Uniti Nova review in HiFi News

free download on issuu app( applestore)

Thanks for the issuu tip, nice one. Yes a great review, I certainly am very pleased with the Nova and the hints in the article of further developments is why I waited for Nova rather than buy a 272 or the classic Uniti range.

i wish one day there will be something like a supernova, integrated amp with dac/streamer / nas/phono, with just another box for ps: 0nly 2 boxes 

Can someone help me getting a pdf copy of this review? I'm very interested!

One interesting fact that came out of the rewiew was that the analogue input is digitised first with a ADC... as a result the Nova lost out a bit in the review...  vs the Naim integrated..

Interesting move by Naim... does this allow the streaming of an analogue source connected to the Nova to other Naim streaming capable products?

Interesting read, and I am sure the Nova is a great product. But I can't help to note that Andrew Everard seems to praise every single Naim product he reviews. Well, this might be no surprise since he uses Naim himself...

And most people on the forum are interested in Naim and praise the products, for their  quality at the price point. I have listened to many, many, products over the years, Naim tick the box. Yes there are other great products, but it is, and should be a very personal choice.

Timo posted:

Interesting read, and I am sure the Nova is a great product. But I can't help to note that Andrew Everard seems to praise every single Naim product he reviews. Well, this might be no surprise since he uses Naim himself...

I read Andrew regularly in Gramophone and he doesn't praise everything there, although he is always impeccably polite. But maybe more to the point is that Paul Miller co-wrote the HFN article on the Nova and he does I believe always say what he really thinks, with graphs and numbers to back it up.

So for me the right conclusion is that Naim kit does all sound excellent at it's price point and that includes the Nova.

Maybe a key test is that if someone who is what my poor old mum when she was alive used to call a "right rogue" were to steal my SuperUniti from my office, would I buy a Nova to replace it or would I buy a pre-loved SU and keep the change?

I think, partly on the basis of this review, that I really would go for the Nova...

best

David

Klout10 posted:

Can someone help me getting a pdf copy of this review? I'm very interested!

You could try subscribing - it’s an excellent read. The best out there along with Hifi Critic of course

Try the ussuu app on iOS, the hifi news November edition is for free, plenty of adverts etc, but type in most mags around the world and they are there. Now need to ween my wife off these paper copies of her mags, not sure how it works financially, perhaps we are cutting our own hifi cult throats, but a quick fix to the article?

Klout10 posted:

Can someone help me getting a pdf copy of this review? I'm very interested!

free review on issuu app, applestore, you tap hifi on the search and you will find it after other hifi magazines.

Search as above, and also November 2017,they are dated and I think this gives it as being on the site as a few days old.

very subjective  PR Review,,it seems to indicate the days of the black box audio amplifier is over naims future is focussed in this range. which is good for most new customers. pity they didn't produce a compact speaker to go with it     every one  the planet  knew this range would be very good and fly off the shelf even without reviews . the one area that struck me is the inclusion of the ADC. I  Can see this  adc unit popping up in other manufacturer units too. my ps audio phono amp has one , and produces 96k files which are good

Just for the record: the Android version of the Issuu app works as well... 

The article also had Paul Miller measure the Nova at 96 w into 8 ohm, a healthy margin above the quoted power rating of 80w. Nice to see no short changing, always a good Naim trait.

audio1946 posted:

very subjective  PR Review,,it seems to indicate the days of the black box audio amplifier is over naims future is focussed in this range. which is good for most new customers. pity they didn't produce a compact speaker to go with it     every one  the planet  knew this range would be very good and fly off the shelf even without reviews . the one area that struck me is the inclusion of the ADC. I  Can see this  adc unit popping up in other manufacturer units too. my ps audio phono amp has one , and produces 96k files which are good

I cannot imagine the days of black box audio amplifier being over - it will always be part of the Naim range.

Likewise BMW introduced some new models, like 4 and 6 series, but the 5 and 7 will always be part of the BMW offerings.

Gazza posted:

The article also had Paul Miller measure the Nova at 96 w into 8 ohm, a healthy margin above the quoted power rating of 80w. Nice to see no short changing, always a good Naim trait.

A whole 0.79dB, no?

I am sure you would have a field day if that 16 w was missing?

Into an 8 ohm resistive load? Nah, couldnt be arsed to be honest.

Hi Jon and Gazza -

I read the lab test specs as neither generous nor stretching: there was indeed 96 W @ 8 ohms, but iirc it was much closer to 160 W than 192 W @ 4 ohms ... so, from a current delivery / genuine power perspective, where you expect twice the power at half the load, 80 W seemed simply honest and indicative for the 8 ohm load. That the 2 ohm and (to a lesser, but nonetheless impressive, extent) the 1 ohm measurements also support this view. Full marks for honesty, but not necessarily "under rated": tells us more about the expected drive / grip / control for real (even "difficult") speaker loads, I think? Sounded fine and effortless driving the smallest B&W 8-series floorstanders, which I believe are known to have low resistance in the lower octaves...

Regards alan

to those that may know, isn't this a minimum phase filter rather than a linear one?

.sjb

Sloop John B posted:

to those that may know, isn't this a minimum phase filter rather than a linear one?

.sjb

Yes that's my understanding also.

Linear phase attempts to keep the group delay the same at all frequencies and thus requires pre-ringing in the time domain.

Hi SJB -

I'm no filter expert by any means, but I read the Naim white paper (for the NDAC where they first introduced this filter) and two of the references and I get the impression they mean what they say. Although FIR filters are more generally linear phase, and IIR filters more generally not, it is possible to compute the coefficients for an IIR that preserves phase and has zero (acausal) pre-ringing as shown. Since their emphasis is low-cost / -intensity compute load in the fpga, I think their design was a "best of both worlds" approach rather than a simpler tool-box designed filter (especially since they use 40 bit floating point, which pushes the arithmetic S/N below the original encoding and the analog converter noise floor. This seems to be the polar opposite of the many thousands of taps FIR approach used in Chord DACs, where much higher computing is available and taking a larger pre/post sample dataset (is a wider convolution bandwidth) drives down the noise floor and improves the interpolation precision  ... but I don't have the impression that the Naim filter isn't what it says on the tin  

Regards alan

(edit)

ps - in this context, linear means zero phase shift; I'm not clear on how this might differ from minimum phase

I also read the HiFi news review of the Nova and the ADC part. I am using my Nova exclusively as a digital centre so not likely to connect via the analogue ins... but I must admit I am a little puzzled as to why the Analogue ins are digitised. Would it not be better for SQ to amplify them as analogue signals? 

Either way Vinyl playback sounds silky smooth.