Naim Uniti Atom Review (Streamer & Amp)

[amirm]

@amirm, it’s Uniti, not Unity! This better gets properly indexed by Google

Oops. Fixed. Thanks. Good thing Google is smart enough anyway:

 

[tktran303]

For those who have had a case of that terrible affliction called Gear Acquisition Syndrome since the 20th century, will know that NAIM, in the early days was solidly engineered. You know, when 0.03% THD (SINAD ~70dB) was some kind of benchmark, before the onset of clipping, usually defined at 1% THD for solid state amplifiers.

Naim was Not Bad. Solid English product at “this must be good” prices.

But after the founder died about 2000 the marketing guy took the reigns. Sales tripled, and NAIM was seriously high end by this time. Now I really couldn’t afford them; I could only drool about them: due to Shakespearean lyricism that the hi-fi press used “reassuringly expensive” and “worth every penny”.
And the looks were, well, industrial looking; well before we had industrial designers dabbling in audio or computers; which is fairly commonplace now, ala Apple.

Amir probably remembers this too- remember in C20 when virtually all computers were big ol’ beige boxes?

But since C21 I can’t think of any “high end” manufacturer that measures to a very high standard. More shiny and intricate casework, more hefty, definitely. Buy perhaps only a handful, like Bryson, Classé, and Halcro, but never Naim.

But Naim definitely had followers- gorgeous to look at and good enough to hear.

To be honest, a lot of people don’t want to hear the truth. The first time I demo’ed a Hypex nCore amp to a group of audiophiles about 10 years ago, they were unimpressed by my use of standard “computer (IEC) power cable”, and “cheap binding posts”, connected to the (in)famous Quad ESL 57.

I really thought the Quad really did sound rather uninteresting. “Is that it?” I thought.

Then we pulled out a legendary (ancient) Krell KSA-50 Class A amp, and behold! All the tones and special fx (distortion) from yesteryear came back!

“This is how it’s meant to be heard!”
“Put that piece of (shit) class D where it belongs- on subwoofers only”

Ah, how times have changed.

You really can’t convince people of change.
Sometimes change is generational.
It happens automatically, with you or without you.

 

[respice finem]

Not terrible - except for the price.

 

[3125b]

Can‘t say I‘m surprised.

 

[F1308]

Look at my Topping PA5...and listen !!!!
Lovely !!!! Terrific !!!!

As for this other one, I voted Don't let them pull your leg.

What Hi-Fi? Awards 2021 winner...!!!!????

Naim Uniti Atom review

What Hi-Fi? Awards 2023 winner. A streaming amplifier that not only looks great but sounds great

www.whathifi.com

 

[AndreaT]

Industry standard reading for power figures is at 1%THD, which is at -40dB on the graph. Why make it seem like the amp can't match its specs when it actually exceeds it by over 10%?
It's fair to reason that distortion takes over at ~36W, but industry norms are industry norms and I think the text on the image is rather misleading.

It is rather and way more informative to read the knee of the graph. Distortion is rapidly increasing after 36 W.

 

[Harryharryharry]

Please test some more Naim stuff

 

[amirm]

Please test some more Naim stuff

They are expensive so finding members who want to know how they really perform is hard. But yes, I will be on the lookout for more....

 

[Endibol]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Naim Uniti Atom streamer, DAC and integrated amplifier. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $3,799.
View attachment 214470

The overall industry design is attractive and has a high-end look to it. Alas, every part of the unit has an ultra sharp edge from heatsinks to edges of the plexiglass (?) front panel. It is a heavy box which makes you really feel those sharp edges as if they are going to tear into your skin. It was unpleasant every time I had to move or rotate the unit.

The front panel is large and sharp which I like. Alas, and strangely so, it is not a touch screen. In this day and age and at this price, a touchscreen is a requirement in my opinion. A very large rotary control managed the volume. It seem to have some kind of acceleration but wasn't very intuitive.

Here is the back panel:
View attachment 214471

I was surprised to see the compact binding posts that are made only for banana plugs. Likewise there is no USB B to use the unit as a DAC. Maybe you can use the type-A connector for that but even so, it is very unusual choice. Nice to see a floating ground switch. In my testing, it only impacted the networked tests. Otherwise it had no effect.

Inclusion of HDMI is very important to allow sound from TV to be piped into it.

Upon booting and with Ethernet cable plugged in, it nicely told me there is new firmware. It took something like 10 minutes to download the image and then went into a seemingly infinity cycles of booting, dark screen, non-descript progress bar and power button that would fade on or off or solid on. I left there for probably half hour when it finally seem to be ready.

There is the usual app to control it but I opted for the included remote control. It too has very sharp edges but otherwise functional.

Naim Uniti Atom DAC Measurements
I started by testing the unit using Coax due to lack of type-B or type-c USB port. Here is our usual dashboard:
View attachment 214473

Distortion dominates causing our SINAD (noise+distortion) to barely reach into "fair" category:
View attachment 214474

Distortion rises into the noise floor of even 16 bit content so not a good first showing. As noted, changing the grounding mode made no difference in any of these measurements.

The output stage is capable of higher voltage which is nice:

View attachment 214475

Good to see the output does not become all distorted once the internal amplifier is pushed beyond clipping.

Noise performance is not competitive with even budget DACs but almost good enough for 16-bit playback:
View attachment 214477

Multitone distortion was quite high:
View attachment 214478

Jitter display looks clean but noise floor is high and is masking interference patterns:
View attachment 214479

Levels of those spurious tones though is quite low and inaudible (-128 dB).

We have a rather odd filter response:
View attachment 214480

This partially contributes to rather poor noise+distortion relative to frequency:
View attachment 214481

Finally, linearity matches the fair performance of the rest of the system:
View attachment 214482

Naim Uniti Atom Amplifier Measurement
Given the choice of analog or digital input, I tested both which producing 5 watts:
View attachment 214483

View attachment 214484

Performance is very close so I opted to use analog in as that makes the comparison to other amps easier. Notice the high power supply noise at 120 Hz (double mains frequency in US). Overall ranking is well below average:
View attachment 214485

Frequency response test with analog input shows a brick wall filter which indicates input is being digitized:
View attachment 214486

Shame then that no DSP functionality is provided. The roll off filter in the ADC causes some drooping in the high frequencies.

Crosstalk response was kind of shaky but overall good:
View attachment 214487

Multitone test once again shows less than optimal performance:
View attachment 214488

Rated power is low and that is what we see:
View attachment 214489


View attachment 214491

View attachment 214492

Sweeping the frequency for power measurement we get orderly response:

View attachment 214490

Notice the typical sharp drop in power at 20 Hz. This is why you need more powerful amplifier than you think you are getting. Power is needed in bass but the reservoir capacitors in the power supply get depleted and you don't get as much output.

Naim Unit Headphone Amplifier Measurements
I expected the headphone output to be "junk" but it actually is not:

View attachment 214493

That is plenty of output for satisfactory response of high impedance headphones. Noise floor is not competitive with any modern/recommended headphone amp but could have been far worse. At 32 ohm though, available power is much more limited:
View attachment 214494

Sweeping the load we see that the headphone amplifier is not capable of much current delivery:
View attachment 214495

So best to stay with high impedance headphones.

Naim Uniti Atom Streaming Measurements
I ran the streaming tests a day later and here, I noticed noise bleeding into the output:
View attachment 214496

So I tried the ground lift switch and it remedied that:
View attachment 214497

SINAD though is dominated by high distortion so didn't matter one way or the other. And performance is the same as local/coax S/PDIF input.


Conclusions
Performance of Naim Atom ranges from fair/adequate to rather poor. Shame that when you pay so much for a piece of audio, not much design hygiene is included. I suspect more went into software development and enclosure design than making sure the hardware is performant. I hope for a version 2 the company works to substantially improve the performance of these subsystems. I am sure many buy a Naim product thinking they are getting great audio performance.

I can't recommend the Naim Uniti Atom streaming amplifier.

P.S. I was going to give the mailman panther rating to the unit but he is out making deliveries......

-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Another expensive good looking unit with quite disappointing performance.. I start to worry about how my Mark Levinson 5302 and 5206 would measure on Amir's bench...

 

[Endibol]

Look at my Topping PA5...and listen !!!!
Lovely !!!! Terrific !!!!

As for this other one, I voted Don't let them pull your leg.

What Hi-Fi? Awards 2021 winner...!!!!????

Naim Uniti Atom review

What Hi-Fi? Awards 2023 winner. A streaming amplifier that not only looks great but sounds great

www.whathifi.com

We already know quite some time that What Hi-fi is a BS-review site nowadays.... These guys seem to be very commercial and I expect that they get paid for positive reviews..

 

[Harryharryharry]

They are expensive so finding members who want to know how they really perform is hard. But yes, I will be on the lookout for more....

Thanks! I'm curious as I know someone who sent £15k on Naim system. I wonder how the separates performed rather than this all in one box.

 

[Bleib]

Gotta love reading measurements so that we get to see through all the marketing BS

 

[nerdstrike]

I had hoped to see reasonable performance in a small classy box. Limited power is fine for a snazzy minimalist integrated system, but lousy performance all round is really not.

I have way more sympathy for the less-than-stellar receivers that are competitive with these things and also capable of running an atmos setup for less money.

 

[NYfan2]

The question is why are all these reviewers raving about Naim? I read a lot of reviews of the Uniti ATom vs NAD M10 because about 2 years ago they were on my wishlist, luckily I found the review of the M10 on ASR and started to follow ASR and my eyes were opened.

But again why do people prefer the Naim? I now know that many reviews on websites etc. are total BS, just a marketing talk to atract clicks, but all?
Some people must be sincere when they do a review and the Naim was often compared to the NAD M10 and almost everybody preferred the Naim. The M10 has it flaws but is still way better then the Uniti Atom

 

[Jimbob54]

3 pages in and unless I have missed it, nobody is saying the unit must be defective or the tests weren't done properly.

That's a first.

 

[DanielT]

The question is why are all these reviewers raving about Naim? I read a lot of reviews of the Uniti ATom vs NAD M10 because about 2 years ago they were on my wishlist, luckily I found the review of the M10 on ASR and started to follow ASR and my eyes were opened.

But again why do people prefer the Naim? I now know that many reviews on websites etc. are total BS, just a marketing talk to atract clicks, but all?
Some people must be sincere when they do a review and the Naim was often compared to the NAD M10 and almost everybody preferred the Naim. The M10 has it flaws but is still way better then the Uniti Atom

First, I want to take the opportunity and thank you for another interesting review, test Amir.

If we take What Hifi. They write, in principle, always overwhelmingly positive reviews about British HiFi. Even if the stuff is mediocre, or even bad and obviously expensive. It is part of the concept. Their modus operandi. For example:

Rega IO Review (stereo amplifier)

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Rega IO stereo integrated amplifier with phono input. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $649 on Amazon including Prime shipping. It is designed and built in UK and price there seems much more reasonable (379 pounds). The front...

audiosciencereview.com

Rega io review

What Hi-Fi? Awards 2021 winner. Signature Rega sound in a highly accessible package

www.whathifi.com

What HiFi, if they were real journalists had, of course, for example, done serious journalistic digging work and chased those responsible at Spotify and put them against the wall and peppered them with questions about when Spotify's promised lossless will come. But has What Hifi done that? Nop, of course they have not done anything like that.

 

[martijn86]

This is okay for a lifestyle device. If someone just wants an all-in-one package for their <$500 set of bookshelf speakers to do some casual listening from lossy streaming services and TV sound in an untreated room. It'll likely be fine for that. If it had cost somewhere in the neighborhood of ~$300, I would totally understand that and there would have been a good target audience for it.

At this price though. It better be absolutely stellar performance with Purifi amps, fully 20 bit+ signal path and a full Dirac Live license. They should even have a pretty darn interesting unique selling point for THAT pricetag.

 

[holbob]

To be fair, even on the British audiophool forums What Hi-Fi is known more as a product catalogue.

 

[DanielT]

To be fair, even on the British audiophool forums What Hi-Fi is known more as a product catalogue.

OT
Damn, you Englishmen have done very well over the years, centuries. All inventions, great scientists and so on. But you do not have to be ashamed of What Hi-Hi. It is what it is. We have similar junk Hifi newspapers in Sweden. But fortunately it does not spread worldwide. You know, for example, tests about audible sound differences in USB cables, with associated ornamental wine review prose.

In any case, according to Wikipedia:

What Hi-Fi? is a magazine published thirteen times a year by Future. It is a buying guide to consumer electronics, featuring reviews and articles on hi-fi, home cinema, television and home audio. What Hi-Fi? claims to be "the world's leading independent guide to buying and owning hi-fi and home cinema" and home to "the most trusted tech reviews in the world". However it has been criticized[by whom?] to be too biased towards certain manufactures such as Samsung, Rega and Marantz in recent year reviews.

What Hi-Fi? - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

....to be too biased towards certain manufactures......no shit, Sherlock.

 

[Marc v E]

It keeps surprising me how bad the measurements can be for hifi items, while still getting rave reviews all around. After getting an idea of how distortion sounds, I'm beginning to believe most of us can easily get used to a distorted sound (for example in a car). The looks, user experience and price seem to be the 3 factors that matter most in a sighted review. More than sound quality. Although ime a less distorted sound gives a more satisfying experience in the long run.