If you are happy with Atom, and why wouldn’t you be, I would wait until you can demo a Nova. The Atom is v v good but I just found it a bit lacking in bass which is why I went for Nova
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I just bought an Atom, and I agree that adding in a full-fat Powerline does give an ‘uplift’ in terms of wider range and general sound quality, not a lot but the improvement is definitely there.
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It’s not just a CD player but a very good CD ripper. I have the Star and have not listened to one single physical CD playing. I rip everything I have to an attached SSD. The quality of the rips are claimed to be exact bit perfect copies and I cannot complain about the quality that comes out at all.
In all honesty early firmware had some issues where there ended up a small gap in a file every now and again but it seems that is solved. And it is sometimes (for me it was single digits in 100 discs) overly picky about not reading a CD that does not appear to be damaged or exhibit any CD rot at all. But aside from that I am very happy.
If you want to stick with the all in one solution and like the CD functionality, get the Star. The cash is not just for the CD functionality, you are almost doubling your RMS power as well.
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I dont have any experience with atom or star but I have just bought a nova and paired it with a core to rip my CD’s to. It was going to be a second system but a box in my main system has had to go back due to a fault and so the Nova is on main system duties. When I first powered it up I thought it was OK but nothing special. I had it on a fraim with a powerline feeding some neat SX7i. after about a week and it really is starting to come alive I must say. I can now understand a lot of the posts about one box solutions etc as it is very very good. If you compare it to a multibox solution the cost is really good. I dont think it sounds that much different to my old 282/250DR (but my sources are not the best so that could be the issue there) If you sell your Atom and buy a good used nova the difference will not be huge and I am sure you will like the nova very much.
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I have had demo of both, side by side, and owned both. On the demo, bought Star, as could not hear any real improvement, besides loss of CD player and £700 more. Now at home, with a good matching speaker, the Nova begins to show it’s paces over the Star. However, in my opinion it is not night and day and also whether the potential owner requires a CD player built in.
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