”.
(From the described behavior, I’d guess it’s “On HDMI input only”, i.e. the behavior does not kick in, when you have it on another input.) - No guarantee, but I think it will then be able to “sleep deeper”, when you send it to standby. (But won’t wake any more along with the TV.)
Try an optical HDMI cable. They are thinner and the plugs have built-in optical transducers. I believe there are still electrical connections on a couple contacts but most are galvanically isolated via the optical path.
If you’re lucky, the ground loop is on one of the connections that is replaced by the optical portion of the lead.
They are pretty cheap on Amazon though. Just be sure it is optical. That tends to be on HDMI cables over 10m so there will be a fair bit of slack to coil. I say this because if you find an optical one and don’t read the fine details, you may get a non optical one in the same brand series below a certain length.
Thank you for your responses and tips. It seems to me that it’s an issue in the software. I will turn it off/in to standby from an other source so it will go completely silent an cool down.
Naim has answered my quastion. In HDMI the transformer requires more power to detect the TV when it is turned on. I had to change the setting for the HDMI source in the app from “automatic” to “out”. So it is solved
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