I don’t think that the Nait integrateds are about to disappear any time soon and I don’t doubt Naim’s commitment to producing the best sounding kit it can.
What I do think is that a streaming pre-amp coupled with a suitable power amp could be a very tempting proposition for people who might otherwise be considering an NDX2 and Supernait3. I’m such a person and the only thing holding me back from the streaming pre-amp route is what would I do with my Nakamichi cassette deck. If I’m having such thoughts then others will be as well. Who knows, perhaps later streaming pre-amps will have more of the pre-amp functions found in the classic NACs (as Alan suggests in his post).
I light of this I see a shift away from the integrated amps and pre-amps that has sustained Naim fans for so long except at the higher echelons of the Naim range.
But this won’t happen overnight. I suspect we have a few more years of Naim selling integrated amps to come yet.
Apropos the (digitized) analog input on the Uniti series, lots of folks are running turntables and having great success. I have a modest ClearAudio Concept Active going into my Nova and really like it. Others have far more upscale rigs and have reported differences in sound when swapping rather high end phono pre units… This makes great sense to me, as the Naim analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog are highly matched … think active crossovers in powered studio monitors (eg Dynaudio) which take exactly this approach. There is not necessarily a loss in analogue input quality, but it may have a different character than some other analogue input device… but perhaps not more than you’d get from two different all-analogue circuits. You might be very happy running your tape as an input, but the output for recording is a different matter of course. That’s not a problem unique to the Uniti line of course: the Statement lacks a tape out too!
Naim have released a new product… in the recent events globally that should be applauded and welcomed.
If you like it…Good…consider buying.
If you don’t, then don’t.
The expectation that Naim should justify themselves about their product decisions and design here in this forum is laughable.
Would you discuss a car manufacturers release with them direct …doubt it.
Come on…smile…lighten up and enjoy what we have.
This would mainly be to connect a computer directly, which i sometimes use for music production. I currently use an USB to optical converter to connect the Nova, which also works, so it’s not a big problem certainly.
Glad there’s a workaround! One of the key selling points of Uniti Atom Headphone Edition is that you don’t need to connect a computer, unlike so many other headphone products. But can see you’re in a special situation
“Nova HE” speculation: More inputs (compare Nova to Atom, so acts as a more versatile pre-amp), improved power supply + improved pre-amp stage, …?
Ah: analog pre-amp was mentioned above as well as a “wish”. (Following N272.)
