Suddenly poor sound quality

The sound of my Uniti Atom suddenly wasn’t good anymore. It looks like the mid frequencies were almost gone. As if I’m using very bad speakers. I do have Synthese Floating speakers and they are about 25 years old, but still very good.

Does anybody recognize this?

The first thing I would suggest is that you power cycle your Uniti Atom - unplug it from mains power, leave it for around 30 minutes and then reconnect.

I have read similar observations from others here, with the Star for instance. There’s a running thread « star became thin and fatiguing « , something like that.
Apparently the Unitis are sensitive to mains quality. I would investigate in that direction.
Is there some building works actually in your area?

To add to Clare’s post above, if your Atom recently received updated firmware then occasionally it needs a full factory reset to sort out the DSP.

Or perhaps try a different pair of speakers. At 25 years old something could have failed resulting in the sudden change is SQ.

I went already to my dealer, so it was at least 30 minutes off power. But it didn’t make any difference. But the dealer wasn’t convinced of the poor quality.

There are no works around my neighbourhood.

I did an update just after we noticed the poor quality and so before I went to the dealer. No difference.

And the speakers: yes, could be. But both speakers on the same time?

Yes, it can be that.
However I read similar complaints recently here and the sound quality of the Unitis was different from day to day. Some mains tweaks improved things.
But first, Clare and Richard suggestions are of course the first things to do.

As @Richard.Dane suggests, time for a full Factory Reset, then. Let us know if you need help on that.

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The dealer already send the Atom to Naim’s technical support. We tried two Atoms on the same speakers and both my wife and I heard the same bad quality with our Atom. Still the dealer wasn’t convinced! Strange. But in 2 or 3 weeks the Atom is back again. I let you know how it’s going to end.

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If you tried two different Atoms on the same speakers then it would seem to likely indicate something wrong either with the speakers themselves, or, assuming the same speaker cable was used, a problem with the cable (perhaps some conductors have broken at one one the plug ends?).

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We tried it at the dealers’ shop. Changed Atoms using the same speakers and cables. Same music, different sound.

Ah, OK, I misunderstood, so yours sounded poor but the other one with the dealer sounded fine. In which case, I would do the full factory reset.

Well, the Naim is back home and nothing was wrong, they said. I listened to the same music as with the dealer and it’s still very poor. Like they are very cheap. So my next step is getting some other speakers at home and listen for the difference. Tomorrow I’m getting a pair of very special speakers to try. To be continued.

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Well, it’s clear. The Naim is Ok, the speakers weren’t! Just tried it at home with the Stradivari Cobra IV S2. An absolute wow-moment. Fantastic speakers. At the dealers home I listened to both the Cobra and the B&W 804D4 (€12500 per set!) and the Cobra was much better. At least in my opinion. So end of story: I bought the Stradivari Cobra’s. Problem solved.

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Glad for you that it’s fine, but it’s a bit of a cautionary tale about the reliability of our ears

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