Why do naim recommend the uniti core over the hdx now, even though much more money can be spent on the hdx (power supplies etc)? Is the uniti core better?
Naim will obviously recommend the Core because it’s a current product, so they can sell you one. The HDX includes a DAC, so it can be a standalone source rather than just a server or digital transport like the Core.
Personally I wouldn’t buy a Core because its functionality is so severely hobbled compared to any other UPnP server I can think of, and more so than the old servers such as the HDX, but some may find it acceptable in that respect.
I have a core. And I an pretty happy with that given what it is supposed to do it does that pretty neatly. Initially there were bugs. But now pretty stable.
Great thing is it can get metadata from Musicbrainz which is a great place to tag ur music freely and use across variety of products.
Also, it works great with Naim streamers and also with Roon (use Uniti core folders as storage in Roon configuration).
But surely it is pricey as like and other Naim products.
I think Core+NDX2 gives u more than HDX capabilities at little extra cost.
These are hardly innovative features. A free app and any hard drive on your network would give you that.
@ChrisSU agree none of them are innovative features. But having them all together out of the nox without much of manual configuration/setting up multiple things is important and has its value too.
I know you can build all these things together these days with low cost hardware and excellent DIY kits. But that is not for everyone.
Next u can stitch multiple components together to achieve the same. I have been there tried building something similar using QNAP NAS, Macmimi, Apple’s Universal Disk Drive, Minim Server, Bubble UPnP. But you know all together that also costed me close to $1200. But u still need to deal with regular software version mismatch, upgrades, managing metadata library backups - bluh bluh bluh. Again I don’t mins - but not everyone’s cup of tea. (And btw none of these give u automatic meta data integration from free music db like music brainz (i like it more than freedb).)
So next come something like Roon with Neucleus. But that would also cost you at least close to 2.2 K USD. And to be on the safe side u may go for the higher Neucleus version so that u r future safe. That will make total cost more than $3000. But with Roon u loose support for general upnp players.
So with all these I do think that Unit Core does have a good spot in this space. Working for me pretty good for last 4 years (1st year it was a crap). Surely it is little pricey. And there are room for improvements.
Regards,
Sourav
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