Uniti too good to pass?

It is very tempting isn't it !
As you say , it is based on the 5 series but it would be interesting to find out the difference in sound and enjoyment level , if any , weighed up against the huge practicality and functionality of the Unity .
All they need to do now is design one based on the 252 and my separates are gone .

Well its a hell of a climb down.

I understand your feelings but such a dramatic change will, frankly, leave you cold.

It would replace it physically, but thats where it ends.

You are right Gary , it is a downgrade , however , some have taken that route and really enjoyed the sound .
It's worth a demo at least I think . You never know .

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
Well its a hell of a climb down.

I understand your feelings but such a dramatic change will, frankly, leave you cold.

It would replace it physically, but thats where it ends.

Garyi, you didnt appreciate the Uniti when you demo'ed it? Or you just didnt think it came close to 202/200/CD5x level?

If not, what does it compare to? Nait 5i/CD5i?
thx,
p

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
Well its a hell of a climb down.

I understand your feelings but such a dramatic change will, frankly, leave you cold.

It would replace it physically, but thats where it ends.

Did you really think it was a climb-down? You may be right, and of course, I did hear it with one hell of an analogue source, but I bet there would be a lot of forum members who would seriously see it as a replacement for separates further up the range, it's that impressive.
But I haven't had one at home, so it's very difficult to say....

Just spent 15 minutes reading the manual and it is interesting.

All these years we Naim types have been proud of our reverse snobbishness. Who needs remote control on the NAT03 when one can walk over and change station? Who need stored stations in a radio tuner? Heck who needs station scanning, we analog nerds just dial in the frequency every time we change station.

The Uniti has changed all these, almost every thing is automated and configurable. You can program 40 channels on your tuner and these can be a mix of FM stations, Internet radio and DAB.

Even volume levels between your headphone and speakers can be programmed to be separated.

All these have probably been available in Japanese AV receivers for years. But it just seems very tempting when stuffed into a black box with green lights.

Go on , you know you want to .
how easy would it be for you to get a demo ?

I see it in my local Naim dealers already. However, don't think any of them has the LAN part set up yet.

What I find with distributed audio is that most dealers are like fish out of water with these things. I mean I probably know 10 times more about distributed audio then they do.

I went to a shop selling Linn DS and they have they Akurate and Klimax sitting pretty there, but they had not a clue what to do with them. And when I asked them about home demo, they looked at me like I just grew another head.

Yeah, most dealers have been blindsided by the rapid progress of computer audio. I think it's just desserts for their snobbishness towards mp3s. By focusing exclusively on poor sound quality they forgot about the joy of music and failed to keep up with developments in this space. Several are scrambling to get networks built out but a few still have their heads stuck in the sand. It would be nice if demand for products like the Uniti could shake out the dinosaurs.

Back to the uniti for those interested.
A quick home demo showed:
- very coherent sound on CD/amp through n-sats, very enjoyable system
- amp definitely about Nait 5i level
- iradio/DAB(UK)/FM about on a par with each other using BBC Radio, so this maybe means the FM not quite up to separate tuner standard, but good nonetheless, and iradio excellent
- as a front-end player using line out into my 252/250, the CD player sounded excellent
- sadly the headphone socket didn't, nowhere near Headline standard
- DAC improved sound from a Squeezebox but maybe not ultimate DAC
- didn't try USB etc

Great as i'm sure it is, you've got a nice system and plenty of upgrade potential - unless you need the cash from the sale of the other components i'd enjoy what you have

James

quote:

Originally posted by Naijeru:
Yeah, most dealers have been blindsided by the rapid progress of computer audio. I think it's just desserts for their snobbishness towards mp3s. By focusing exclusively on poor sound quality they forgot about the joy of music and failed to keep up with developments in this space. Several are scrambling to get networks built out but a few still have their heads stuck in the sand. It would be nice if demand for products like the Uniti could shake out the dinosaurs.

LOL. Because MP3 is so good? 'Most dealers' may know more than you suspect. 'Most dealers' in the states have been putting a noise in every room from a server for I'm sure longer than you've been using one. We've been ahead of the curve.
What a spiteful post rationalizing why a dealer may not have agreed with you.

quote:

Uniti too good to pass?

I'm passing for now to complicated for me; perhaps if it had just worked or some expert help had been to hand then my view would have been different, but although it seemed ideal, I was disappointed.

quote:

Of course I understand that the Uniti is at 5i level, but my 202/200/5X is not leaps and bounds better

.... really - ?

Saxondale

quote:

Of course I understand that the Uniti is at 5i level, but my 202/200/5X is not leaps and bounds better


really - ?

Why so surprised? It's all matter of opinion after all....and who can define leaps and bounds? At this level the law of diminishing returns has set in and leaps and bounds to some is marginal to others.

I have a CDS2/XPS2/52/250 system at home in the US which is magical but I am sitting here in London using a MacBook Pro/Cambridge DACMagic and a Nait 5 i that I got tonight with a pair of cheap EPOS standmounts and you know what - I am having a blast as it sounds great.

Cheers

Jim

yes , I probably didn't word my really in the correct context there Jim

what I meant by my 'really' was that if the uniti is as good as people are saying (and I need to hear one) and JYOW is now saying his 5x & 200 level kit isn't so far in front then it makes me wonder if the seemingly new way of audio approach (ie: get it all in one box - or cut down on the boxes) is the way forward - ?

hence my 'really' not in a cynical sense but in a curious tell me more sense

I managed to get a listen to a Uniti this afternoon. Just using CD I compared it to a CD5X/Nait XS.

The Uniti put in a very good performance and for an all-in-one system at the price point was very good. Sonically I prefered the CD5X/Nait XS, but it costs quite a lot more and doesn't offer nearly as much functionality.

quote:

Originally posted by Naijeru:
Yeah, most dealers have been blindsided by the rapid progress of computer audio. I think it's just desserts for their snobbishness towards mp3s. By focusing exclusively on poor sound quality they forgot about the joy of music and failed to keep up with developments in this space. Several are scrambling to get networks built out but a few still have their heads stuck in the sand. It would be nice if demand for products like the Uniti could shake out the dinosaurs.

In most cases, the network requirement for modern digital sources has less to do with the transport of fairly small MP3 files from an aggregate storage device, than tagged FLACs or hi-res files.

Oddly enough (and I see this from the perspective of a high-tech trade support person), it is the "dinosaurs" whose joy of music has kept their interest piqued in new music technologies for years, that have stepped up to become competent comparative demonstrators of quality differences (file, transport, DAC, etc.) within the digital music space.

A license to generate MP3s is by no means justification for reverse hipster snobbery (especially when you understand the various efforts to evaluate MP3 codecs for sound quality). It doesn't take a moron to understand that, if you can achieve better sound quality, you aim as high as you can while eliminating any constraints (storage space, bit rate, latency) that you can–without ever looking back.

MP3s have become the new Compact Cassette–because there's no longer any present-day reason for utilizing lossy compression (or storage compression, for that matter) when you have the wealth of bandwidth and storage today (even on an iPod) that wasn't present ten years ago. Given that the legacy digital distribution format (CD-DA) for music is both uncompressed and DRM-free, I can't see any reason why you wouldn't eat the whole pie.

As for developments in this space–one could also argue that it was Apple (in tandem with the RIAA) which was the biggest limiting factor in sound quality for portable music (keeping the entrenched players happy)–imagine what would have happened had the original iPod had an optical digital out....

I think we're finally seeing the promise of the iPod as a high-quality audio source (with the rise of decent bitstream-access technologies and licensing), in spite of the fact that it's a very convenient, persistent and omnipresent one.

How is the quality of the volume knob? Specially when you listen at lower level and that is when you can play loud ( say in the evening 23:00 )

Is there channel unbalance ( like the NAC 202 ) Or is this full balanced till zero?

There is no volume knob, no potentiometer.

I didn't notice any problems with low level listening.
See my other post on the Hifi Corner forum (now some way down the list!)
As it's only £240 more than the CD5i/Nait5i it's incredible value.

quote:

Originally posted by David Dever:
There is no volume knob, no potentiometer.

Yes off-course, i mean no physical knob but the volume control system. So no problem at very listening levels.

quote:

MP3s have become the new Compact Cassette

Have MP3s improved that much?

About the specs of the streaming.

If i connect the uniti with a UTP-cable, how is the quality of the music? 16bit/24bit??? 320kbps/losless/flac... What is the technical spec of it?

AND how will it be when i stream it threw the WIFI?

Will that be the same as with a cable? Or worse?

Could somebody tell me how the specs are?

Robbert, you should see your retailer–there are a few concepts for which you might need a bit of clarification....