Upgrading Atom to Nova or speaker upgrade?

Hi-Fi Corner
1

HI,
My old system was a naim nait3r with naim cd3.5 and dynaudio 70 speakers, I bought it in the late 90s, the nait 3 finally died a couple of years ago.

I recently got back into hifi , started with a denon ceol n11 (great bit of gear for the money), to which i added qacoustic 3030is, then changed to Dali oberon 5s.

Now I have replaced the denon ceol with a Naim Uniti Atom. What I am really aiming for is to replicate the sound of the original system, with modern components.

The current setup with the atom and oberon 5s is nice, but it really just doesnt have the soundstage, solidity or detail that the old nait3/cd3.5/dynaudio 70s gave me.

Any recommendations on where to go from here? I was hoping that in 30 years things would have moved on a good bit.

I was very impressed with the little denon, super value for money, I was hoping the “upgrade” to the atom would give me back that nait sound and it has a little, but it really just doesnt have that “wow” factor the old system had.

I was toying with buying a nova or better speakers or maybe both.

Thanks

Steven

2

Part of the problem might be the Dalis, which are only £800 speakers. I’ve been using a Nova with some small PMCs for a couple of years and it’s been excellent. But for reasons I won’t bore you with, I swapped the Nova for an Atom HE and converted the speakers to active. It’s been a wonderful upgrade, and from a system that actually costs less. This approach may work for you.

If you do go the Nova route, choose speakers carefully.