Humming UnitiQute 2

Hi-Fi Corner
1

Dear All

I inherited a UnitiQute 2 from a friend of mine, and I was so thrilled to listen to it, and it’s wonderful that it received the recent firmware update too.

The only thing that prevents me from being at peace with my music playing setup is the really VERY annoying hum / whine the device emits. And, yes, I’ve read extensively on hum generally / toroidal transformers / “Naim hum” but my local Sevenoaks had a listen and pronounced it abnormal. OK!

So my options seem to be:

  1. Pay (if memory serves) £5-600 to send it back to Naim for a service and “presumably” this is a guaranteed fix but at an eye watering cost
  2. Sevenoaks recommended a local (Cambridge, UK) engineer called Mr Tech Guy / Resolute AV, who was very helpful and will charge me £70 to take a look but they clearly are in no position to guarantee anything, having not seen the unit, so that may be burning money for no reason
  3. Live with it, which is semi-viable as the noise is VERY positional and varies in intensity
  4. Explore some kind of mains filtering, e.g. a UPS / dedicated mains circuit
  5. Live with it

I’m a bit lacking in direction so would appreciate the wisdom of the very well informed crowd, if you’d be so kind.

Cheers

BDD

2

I have a UQ2 which failed and was advised by Naim that it will cost £500 to repair. No economic value so I’ve put it in the loft.

3

I’m surprised Sevenoaks didnt try a few things while listening to it..

different mains cable ?
mains filter - presumably they would have had something in a listening room/demo to try to assess any change ?

Could you borrow something like the ifi DC Blocker from Sevenoaks (or similar) to try at home ?

Alternatively you could look on Amazon for something like the ifi unit to try, you can always return if no difference is observed

As Sevenoaks have declared it abnormal then another repair option would be Class A in Sheffield, the only other Naim approved repairer (but at a lower cost) to the factory.

Factory or Class A repair would no-doubt include a service, caps replacement etc as well so effectively back sounding almost as new.

There are other Naim repair places who may also take a look, always worth a ring around to get an idea of pricing.

4

I have a UQ1, its screen failed. I spent about £500 or £600 having it serviced, an upgraded streaming board fitted, and the screen replaced. Should be good for years now, no regrets.

5

Genuine question whilst also raising some others.
First useful to know how you have set this unit up, speakers, wiring et al, plus anything else connected.
Second you likely don’t know how this unit has been used, so speculative as to the source of the hum.

Realistically, despite being a UQ2 owner, as a great piece of kit and part of the original all in one Uniti particularly with the SU, the units are at a minimum, ten years old.

If a fixed price servcie at hq, with a years warranty and likely a ten year life, that equates to one pound a week. While you maybe weren’t expecting a high service cost - around 25% of the last putchase price, the unit will be returned to you at the very exact spec it left the factory, plus the iRadio update.
Naim is one of a few manufacturers that will service, as much as possible, much of what has left the factory, if parts remain available. One caveat, if the unit has been alerted by an unauthroised servcie agent, then may decline ro charge more. You could ask for an asseessment.

A new Atom costs north of £2k, while secondhand units can be sourced from dealers, one of the few additions that the later Uniti all-in-one streamers can offer is not just Tidal (avilable to UQ2 et al) but the addition of Qobuz. Work arounds exist, so it is a case of where you would like to end up, but for Tidal and local streaming, usb or NAS plus iRadio and Tidal, the UQ2 perfoms very well.

The suggestion by @Percymon is a useful one, however iirc, Darren only deals with pre and power amps, rather than streamers.

I’d stick with the factory and look forward to years of stsreaming enjoyment!
Use Naca5 and appropriate speakers.

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6

Some Naim devices just hum. Sometimes it will depend on the quality of the mains power feed your home provides, but sometimes they just hum regardless.
If you return your Unitiqute to Naim for a service I think it is very unlikely that it would come back quieter, although you could ask them to check the transformer mounting to see if it needs attention. If the unit doesn’t need a service for other reasons I certainly wouldn’t send it back on the off chance that this will help.

7

This.

Maybe get your mains sorted or use one of the rather cheap DC blockers.

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8

It’s worth double checking, but Class A couldn’t offer a service on my UQ1 when I asked them a year or so ago.

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9

@ChrisSU @PerF it does sound like it might not be usual toroidal transformer hum though?

10

ChrisSU
Some Naim devices just hum. Sometimes it will depend on the quality of the mains power feed your home provides, but sometimes they just hum regardless.
If you return your Unitiqute to Naim for a service I think it is very unlikely that it would come back quieter, although you could ask them to check the transformer mounting to see if it needs attention. If the unit doesn’t need a service for other reasons I certainly wouldn’t send it back on the off chance that this will help.

There is certainly something to this - when i have my olive 102/HC/180 set up it used to hum from time to time, sometimes louder than others.

When i temporarily swapped the 180 for the 300DR the hum stopped, and weeks later moving to a 282 with 2HCDRs still no hum.

11

Thanks for all the replies, lovely people - lots of food for thought and some good actionable ideas.

I DID try an audiolab DC Block, which did zero, but I think maybe trying in other parts of the house with as much as possible switched off is worth trying. Poking around our relatively newly-purchased house has reminded me that we have two fuse boxes so maybe there is some mains issue at play.

The only thing I’d be thinking against that theory is that the UQ2 STILL made a noise in the Sevenoaks dem room…

Ultimately, it makes SUCH nice music that I can forgive it this small quirk!

More explorations tomorrow, I hope.

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12

Is it the unit itself buzzing when switched on and nothing connected? I.e. it sounds like the transformer humming?
Does the sound change with the unit on its side or upside down?

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13

I’ll try tomorrow!

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14

My SN2 always had a slight hum that muting always reduced to almost nothing my partner then started plugging her phone charger into my hifi extension block the noise this thing a cheap Chinese plug that had two usb inputs introduced was ridiculous increased the hum levels that couldn’t be ignored.

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15

We had a similar issue with a 250 olive, after unplugging and replugging everything we could think of, turned out to be her Dyson hair straighteners
Martin

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16

May I ask why you believe it wouldn’t come back quieter? Were that to happen, and had I paid multi-£100s, I’d be (shall we say) somewhat displeased!

17

Update: I’m taking it to another Naim dealer just outside Cambridge for their view and will process all the super helpful tips on here. While I DO think our house / street mains may be somewhat suspect, the fact that the device made a noise in Sevenoaks’ dem room tends to suggest that it’s not entirely that..

I’ll report back with findings after trip to other Naim dealer.

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18

Good luck - hopefully you are able to try some mains treatments at the next dealer, even if its to prove/disprove the unit at fault

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19

There’s value and there’s “value”.

It’s unlikely you’ll find an amp for £500 to outperform a UQ2, let alone a streaming one. But the sake of argument, suppose you could. Is the UQ2 still unworthy fixing?

It depends. The big picture of course is that £500 buys not only a repair but incurs a small material cost compared to the demand in materials for a new product which requires a new case, transformer, wiring, PCBs, numerous other components not needed in a repair. £500 is now buying economical longevity with a low environmental footprint.

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20

I’m thinking very much along these lines - but when it creeps up to £640 (IIRC) and then I read from @ChrisSU that it may not even be fixed, the calculus does shift a bit. I know one thing, which is that the system sounds gorgeous, is compact and pretty, I could add a NAP100 for extra welly AND it has the 4 digital inputs I need = as close to perfection as I may reasonably expect…

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