Just a quick question to all you knowledgeable ones from the newbie I am… I have now gone down the dark side and brought myself the Naim Uniti Star from a good friend and was wondering if they can take any power amplifier? I ask as I have a pre/power amp of my own and before I plug it in and blow it up or it goes haywire - the Uniti Star that is - I thought i’d ask you guys and gals. I am running The Oak (awesome 80’s deck) turntable with a Michell TecnoArm 1 with a Goldring G20 and the better stylus through a Rega Aria into the Star. Outward is Chord Rumour 4 cable with a pair of original black Acoustic Energy AE1’s on the end, stood on Partington Dreadnaught stands. Cheers all. Doug-e-Fresh.
Have you done a search? I think your question has been raised before. I did a search. There are threads.
Hi Doug, can I ask what you’re try to achieve by adding a power amp to your Star? I wouldn’t have thought your AE1s would be hard for the Star to drive directly.
Roger
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Hi Roger. Some people like to hang on to stuff, even when there might be a better way with fewer boxes while introducing potential incompatibility. The OP’s speakers are rumored to be fairly easy to drive and i suspect the Uniti Star will have no difficulty.
Yes, you can easily connect a power amp. Note that the Star has single ended connections, not balanced. From memory the original AE1 really benefits from a powerful amplifier. That said, hanging a power amp from a Uniti (other than the Atom HE) doesn’t always give great results. It’s certainly worth trying nevertheless.
If the speakers have dual connections you can also bi-amp off the Star.
I know from experience that the AE1’s need loads of power, hence asking the question. I was not a Naim fan until listening to the Star as I always thought their kit was overly analytical and just not right (please don’t shoot me as that just my opinion). I’ve tried several in the past, even from the Olive days as when I was a screenprinter (Calne Screen Print) we actually printed their Olive front fascia’s for a time. I’ve always liked their look but not so much the sound. The Star has opened up my soundstage and the AE1’s sing along very nicely.
It was more of a thought than an actual achievement really as I now have a redundant power amp licking it’s wounds! I made it myself. It’s a Rod Elliott design from Australia and i’m very proud of it a loathed to get rid of it, mainly as I would not yield the cost back of what it was to build. It has around 180 watts (RMS) into 8ohm and about 320 watts (RMS) into a 4 ohm load and would be ample for the AE1’s as they are a power hungry pair of tiny speakers.
I also did the Naim factory tour a day before lockdown - I won’t ever forget that date - and was suitably impressed with it and their demo room.
I’ve owned Naim since 1983 and (obviously) like the way it sounds. I’ve never considered it analytical, though we all hear things differently. It’s understandable that some don’t like it, for all sorts of reasons. Whether your amplifier will make things better or worse will only be known by trying it. So give it a go and report back. I sold a 250DR to the owner of a Nova, who reported back that it made virtually no difference. They then changed the Nova for an NDX2 and a NAC282, and the 250 then came into its own. The Unitis are very well conceived and don’t seem to benefit that much from adding a power amp. That said, your AE1s do slightly change that.
Wow, that’s impressive, I’ve never been much cop with a soldering iron so am rather in awe of your skills.
As for driving the AE1s, my first foray into Naim was when I went to audition a first generation Uniti and ended up with a CD5XS and Nait XS. One of the pairs of speakers used in the audition were AE1s and neither the Uniti nor the Nait seemed to have any problem driving them, so I’d have expected the Star to cope as well. There were then several versions knocking around and I can’t rember which I heard, but if yours are the true original version, they could be more than 35 years old and speaker performance can deteriorate over time. Just a thought.
Roger
Perhaps they were a later iteration. The original AE1 with the aluminium bass cone was a real no compromise speaker that sounded fabulous but took a lot of driving. A NAP250 was the sort of thing to pair them with.
You already have the Star, and you already have the empty built why not just connect it and see? (Or rather hear!)
Yeh I have them. They are from 88 I think and are the early black ones with the metal cones. A ridiculous amount of throw of 11mm from that bass unit too!!!
Thanks Roger. I’m no electronics engineer either and had to get my pal - who is - to look at it as when I was going to do the bias, it wouldn’t work at all. He looked at it and saw I had only one component the wrong way around. Turned it around and bingo!!! Of it went. Took me a few years to build too. I sourced the cases from Italy and had them screenprinted on the fronts and rears. It has 2 Arduino blue screens on the front that need sorting as i’d like them to act as VU meters and also when the load has dropped from the capacitors when the amp is switched off. It has 140 volts DC and 120,000uf on the smoothing caps and I DO NOT want a belt from them one iota. That’s probably another reason I cannot sell, even though it is all marked correctly on the back to indicate all that manufacturers do.
Yeh I might just risk it and see.
It can’t harm the Star, so no reason not to try.
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