I wouldn't buy a second system just to use party mode.  However if you have a need for a second system then it is straightforward to use and you can have different volumes in different rooms.  As far as I can tell it makes no difference to sound quality.  That being said it is just a novelty for me as I have never used it in that way.  As an aside I have only just noticed that the sliding volume control in party mode also includes a digital readout.  That would be useful in the standard volume control.

I have an SU and 2 Qutes.  My experience is it works well.  Things to note though:

- The slave device gets a stream at 320kps, so there is a SQ impact (which is why Naim call it party mode I guess).  The master device plays at the native bit rate.  With a UL and a Qute which is the master and which the slave just depends on which device you initiate Party Mode from - so basically down to which of the devices your nStream remote is talking to at that time.

- It doesn't work on all inputs.  I think it only works on uPnP and iRadio - so if you had a turntable plugged into the UK for example it would not work with that.

- It only works up to 24/48k native file resolution.  So if you have 24/96 files it does not work.  Workaround for that is to have your server transcode to a lower resolution.  For example in my setup with a UnitiServe as the server, I set that to transcode to CD quality if I am running a playlist that has  some high res files in it.

I typically use it when I am doing things around the house and want background music I can hear around the place.

The user interface for it in nStream is pretty intuitive to use, and you can use it to adjust volume on the master and all the slaves together or independently.  You can also use the remotes on each of the slaves to change the volume of the slaves independently of the master.

Regards

David

David