Uniti Star - thin sounding & fatiguing

You have also the Isoacoustics Aperta. Good isolation and can be placed on your rack.

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Good, it sounds promising and progress is being made. Hopefully all the small changes will add up to getting you sorted. Best of luck, that combination is capable of good things, I hope your patience and tenacity are rewarded in the end.

If the Chord cable still isn’t enough, Linn K20 is also (relatively) inexpensive (£5 per m) and like the Witch Hat cables, well worth trying - electrically they are an excellent match for Naim. (Remember to use at least 3.5m each side even if you don’t need the length for the distance you need to get to the speakers, that length is needed to get the electrical matching right).

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Thank you @Xanthe. Will keep that in mind. I’ve managed to also order a NAC A5 that is arriving on Wednesday. Earliest I could get him hands on. Costs a bomb, £290 for 3.5m each with Naim plugs on one end and Chord Ohmic plugs on the other.

My Witch Hat Phantom was cheaper at £280. Going by the reviews they should be better than the A5 (I think).

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With that setup NAC A5 or Witch Hat Phantom are just about ideal and, with the other mods are very likely to mostly sort it out.

Adding some better quality vibration control (such as that which @frenchrooster suggested above or similar) I think should very likely complete the transformation (obviously I can’t be certain, but I do hope so). Remember that with your hands you won’t be able to feel all types of vibration - some is too high a frequency and some will be travelling along the shelf rather than going up and down.

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And don’t forget to experiment with the bass reflex port bungs. I preferred my BWs usually having the reflex port closed.

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Any chance they might let you take along your Star for comparison? This would give you a chance to rule out the possibility that your refurbed unit is not up to snuff in some way, which is always a possible, if remote, explanation of the problems you are encountering.

Roger

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Because the OP liked the sound, upgraded one component and it got worse, not better. We/he/she should focus there first.

Those thing you mention are things to improve a good sounding system, not fix a bad sounding one. I.e. I’m not saying the shouldn’t be looked at, but am saying they shouldn’t be proposed as fixes for his issues.

Not in the least because in the end it would mean comparing apples with oranges. A badly set up Marantz based system vs a well setup Naim based system. So if in the end there was an improvement how would the OP know whether the Naim was worth the expense?

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As I tried to say, and Xanthe was clearer, the Marantz is softer, less dynamic and more forgiving on some bad recordings. At least very probably.
The Star may push high frequencies higher and be less forgiving, so exposing shortcomings in the set up. With the Marantz, these shortcomings were hidden.

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It might be nothing related to the OP’s problem, but I remember my first steps into hi fi with an amp with no tone controls, or the ‘loudness’ button popular in my childhood (Naim Nait 2 with Royd Sapphire speakers at that time). It was the exact same response as most of my friends who came to hear it - where is the bass? When you have grown accustomed to live rock concerts with bass that hits you in the chest, and then hearing most audiophile systems with small 2 way speakers that seem to omit the lower octaves and are so different from the usual overblown, woolly bass of mass market audio, it took quite a while to adjust to the presentation of way tighter bass.

I would spend a good couple of hours experimenting with repositioning the speakers, as a change of amp may require a move closer (or further away) from a boundary wall and change of toe in angle. My B&W 803S speakers are very revealing, but not the fastest sounding. They come alive more in my room firing almost straight ahead, whereas my other speakers like to be angled more towards the listener, to make the central image come into focus. Definitely try to borrow some Naim NAC A5 speaker cable as others have suggested, as they have never sounded bright or thin in any system I’ve used them in.

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Apologies if this has already been covered but from reading the original post I would say the cable could be a factor. When I started building my Naim system I used some legacy QED Silver Anniversary XT. Whilst I didn’t have much by way of comparison the sound was bright and did fatigue with this silver cable. I changed to Witch Hat N2 and never looked back.

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My experience is… a good support for hifi gear is quite important and speaker placement and listening position is super critical. Make sure you are not listening in a ‘null’ position… do some reasearch on hifi set up and room acoustics…check out youtube… With some patience you should get some very good results.

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Something I could and would never accept. The downside is that decent full range speakers are a lot more expensive than ones of equivalent quality omitting the bottom end. Subs might be an in between solution - but that depends on the sub and its integration.

@Xanthe thank you for the assurance. NAC A5 arrives tomorrow. I did have a question if someone here could help. From what I know, the Uniti Atom has a different Naim speaker cable plug, however the Star should share the similar speaker plug as the rest of the Naim line-up? My dealer was not so sure and said will check.

@Ardbeg10y thanks, I did try with foam bungs. Using the full bug and also the outer bung. I felt it removed the dynamics from the sound. Did not like them.

@PeakMan haha, that would be ideal however I know they are looking desperately to make a sale, hence I do not want to be unfair to them. I was motivated to buy the refurb from reading @Naim.Marketing 's comment on the Naim owners facebook page and from the sounds of it, the factory test should have been thorough. Will wait for the NAC A5 before revisiting, though.

@n-lot thanks, very well thought of view. This whole process has also exposed that my previous Marantz system was poorly set-up. I am planning on doing some A/B tests later today.

@frenchrooster I definitely think the Star is less forgiving, no doubt.

@ElvinJones I have been watching YouTube videos and reading up lots on HiFi lately, I definitely take your point on this. I think also sometimes heavy bass might be mistaken as sounding dynamic. As mentioned above, I am going to do some A/B testing with my Marantz tonight and reflect on the sound, a bit more. I am also playing with the placements etc. Have my speakers now no longer toed-in. Let’s see. NAC A5 comes tomorrow :slight_smile:

@Stu299 Thanks, NAC A5 tomorrow and Witch Hat Phantom arrives in 8 weeks :frowning: Will keep one once I finalise the cable

@Richieroo thanks, currently experimenting with placement. YouTube has been useful

@Innocent_Bystander I do think the bass on my 705s are good for a 2-way speaker, maybe a REL sub in future. The equivalent floorstander in the range - 702 S2 is almost double the price. Aiming for the 800 series floorstanders in future, once I learn more

Another update for everyone: After about 5 days of running my system overnight, I must say the harshness of the highs has slightly been tamed, still can be improved. I have also not powered off the system, as recommended by Naim. The ‘thinness’ I mentioned at first, seems to have gone after the run in as well as playing with speaker placement etc. Thanks again for everyone’s inputs. Next job is to get the highs at a good level - NAC A5 and further experimentation incl. A/B testings :slight_smile:

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Regarding the bungs totally agree … I tried the 805D3 and the bungs killed it dynamically…the 705 S2 from memory is not the most punchy speaker out there I seem to remember it being very neural and open with good finesse and timing. The NACA5 is a good move and wont hurt, a decent power chord to the Star would help…and positioning of speakers. Regarding run in leave the star on all the time, and give it a few days with the radio on 24/7… Naim use tantalum capacitors they take a while to settle and hate power cycling…

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Interesting, I had them for a while. Although to prevent my daughter for putting stuff in the ports, not to tame the bass. Found the difference much more subtle than I had expected.

Now using them without again.

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The sockets on the Atom (and a couple of other smaller Naim amps) are closer together than on the standard boxes. It is therefore supplied with matching smaller plugs which are intended to be used with it.
The Star is supplied with standard Naim plugs. They are not just an optional extra so if yours are missing you should talk to your dealer. It’s really worth using the supplied plugs, but they need to be soldered on properly, which is a bit tricky if your soldering skills are not too good. Some Naim dealers are very good at this, others are shockingly bad in my experience.

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NAC A5 cables make a huge difference. Naim unit, Naim cables. For my Nova I also bought a Powerline, which was a further, impressive improvement.

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The unit 1 m from the wall? :crazy_face:

I am a New Uniti Star owner as well. I also felt the Star sounded thin when I first got it. I am now very happy. While I replaced my old cables with NACA5, the biggest difference to the sound was run in time. I’ve also found speaker positioning and the speaker cables did make a substantial difference.

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Excellent. Well done.

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