this is certainly an interesting product, at least for me, trying out headphones for the first time. Now, I guess buying a dedicated headphone amp and continue using the 282 and NDS/555PSDR would still be a significantly better sounding solution for the speaker listening. However, the Atom HE might suffice driving 250DR/Spendor D9 and be as good or better driving the phones? Only I can tell if I get the opportunity to try it out.
Don’t sell your NDS/282 just yet! I’m sure the Atom HE will be great, but it’s still Naim’s entry level product with all the same tech as your NDS/555/282/NAPSC/HICAP squeezed into one tiny box.
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I won’t. I promise 
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I believe we are indeed on final stocks of Arche - just waiting for official confirmation of that.
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Hi,
Do you know if this Atom can drive the Sennheiser HD800s well ? I actually have a Nova and think switching to SN3 with the Atom HE, do you know if the DAC part is the same that Nova’s one ?
I think you need an audition. I’m confident Atom HE will drive the Sennheisers really well. The Nova is step up from Atom in terms of all-round performance BUT the Atom HE has a much better headphone output.
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I’m curious during product development if an equal measure of time was put in to performance measurement with power amplifiers and active speakers?
I appreciate it’s all about the cans but I’m as interested in the preamp function as I am in the ability to drive headphones better than the alternatives.
I’m expecting an answer along the lines of, " it should work great with a variety of amplification choices" but if there’s any more granularity beyond that kind of stock response it’s appreciated.
I’ve been considering a pairing with PMC result6 as an example, alongside my various existing headphone choices. HDMI is gone as well, should that be important, possibly…
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Naim doesn’t do anything half-heartedly - if we’re going to improve a pre-amp section, we’re going to do it well! This wasn’t an after-thought: it was a central part of the project.
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Do you really want a Supernait with the Atom HE? You only need a power amp, so perhaps a 200 or 250.
I’m not very familiar with the Chord MScaler and unsure if this is the right forum. But could you plug an MScaler into the Naim uniti atom at all to improve the DAC sound quality?
Loaded question of sorts, I’d expect nothing less of course!
I know you’ll not be held to a specific choice but my curiosity was if you’d tried out any of the obvious candidates and had a sense of how that system as a whole performed, compared against a NAC or existing Uniti integrated perhaps.
I expect with a Classic Series NAC you’d typically pair it with a Naim NAP, this Atom HE is less obvious in its identity in the hierarchy as a preamp.
As an example, the Naim DAC-V1 had the NAP 100 as a partner, the Atom HE has no clear or obvious amplification partner, be that a power amplifier or active speaker pairing, Focal make suitable products and would be considered a good match potentially based on connectivity and price point at least.
My demo list is growing exponentially.
For the extra £3.5 k……you might as buy the Nova or even second hand seperates?
You could connect the M-Scaler to an Atom SPDIF input, but you would not then be taking a signal from the Atom’s streamer, so you could only use it with other digital sources. So I guess the short answer is no.
As stock will take a while to hit these shores and therefore be demo-able to hear it for myself I can only read this thread haha.
And in reading this thread I am starting to wonder about the intention of Naim behind this product.
If I correctly sum it up it kills the rest of Uniti with its headphone amplifier but the streaming / pre-amp section is the same as the old Atom, so in effect the Star and Nova will kill the Atom HE here again.
So how would one get the streaming quality of the higher end Uniti units into the better headphone amplifier? With multiroom?
And as the analogue inputs digitize the incoming signal I assume one would then not get as good a result as when attaching the same source to analogue on a Star or a Nova?
Or do I have this completely wrong? Currently it feels like a there is a rockstar headphone amp stuck in an underperforming shell (sorry if this sounds very harsh just trying to convey how I currently interpret the facts on this thread)?
Uniti Atom is one of our bestselling products. For many people it delivers all they’ll ever need, and more, in terms of performance- with the appeal of being a beautifully built, compact system.
Uniti Atom HE opens up all those benefits to those whom prefer to listen via headphones not speakers. The global size of the fast-growing ‘head-fi’ market should not be underestimated. And the majority of that market want compact solutions, too - not full-size systems.
It’s also an excellent pre-amp, but again with the focus on discretion and simplicity - just add active speakers for an instant system; or use the Atom HE as the compact, easy to use head unit for a power amp + speakers combo.
It’s not meant to replace Atom, Star, Nova or any separates product - it’s an alternative.
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It uses the same streaming board as the Star/Nova, that’s common across the range, so you have Streaming board - optimised headphone amp - cans.
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Thanks for the explanation @Naim.Marketing !
Yeah that makes sense.
Reason for the questions is I’m sitting halfway in between. I listen to headphones a LOT, need something that powers headphones very well for my office, while keeping my Star doing what it is doing. So trying to figure out if it is for me.
So tricky questions like: Would headphones the Star powers without a hitch end up sounding better on the HE while listening to the same digital or analogue source when the headphone bit gives it a boost while other bits are holding it back.
On this I am sure you will say I should demo it. And will do but cause of the stock needing to trickle through I have to wait and curiosity and excitement is taking over.
Ah! This is the kind of thing I want to know. Was not aware of this and that would put it right back into contention for me again. Thanks for the info!
There is some information about the amp here.
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Thanks!
I did read that but I understood under Streaming Platform to be the integrations API not the actual chipset implementations. So if it uses the same chipset tech as my Star I will see a nice bump on headphones.