Benefits of a built-in Chromecast for the new Uniti range ?

If you're already streaming from your iPhone to an Atom, you must be using either Airplay or Chromecast. The difference is that Chromecast sends the stream directly to your streamer, not via the iPhone like Airplay does. Also, it can support some Hi-Res formats if you need it to, where Airplay is limited to 16/44 max.

Understood. Thanks for the info. I assume this is particularly useful for users of these various platforms who suscribed to the paid versions, as the free version does not offer any hi-res contents. 

Chromecast supports up to 96/24 and allows us Android users  to use other platforms to get music on the Atom we can't all use Airplay. One of the reasons I got it was this as it opens up so much more to it and doesn't rely on Naim to add support for each streaming service. With it I get much more services than any other streamer out there. Was a good move on Naims part giving us all the options. 

There is another thread on here discussing Naim's lack of support for voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home.  It doesn't matter to many people but to some it would be very useful.   With that in mind, it's worth mentioning that the Google cast integration allows you to make the Uniti (or other streamer) your default music player for a Google Home device.  A Google Home Mini costs £50 (or £30 when it's on sale).... if you ask it to play a tune it will instruct the Uniti to play the tune using Google Cast. If you want to give the Google Home another instruction it will quieten the music while you do so.   It works really well and allows other family members to get music playing without needing to master the (ahem) tricky Naim app ;-)

SimonPeterArnold posted:

Chromecast supports up to 96/24 and allows us Android users  to use other platforms to get music on the Atom we can't all use Airplay. One of the reasons I got it was this as it opens up so much more to it and doesn't rely on Naim to add support for each streaming service. With it I get much more services than any other streamer out there. Was a good move on Naims part giving us all the options. 

So would the chromecast audio dongle plugged into a DAC via optical input do the same thing then?

A Chromecast Audio would in terms of function do the same, and I believe supports the same 24/96 format.  However, it's not the finest sound quality, even via optical into a good DAC.  Some around here have expressed a scathing account of its performance, personally, I don't think it's that bad, yet still not up to mark either.  Not sure why it falls short technically, but I guess the question is, how much can you expect for £30?  In the grand scheme of things I think its a capable and clever device for money, but not for me, purely due to SQ shortcomings. 

I found it was fine. You do have to hunt out the correct sound settings hidden in the menu of the app or you get a reduced dynamic range as it assumes your using rubbish speaker. If you switch it the full range option sounded fine to me. A lot of people miss this as its not well documented.