Atom to Nova or Star?

I don't have any of these new Unitis except Core, but I have travelled down the same road only a few years ago and it took six months from me buying a Unitilite for my office before I started regretting that I hadn't bought a Uniti 2. Fortunately I did nothing about it until I could afford a SuperUniti and bought that instead, which I am well happy with.

As you obviously have a fairly established case of upgraditis (!), I think that if you buy a Star, within weeks, maybe days, you will be wondering about Nova and if I were you I would just go straight for Nova.

best

David

You really need a good dealer to take you through the options, if you have any idea of upgrading.....work it out. The New Uniti range is great.......I would save for the Nova, or if you have other aspirations, ask about ex demo or second hand.

You have upgradeitis, so best to go Nova as you say your a streamer.

I think the key issue is how much the CD/ripping facility means to you. The provision of this in a Naim box must take up a large part of the cost that is not therefore being allocated to things that will affect the overall sound quality. I am a happy Nova owner and found it to to be very significantly better than the Atom which itself was very good. I haven't heard a Star.

If I were you I would get the Nova - I rip on a laptop and use a Blu Ray player to spin the odd CD when I have to (a musician friend insists on recording on CD and wants to hear it on my system).

Mercky posted:

It’s got a lot going for it though - a CD player and ripper, more clout then the Atom with 70w, possibly sweeter sounding too and then there’s the cost which is significantly less then the Nova, with the price difference I could buy an RP2 deck and phono stage to listen to my old vinyl. 

I have no knowledge of vinyl, but recall that it was mentioned a few times that the new Unitis digitise analogue inputs -- doesn't make this vinyl somewhat pointless with the new range? 

Re Star vs. Nova -- personally I would jump as high as you can, or stay put... The "what if" is terrible, and it becomes more expensive...

Ripped CDs streamed from a nas will sound better than Tidal. Why not go that route with your Atom? It may even sound better than Tidal via a Nova. It will certainly cost a lot less. 

I love my little atom, so much so, rather than upgrade to a star/nova...I added a Nap 200DR

Tastiehastie77 posted:

I love my little atom, so much so, rather than upgrade to a star/nova...I added a Nap 200DR

So how did that work out for you? I've heard even a NAP100 works wonders and I did have an offer of a used one at a good price. Having said that a 200DR will cost as much as a Nova upgrade or thereabouts. Thanks everyone for the guidance above and it sort of concurs with my instincts too, either stick with the Atom or go the whole hog with the Nova!

I started with the Nap 100, Bi amped...It was amazing, but I hankered for more power, so switched out the 100 and added the 200. (not bi amped...didn't make much sense)

It is insanely good.

I have a front end I love (aesthetically and sound wise) with enough power to get my speakers under control.

Tastiehastie77 posted:

I started with the Nap 100, Bi amped...It was amazing, but I hankered for more power, so switched out the 100 and added the 200. (not bi amped...didn't make much sense)

It is insanely good.

I have a front end I love (aesthetically and sound wise) with enough power to get my speakers under control.

Thanks, so how do you connect to the 200? have you some sort of RCA adapter cable?

I had a company I found make me one up...Din to RCA....he can make them at whatever quality you like.

Despite I have a SACD player hooked up to the Nova, since I discovered streaming audio with the Nova (sorry I know I am a late starter), I have not listened to much CD. I ripped many of my CDs using computer and I found myself not even listening to them that much. Therefore, personally, if I were you, I would go straight to Nova for the superior SQ. That said, aesthetically Atom is a work of art, really love its screen and volume control. Nova doesn't quite have the same magic on the looks department. Looks a bit like two parts joined together. But hey I bought it for its SQ (amongst many other things) and weighed that above looks. And please don't get me wrong, Nova is beautiful. 

Tastiehastie77 posted:

I had a company I found make me one up...Din to RCA....he can make them at whatever quality you like.

In the recent posts I read it as a company you founded, which certainly proved click bait for me. 

.sjb

Timo posted:

I have no knowledge of vinyl, but recall that it was mentioned a few times that the new Unitis digitise analogue inputs -- doesn't make this vinyl somewhat pointless with the new range? 

 

Not at all - my LP12 sounds better through the Nova than it did through my previous Superuniti, which did not digitise analogue inputs. I guess the ADC in the Nova must be rather wonderful!

Sloop John B posted:

Tastiehastie77 posted:

I had a company I found make me one up...Din to RCA....he can make them at whatever quality you like.

In the recent posts I read it as a company you founded, which certainly proved click bait for me. 

.sjb

seriously?

Mercky posted:

Tastiehastie77 posted:

I love my little atom, so much so, rather than upgrade to a star/nova...I added a Nap 200DR

So how did that work out for you? I've heard even a NAP100 works wonders and I did have an offer of a used one at a good price. Having said that a 200DR will cost as much as a Nova upgrade or thereabouts. Thanks everyone for the guidance above and it sort of concurs with my instincts too, either stick with the Atom or go the whole hog with the Nova!

I wouldn’t buy a new 200DR for this, when you could get a good used non-DR version for half the price. The DR version only supplies DR power to a Naim preamp, which you are not using, so there is little or no benefit to it in this case. 

Lots of opinions on ripping and streaming of ripped CD’s.  One thing I agree with HH about is they sound better than Tidal and consistently better than Tidal. 

You don’t say how many CD’s you have and I think this is a key consideration. I don’t really see the point of using the Star as a CD player as adopting streaming is generally strongly correlated with reduced playing of CD’s. So the question is really about ripping and serving and do you go

all-in-one  Star

all-out       Nova + Core

half-arsed Nova + NAS

Olly

'Lots of opinions on ripping and streaming of ripped CD’s.  One thing I agree with HH about is they sound better than Tidal and consistently better than Tidal'

I wonder if there are variables involved that would give different user experiences. For me, I can't detect any difference whatsoever between Tidal and ripped CD's, my CDX is not quite as smooth maybe [which I prefer, smoother that is], but I wouldn't be able to identify one from the other without very close comparing flipping back and forth,  they are all very good.

I find I hardly play a CD these days, Tidal is so good and so easy there seems little point. However there are so many here who think it doesn't compare favourably I wonder if Tidal can be compromised in some way? I'm also confused by some who can't hear a great difference between Tidal and Spotify which I thought was night and day, again something compromising the Tidal stream would explain this. So can there be anything that would downgrade a Flac file?

Oh I should add I'm playing through a 272/250 PMC Fact 8's

I was wondering what was compromising Tidal... compared to Qobuz and local playback it is usually inferior. I have set up Qobuz to sound the same as 44.1/16/2 media transfers from my local NAS, by effectively using the same server for my Qobuz proxy and UPnP media server... it really is very good and liberating ... but it does require some effort in setup and using an offboard DAC on my NDX.

However in this setup, Tidal, (ie through the proxy) still often sounds notably inferior and sometimes tracks appear louder through Tidal... so I got thinking as to why... and these were the main possibilities I came up with.

• Tidal normalises or compresses (or is provided with via the distributors ) some of the replayed masters to provide more consistent loudness levels... if done at 16/44.1/2 this will almost certainly deteriorate the sound.. 
• Tidal uses audio water marking on certain  masters that effects the overall fidelity  
• Comination of the above two, hence providing the variability.

Simon

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

I was wondering what was compromising Tidal... compared to Qobuz and local playback it is usually inferior. I have set up Qobuz to sound the same as 44.1/16/2 media transfers from my local NAS, by effectively using the same server for my Qobuz proxy and UPnP media server... it really is very good and liberating ... but it does require some effort in setup and using an offboard DAC on my NDX.

However in this setup, Tidal, (ie through the proxy) still often sounds notably inferior and sometimes tracks appear louder through Tidal... so I got thinking as to why... and these were the main possibilities I came up with.

• Tidal normalises or compresses (or is provided with via the distributors ) some of the replayed masters to provide more consistent loudness levels... if done at 16/44.1/2 this will almost certainly deteriorate the sound.. 
• Tidal uses audio water marking on certain  masters that effects the overall fidelity  
• Comination of the above two, hence providing the variability.

 

Simon

It might depend on what Naim does with Tida compared to Roon. 

From looking at my system analysis whilst trying to get a handle on another issues it would seem that Roon buffers the full track from Tidal and then plays from the buffer. There is a big download spike for the first few seconds of a track and then minimal inward data.

Also Roon computes track and album gain and uses these values to “normalise” volume (if selected). It has computed album gain values for Tidal albums and in a subset of one there does not seem to be any Tidal normalisation as it has the same -14 value for local and Tidal track  

.sjb

• Tidal normalises or compresses (or is provided with via the distributors ) some of the replayed masters to provide more consistent loudness levels... if done at 16/44.1/2 this will almost certainly deteriorate the sound.. 
• Tidal uses audio water marking on certain  masters that effects the overall fidelity  
• Comination of the above two, hence providing the variability.

This would be consistent from user to user though, I was suggesting there possibly was a difference in user experience. 

I also find CD quality Tidal indistinguishable from rips - and MQA better than rips and as enjoyable (in a slightly different way) as vinyl.

I agree my Tidal via Roon sounds as good as the rips of the same album from CD. It only sounds different if it's a different master. 

Sloop John B posted:

From looking at my system analysis whilst trying to get a handle on another issues it would seem that Roon buffers the full track from Tidal and then plays from the buffer. There is a big download spike for the first few seconds of a track and then minimal inward data.

 

ahh - you have possibly discovered the different TCP transfer profiles that I have mentioned before on this forum.. on the classic streamers at least there are two basic modes of TCP operation. There is the use of TCP Zero windows size semaphoring method.. this tends to happen on the home network sources when wired. Here the data transfers it bursts with quite a  space between bursts.  This sometimes happens on internet streaming with faster links or less busy servers at the other end. The alternative method is more of dynamic flow control of confirming TCP window segments.. this is where the data rate throughput is slower and or longer round trip delay latency. I have found this two different TCP behaviours on the Naim streamers can subtly affect the sound - as the latter requires more processing of the protocol machine. Both methods aggressively work to fill the buffers at the start of the media TCP transfer.

By using a proxy server for my internet streaming providing a protocol break I can typically transfer the data by the former method into my streamer which sounds better - and I can also get a more consistent inter frame spacing over the ethernet into my streamer whilst transfer is active and this tends to sound subjectively better to my ears. Also my proxy has larger TCP segment buffers so can better handle variable greater latency from internet sourced transfer than the original Naim streamers. This has changed in the newer streamers as the buffers have increased so latency should be less of an issue with drop out.

However all things being equal I have found the masters on Qobuz more typically match the masters of my rips, and less so with Tidal. I have noticed a greater propensity for loudness levels to be higher on Tidal. But this is not general - and varies - its a case of probabilities.

However (un scientific warning flag)  i have noticed when I discretely watch my family  (who listen to the Naim)  when  listening to local stream or Qobuz proxy stream  feet will often tap to the music - when Tidal played  (via proxy) with same artists - but cant confirm master version - this happened  very rarely.... 

bobbyrab1 posted:

This would be consistent from user to user though, I was suggesting there possibly was a difference in user experience. 

Possibly - but one thing I have learned on this forum and elsewhere when it comes to subjective assessment of SQ in almost all  cases there is no universal consistency.