Hello everyone. I’m a new member from Budapest. I have a uniti atom hp and a dynaudio bm6a in my chain. I just bought a technics sl 1500cs turntable, but I realized that the atom converts the signal coming from the built-in phono amplifier to digital anyway, so I think if I buy a phono preamp, even if it sounds good, the atom will also convert it back and forth, so it doesn’t make sense. Could you recommend a solution for this, which allows the bm6a to remain in the chain, and still have a magical, emotional, and high sense of presence while listening to records?
Thank you in advance for all your comments. Have a nice day everyone.
The New Unitis do indeed convert the analogue input signal to digital and then run through the DAC, however, it’s surprising how good this can be when properly done and well matched. Certainly Naim would not have done it if they felt it was a serious performance compromise at such a level. As such, a decent phono stage upgrade appropriate for your deck and cart (no need to go crazy as the deck and cart will ultimately be the limiting factors here) could well be worthwhile.
The Technics has a built in phono stage, so it’s just a matter of connecting it to the Atom’s pair of RCA sockets.
Yes, the Atom converts analogue inputs to digital. The only way to get around that is to change the Atom to something else. An NSC222 would fit the bill, but I’d question the value of spending £5,700 to keep the output from a £1,500 turntable in the analogue domain.
Remember that there are many, many, users of turntables - many much superior to the Technics - with Uniti Atoms, Stars and Novas, and nobody seems to have grumbled about the sound. As Richard has said, Naim know what they are doing and would not do something that wrecks the sound.
So just plug it in, play your records and enjoy the music.
I remember back in the early days of digital (must have been around '81 or '82?) before CD had arrived but digital encoder/decoders such as the Sony PCM-F1 were available, one of the magazines did some unsighted testing on their reviewers to see how “transparent” digital could be. They also tested against a professional R2R with the same test and music. The conclusion was that while everyone could tell the difference between source and when run through the R2R, most could not easily detect between the source and the A-D/D-A of the PCM-F1. Consider how far we’ve come since then and you start to see how, when you can closely match the A-D and the D-A, and these days running at much higher bit and sample rates, that it might be even more difficult to tell these days if you ran the same test.
As Richard says I would not worry about it with that setup. It converts the signal after it has been generated so you keep the vinyl sound signature.
I clearly hear the difference between vinyl and digital and have a Rega P8 going into my Atom HE.
EDIT: Because of this a better phone stage makes a huge difference.
For completeness yes that it can be improved (before there are comments about how I should rather get a higher end component), but the Atom HE punches way above its weight and I doubt much that you’d improve it by building a full analog path without having to throw some serious cash at it.
Just enjoy your system, the digital conversion is pretty darn good.
Thanks for the answers, so if I understand correctly, is it worth putting a fezz audio gaia prestige phono preamp between the atom and the turntable, because the sound will be even better than with the technics’ built-in amplifier? I thought that if it’s going through the atom’s dac anyway, then whatever I put in front of it, it will sound the same..
It’s really down to the matching of a ADC/DAC pair - or in some cases the same chip handling both.
I’ve tested this several times over the decades and always found that an analogue source digitally recorded and played back on the same device sounds nearly, if not, indistinguishable. The realisation being that vinyl sounds the way it does because it has to, whereas digital sounds the way it does because it can.
I currently record vinyl to a Tascam ADC and played back though it, I cannot tell the difference at all. The difference only becomes apparent when the DAC and ADC are decoupled (unmatched) like when I record via the Tascam and playback on my NDX or another DAC. That is noticeably different.
