I own a NaimUniti - the version with 96/24 and Digital iPod input. I have been peacefully living with it and the n-Stream for a few years.
Just 2 days ago, my lovely iPhone decided that there is a new version of n-Stream and auto-updated it for me. After that I lost control of my NaimUniti on the iPhone. That triggered me to do something I have never bother to do before - upgrading the firmware.
After updating the Firmware, I realise the Uniti can now support AIFF. I have been ripping my collection in AIFF and let my Synology media server "transcode" to wave. So I disabled the transcoding and start playing around with the new app.
With the new power to create playlist for me, I have started up some favourite tracks and voila, I recognise the improvement in playback! Sounds open up slightly with slightly more details, and the vocals opened up a bit, which previously I always find vocal to be a bit muted. I was blaming it to my old CD and imperfect ripping.
I don't know if there is some black naim magic in the firmware code that did that, but I suppose it has something to do with my Synology transcoding. Even the supposedly harmless act of reading AIFF and send it out as WAVE apparently has affected the sound. Perhaps Digits is not Digits after all?
Wonder if anyone has similar experience when updating their products!
Posted on: 25 September 2014 by nudgerwilliams
There has been quite a lot of comment on the forum about SQ changes as a result of firmware updates. The firmware upgrades sometimes change the DSP code, presumably with the intent of improving SQ, so my guess would be that this is what you are noticing, rather than a benefit from the Uniti doing the transcoding.
In fact there seems to be a general preference among forum members to have the server do the transcode to WAV, rather than have the streamer. Try changing that back and see if the improvement is still there.
Posted on: 25 September 2014 by lhau
Thanks NW.
You made a very good suggestion, so I decided to try out turn on and off transcoding and try out various familiar tracks.
For .aiff, I have tried turn on and off transcoding and I feel the improvement really did come from disabling the transcoding.
I also had a big surprise in playback some 24/96 tracks which I thought was in FLAC format and subsequently I found out they are in fact .wav. Disabling transcoding IMPROVED the performance of these .wav files.
I think the Synology stock Media Server must be doing something to the WAV data whenever you enable transcoding. So if some fellow member here are also running through Synology, please try it out and let me know if it was real, or if I am under some form of hallucination.
Posted on: 26 September 2014 by fps1k
I too thought that there was a difference between having transcoding enabled or disabled on a UnitiServe....I found that transcoding turned on made FLACs etc sound better on an NDX but natively ripped Wavs sounded worse! I found a setting where you can specify which file types get transcoded while keeping the native stream, so will see if that makes a difference or not.
