I was using a Chord Hugo and after that the regular Atom. The HE sounds much better than the Atom (duh) and I like it better than the Chord Hugo due to more PRaT and musicality. I must admit though that the Hugo handled DSD better.
I purchased it exclusively for my headphones, but I could use it as a steaming unit for my focal solo 6be using the balanced outputs. When my unit arrives again maybe I will try it.
Didn’t use a dedicated headphone amp before I purchased the Atom HE, I used a Chord DAVE. I considered the Chord Hugo/2Go as an alternative to the Atom HE. In comparison to the DAVE I didn’t feel I lost anything really, different presentation/emphasis, happy with both although don’t use the DAVE much for headphone duties as in main listening room and Atom in the living room.
I was using the Dave/mscaler. I may have lost the precise timing and life-like presentation, but gained more enjoyment with better weight and foot tapping groove. I also gained a better integrated system that works better with roon. I have one remote to control playback and volume.
I also have the Focal Arche as 2nd headphone setup but prefer Naim HE is every aspect except Arche has slightly more air to it at the expense of weight.
Hi, was you transformer humming ? Did you take a video of that ?because mine seems to also hum a bit too much and some other owners told me that their unit were dead silent, so I would like to compare.
Wow no it’s not that much on mine, i noticed yesterday evening because the room was nearly dead silent. When so, I can ear it from 2 meters away, but I’m very sensitive to unwanted noise.
What bothers me is that I asked several owners of the Atom if they have this problem and they said theirs were dead silent.
It has a very little hum, but very little, similiar of what I remember from my NDX2. but this time fades a few cm away. The other one was noisy real noisy, but it was defective.