Yet another Atom display issue

I was listening to my Atom HE last night when the display went dark grey, but the unit was still working. Shortly after that it gave a loud ‘POP’ and the display went completely dark (everything else still working fine). I was sure something had blown permanently, but I disconnected the power overnight, and when I re-connected the cable this morning, much to my surprise, the display was back up! The Atom HE is only about one month old.

Doing a thread search shows other people have had odd things happen with the Naim displays. Anyone heard of any proposed resolutions? There is little point in taking it to my dealer as they can’t repair something that works as specified. I’m just concerned that it keeps going until the warranty expires and then fails.

My Atom did something similar when it was a few weeks old. After a restart it has worked perfectly ever since, and that was a few years ago. I spoke to my dealer about it, and agreed that rather than returning it I would keep it as long as it continued to work properly.

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Personally if it’s ok now I’d document with your dealer and Naim themselves in case it permanently fails down the road. If the issue was fixed by powering off overnight it probably isn;t the display itself.

Chances are it’s a software glitch which has corrected itself via a re-boot.

My original Atom display failed and I returned and changed it for a Nova which had become available subsequently and suited me better at the time.

Have had the occasional glitch with the Nova display but nothing of note recently.

Do make sure the power lead for the Atom HE is firmly seated as on one occasion with the Nova I don’t think mine was.

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I let the dealer know just so I am on the record if it goes in the future. (And he may get a clearer picture if other customers report similar issues.). It may indeed be a software glitch, but a very peculiar one, in that it sounds exactly like a fried component :flushed:. I will just hope that it was a one time only event.

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I’ve just had a similar experience with my NDS. The display was fine then one day it went dark and then lost a few of the horizontal lines. A few days later I noticed it had gone back to full brightness. Sometime afterwards it went dark again and stayed that way. As it was under used warranty I’ve had it sent back to Naim. In my experience glitches like this are unlikely to be one offs. It’s your Atom and if it’s within warranty it’s worthwhile getting it checked over. It’s a hassle I know.

Personally i would ask for a replacement, or minimum get it on record somehow, it will come back IMO. I had 3 screens replaced on DAC V1 and UnitiQute 2. Unfortunately they are not reliable.

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they are completely different though to the atom.

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Re-reading the initial post, It may be worth sending an email to Naim support as well - most of the issues I recall described on the Uniti displays have involved corruption of the screen display rather than completely black. Was the ‘pop’ from the headphones or the Atom HE itself?

Of course, i know that, but screen issues are more common across products than they should be

That’s a thought. I will send them a brief report soon. The ‘pop’ we heard was when the Atom HE was driving the power amp and speakers. The ‘pop’ definitely came from the Atom HE, which was why I was sure something had blown on the hardware side and I was quite prepared to see smoke coming out of the unit. (I had many years in a large electronics/software company before retiring, so I know whereof I speak.:smile:)

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