Hi guys,
thanks for letting me join the community.
I consider buying an Uniti Atom for my living room. I have a pair of B&W 805N’s that I will use. The speaker specs says 50-120W amplification is recommended. But the Uniti only delivers 40W pr. channel. Should I be worried playing music at loud volume?
The sensitivity is only 88 which is a little low for the atom. Personally I’d want a bit more power for those speakers. I’d be looking at a second hand nova if I were you and could afford it. But it depends how loud you want to listen I suppose.
The 805N is far too much for an Atom. They demand much better amplification and sources.
I agree. A Nova would be minimal for me. Ideally, I’d be looking at NDX2/SN3 in old classic series or, even better, something like NC222/250.
Roger
Could an atom he and either a second hand 250dr or 250 nc work do you think? I didn’t think of this combo when I got my nd5 xs2/sn3 and I’m just wondering if it might be a good choice which would hopefully also keep away any urge to upgrade further.
That sounds like another good solution to me.
Roger
The question "what is loud ?
In a smaller or mid-sized room at normal levels, 40W should be ok with those B&W 805.
Don’t expect to play concert levels.
Limited to a budget ?
Do you intend to buy second hand, a Nova might be a better choice.
Atom/Nova have been in range quite a long time, some good discount to be found looking around, on sales may indicate New Classic editions of the are just around the corner.
An Atom is a great performer, but I too think your speakers need more power and more control than that, esp if you want to turn it up a bit and don’t want things to sound inappropriately uncouth.
I’d expect you to get more satisfaction driving those speakers with a second-hand NAP250. You can feed that with an Atom HE or ND5XS2 (or NDX2) streamer plus 82 (or 282) preamp and Hicap PS. The latter line-up is probably a lot more boxes than you would like, but it might be the best SQ per £ option of all if you buy s/h. Just make sure old boxes have been serviced in the last decade or so.
I use old olive 82/ Hicap/250 with ND5XS2 and Neat Xplorers in one system -it’s very good indeed. I have B&W 804 D3s with NDX2/XPSDR and 52/Supercap/300DR in the main system - it’s brilliant but neither an Atom nor a Nova sounds at all pleasing driving those speakers, even briefly.
A second-hand Nova or ND5XS2 (or NSX2) plus Supernait 3 (esp if you can add a Hicap) would be clearly better on the ear than an Atom with your speakers imho. However, going the extra mile now with one of the above options would probably be rewarded handsomely and might prevent another round of upgrades ever being needed.
Good luck!
Welcome!
If you worry about the amp heating there is a safety auto shutoff.
After that it’s your ears who will tell you if you like the sound.
Is the B&W sound signature something you like and want to keep?
If not there are great speakers who are less power demanding and play very well with Naim.
(Plenty of threads on this topic)
I personally run Kudos X2 with an old UnitiQute ver.1 at 30 watts. I’m still totally amazed how fun it can be for old gears. It’s really not a punishment when I need to use my second system. Au contraire. 
Here in my country (The Netherlands) there is a so called official Naim summerdeal by Latham:
Naim Uniti Atom + Focal Aria Evo X N°1 + The Chord Company 2 x 3 m Shawline X speakercable.
So… no NACA5 (…) and the Focals sensitivity is 89.5dB (…).
Maybe your 805 can run a little more satisfy when using the Chord cables as well.
That is what I have.
I bought the Atom HE and a 250DR as I wanted a streaming pre-amp with a very good headphone amp.
Naim kindly supplied a suitable interconnect foc 
I auditioned several brands of speaker and had long home demos.
I settled on the Kudos Titan 606 and I’m very happy.
The 606s are a bit OTT for the front-end, but that’s deliberate as I intend to upgrade the HE/250DR in the near future, but I am very happy with the sound even at low levels.
99% of my listening is classical music.
That should work fine
Speaker power handling specs are among the most meaningless and misinterpreted specs out there. The speakers certainly don’t “need” 50-120Watts. Keep in mind that with a sensitivity of 88 dB, that means that when the amp is outputting a nominal 1 Watt into an 8 Ohm load you are hearing sound at an average level of 88 dB. Far too loud for me! Normally most of us will be listening at say around 75-80 dB, so using only a fraction of one Watt on a continuous basis. Loud short bursts may require an extra 10 dB or in extreme cases 20 dB, meaning peak power demands of 10 to 100 times. All this is a simplification as no speakers are a constant 8 Ohms. The bottom line is that an Atom should have no difficulty in driving 805N’s in anything approaching a normal size room at normal sound levels. For those who claim that the Atom is not good enough for such exalted speakers, I take a different view.