Uniti upgrade path questions

Myself - I'd go for "3" if you still use the CD player...

Phil

Never thought the day would come when I dared disagree with Phil .....

I did 4 and have no regrets - SU is a huge step forward over Uniti and I never rated the Uniti CD player very highly anyway (admittedly coming down from a CDS2/XPS). Sound at all volumes is way better. I certainly don't miss playing CDs, I just buy them, rip them, shove them in a box in the loft.

I did say IF you still use the CD player...

Personally I haven't had a dedicated CD player for probably 10 years or more and never will again ...

Phil 

If you have the money, SU without a doubt. Will help the bass out come out of your Neats. Try it before 

Good luck

Yip

Phil,

I understand your point. I was without a cd player for 3 years. Then what do I do with my 3500 cds dusting on the shelves. Sell them... Mmmmm.... Break my heart. So I bought a CD5XS new and said to myself that I was going to spin cd's for the next 10 years anyway AND stream the Hi-rez. Best of both worlds for me at least. I love spinning cd's. And this is were I like my SU - stream, cd, etc.

Yip

Dear E-H,

I agree with the others to either choose 3.) or 4.) where an important question would be whether you still need a CD player. If not, you might want to save some extra budget for the SuperUniti since I believe it will be a better match to your very good loudspeakers !

Cheers,

Iver

The CD or not to CD is a tough nut to me. As the other users of the Uniti only plays CD's and listens to streaming radio I'm reluctant to remove the CD-player. On the other hand all our music is already ripped in lossless and is stored our NAS so the main problem keeping us from using it is the small font on the Uniti display. Therefore I'm leaning towards the SU myself (using an iPad as user interface), but it would dig deep into the budget at this point.

I used to have a Supernait in another system, paired with Allae's, and compared to the Uniti on those speakers it sounded fuller. Will the SU compare well to the voicing of the SN? In that case I think I'll have to try the SU path and see where it leads us.

I used to have a Snait/HC2 before the SU. To my ears, in my room, i don't hear a lot of difference between the two. The SU sound is very similar for what I remember of the Snait. Of course, I didn't have the chance to do a A/B comparison but my feeling is that they are pretty much voiced the same way. 

I have not got a quote, but assumed the cost of trade-in to Uniti 2 is almost the same as the SuperUniti. That is why it wasn't really on my list of upgrade options.

The repair is under warranty but it won't fix our main problem with the screen-size as the iPod upgrade is not included...

You should be able to run the n-Stream app to control your Uniti as long as it is updated to latest (v3.x) software and you can run the latest v3.x software on an original analogue Uniti - you just don't get all the benefits of the later hardware ... but you should be able to use n-Stream to control it.

Phil

This is a new development. Perhaps I should try to update the firmware before repair. Thanks for the heads up! I really thought that the original Uniti could not be updated without a board upgrade as well.

Edit: I'm pretty sure I have the SW version with the warning but will check when I get back home.

If your Uniti is a V1 machine then I would definitely get your dealer to update it - if it needs repair then get the unit updated to latest code as part of the repair.

If it's a V1 machine then the unit has to be updated to V2 software first (which isn't the nice pretty user friendly updater that there is for V3 software) and I'd definitely get your dealer or Naim to do that for you.

Cheers

Phil 

Thank you for the information. Unfortunately, or fortunately, it leaves me with my original choices as the unit will have to be shipped away. So I have to decide. It would be nice to get an upgrade done at the same time even if it ends up being a trade-in 

...but you don't have to upgrade your Uniti to get it to work under the n-Stream interface, just get it repaired, and what's the warranty on your Uniti in your territory?

Phil

The warranty is 5 years and the unit is still covered. The decision to upgrade or trade-in is my own based on the desire to get some fresh functionality at the same time.