Welcome to the madhouse and enjoy your SuperUniti, it’s a great piece of kit!
I’ve had my SU also since 2012 and its been fantastic. I was offered a terrific tradein against the Atom HE edition by my dealer and that’s the only reason I’m not still keeping it!
I have a Superuniti and think the sound from Tidal is great.
I am however thinking of using a CD transport (such as an Audiolab CDT 6000) with the Superuniti instead - but won’t have the chance to try before I buy.
Have any of you SU users by any chance taken this approach ie used the digital input from a CD transport?
Yes, we had our old Micromega transport connected up to our SU for a while and it worked well.
Using digital input 2 (RCA) with a high quality digital interconnect which was previously used between CD transport and matching Micromega DAC.
Thanks, Iain, that’s really helpful to know. I’m guessing decent transport + internal DAC vs Tidal Hifi + internal DAC ought to come out highly similar…
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I think the SuperUniti shared a DAC chip with other naim models of the time.
It’s really not bad at all.
Obviously DSP is a different chipset to later/improved naim implementation of the 1791.
CD might improve on Tidal I can’t recall. The streaming side of SU was improved upon when we moved to 272 then improved again by NDX2. Tech moves on!
I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with a decent transport.
In that case I think that is the route I will go down! And appreciate the guidance.
Have a great weekend
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Definitly not.
I’m a SU happy owner and I can confirm that a CD transport works much better than Tidal.
Obviously, to be fair you should be sure that the master you’re hearing via Tidal is the same of the CD, but a part from that, in my system CDs win all the time against Tidal.
One quite cheap improvement could be stream via Audirvana (then connected to the SU via UPnP) instead using Tidal directly.
Not only you can listen to MQA, but the very same track streamed via Audirvana is a lot better… Don’t ask me why, but so it is!
I’ve found similar, my ripped CDs sound better than Tidal. Tidal music seems to sound a bit flat compared to my own music collection.
Thanks to everyone who has provided their advice which is much appreciated
Another happy SU user over here. I did use a CD-player into the digital in, hence using the SU’s DAC, and indeed it is better than Tidal. But what even beats this is properly ripped CDs.
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again appreciate the advice but when you say “properly ripped CDs” can I ask how one would go about this? I’ve often wondered but felt somewhat bamboozled by all of the different ways of doing it!
And also clueless as regards methods of storing and easily accessing it all eg would a USB work well, plugged into the front of the SU?
Any guidance would be appreciated
I bought a Uniti Serve on eBay and just finished ripping my CDs. It’s wired into my router and streams to my SU. Sound quality is better than anything I’ve owned before. A joy to use
Two general methods of ripping CDs:
- Buy a hardware device which does it - naim UnitiCore or similar offering from another manufacturer. Core is very expensive compared to latest budget offerings from say Innuos.
- Rip on a PC. Freeware packages or purchase something like dbPowerAmp.
Depends how technical you are, and on the value of convenience. Cost of 2 is cheap if you already have a PC.
If you go down route 1 you’ll have a hardware device which can likely act as a server and provide access to the ripped CDs from your SU.
For route 2 you can store the rips on a HDD/stick and connect via USB but it’s far more convenient to have a server here too - many people have Synology/QNAP NAS with Asset Server for this purpose.
The total cost of a brand new PC, dbPowerAmp licence, a Synology NAS (+hard drives) and an Asset licence is likely half of a UnitiCore, and equivalent to something like an Innuos Zen Mini.
If you have a NAS on your network installing bubblesoft will allow you to bring in Tidal lossless and transcode to wav which will provide a good uplift in SQ. You’ll need to use the Linn or similar control app which can be a turn off for some.
Thank you but I’m already somewhat confused by the options and the terminology (my fault, not any of yours!) (also my SU is nowhere near my router). So I think I will go down the CD transport route!!!
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I am doing it the precise same way as Actionjackson does it, using a Unitiserve. Ripping CDs is a piece of cake. Its software is a bit old-fashioned though but still does the job.
And there is no need to use a NAS or bubblesoft or whatever to bring in Tidal lossless, the SU runs Tidal with full quality by default. Not MQA, but this is debatable anyway.
I have friends who refuse to believe cords and cables make a difference, except one friend who without hearing believed.
He used to be involved in high grade, top secret arms manufacturing* for HMG . Cables and connectivity were very important to product performance and understood right away and explained to me the expense the government would go to
*It’s a very local big employer based in Aldermaston
The reason BubbleUPnP Server has been a popular workaround for first gen Naim streamers is because it improves both sound quality and reliability. I even gave it another try on my 2nd gen streamer recently and found that it gave a small SQ improvement there too.
I started my streaming with a Superuniti, later adding a UnitiQute plus NAP100. Both most enjoyable. Ah, the joys of ripping 2000 or so CDs :).