Unitiqute upgrade
Posted by: w33logic on 04 June 2013
Now that the Unitiqute 2 has been announced/released, is there any information on the possibility of having a UQ1 upgraded to the same spec? I know that Naim are pretty good at the firmware updates, but I'm not so sure about hardware.
I posed this question to Naim and their answer was that there is no way to upgrade a Qute v1 to v2. The Qute v1 is at the end of its road.
I was a little surprised and disappointed. It would have been nice if there was someway, sort of like a throwback to the NAC 32 upgrading to the 32.5.
By the sound of it you'd have to replace almost the entire innards for an upgrade to V2. Probably not a realistic proposal in terms of time and cost.
With the regularity of new model introductions in the Uniti range, though, it seems the brand's legendary S/H values are likely to take a knock.
Frustrating. Will Naim continue to support the v1 with firmware updates?
Frustrating. Will Naim continue to support the v1 with firmware updates?
Yes ... the V1 and V2 units run the same firmware so will remain current.
To upgrade a V1 unit to V2 spec *WOULD* require a complete new main board *AND* a new chassis so isn't really economically viable to do...
Phil
You can always just add a NAP100 and turn off the speaker output on the Qute. Huge gains there.
You can always just add a NAP100 and turn off the speaker output on the Qute. Huge gains there.
I have seen the NAP100 / Qute combination mentioned around the forums but it is not mentioned anywhere in the 'official' Naim documents (the NAP100 is only ever mentioned paired with the DAC-V1 and there are no upgrades mentioned for Qute other than power line or DAC). Is this an officially sanctioned / recommended combination?
You can always just add a NAP100 and turn off the speaker output on the Qute. Huge gains there.
I have seen the NAP100 / Qute combination mentioned around the forums but it is not mentioned anywhere in the 'official' Naim documents (the NAP100 is only ever mentioned paired with the DAC-V1 and there are no upgrades mentioned for Qute other than power line or DAC). Is this an officially sanctioned / recommended combination?
In the past we ran our UnitiQute as a source (DAC/Tuner first, streamer later when we got our NAS to work) via a 52/SC and also as a pre-amp via a NAP140 IIRC. As a source I prefer the Qute to the ND5SX, which we bought and soon replaced with an NDS. The NAP140 combo with Qute as pre-amp/source was also good, but we prefer the amp in the Qute in its current role as Kitchen Radio/System.
I'm not surprised that there is an absence of information on officially sanctioned / recommended combinations. The flexibility of the 'Qute would make such recommendations very, very broad indeed.
The Qute/NAP100 works easily, the NAP100 has both 4-pin and RCA inputs (not to be used at the same time) and the Qute has Pre-outs via RCA. Works best if you disable the speaker output on the Qute.
You can always just add a NAP100 and turn off the speaker output on the Qute. Huge gains there.
I have seen the NAP100 / Qute combination mentioned around the forums but it is not mentioned anywhere in the 'official' Naim documents (the NAP100 is only ever mentioned paired with the DAC-V1 and there are no upgrades mentioned for Qute other than power line or DAC). Is this an officially sanctioned / recommended combination?
The combination of Qute / NAP100 works very well ... we don't specifically plug the NAP100 as an upgrade for the Qute as the Uniti products are intended as "All in One" boxes and adding a power amplifier of any kind to a Uniti, UnitiQute or UnitiLite then makes it no longer an all in one solution.
A number of users have been running Qutes into NAP250s (albeit not an ideally balanced system) quite successfully so there would be no issues with a NAP100 and I have been running exactly that setup myself since last October with very good results.
Cheers
Phil
I also use Qute2/100 combination, possibly the best value system available.
Awesome.