Naim Uniti Atom Review (Streamer & Amp)

[Katji]

You know, B&O have always sold on their aesthetic and finish, but I now believe that even in the 80's, they were way ahead internally and technically, not that we 'flat earthers' then even looked at that brand remotely seriously, regarding it as a rich man's Technics or similar stack system (I was pulled up short later on I remember, hearing so many Beosystems 'sound' really very good in owners' homes in a good-all-round kind of way)

Yes, yes, and yes. 2 or 4 friends of mine, still around, would agree with that too. B&O was too expensive for us anyway, we would've just liked to get more expensive Sansui, Pioneer, NAD, Rotel than the entry level ones we had.

 

[Aperiodic]

Unlike many other companies, NAIM does not specify power at 4 ohm so I could not show it with 1% distortion test I run.

I'm unclear as to why the mfr not providing a spec for a 4Ω load precludes testing it into such a load. As designer Frank van Alstine says, "A product does what it does, not what somebody says it does" in any event.

 

[AudioSceptic]

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/

I've been waiting to see a Naim tested here. Years ago I wanted an all-in-one like this for a second system. There was a Naim model the UK mags raved about but I couldn't justify the price and bought the Denon Piccolo DRA-N5 instead. The Denon has great functionality and sounds much better than you would expect for the money. Looks like I didn't lose any SQ compared with the Naim while saving a lot of £!

I expected, as I did for any Linn, a result of "good but overpriced". I never expected it to be poor and unacceptable for the price, actually for almost any price. Of course, the What Hi-Fi review <https://www.whathifi.com/naim/uniti-atom/review> comes from a parallel universe. What's especially amusing is the way the mainstream audio press is obsessed with "hi-res" yet many of their favourites can barely manage 16-bit performance.

Pros​

• +
  Class-leading clarity and insight
• +
  Lovely precise timing and impressive dynamic range
• +
  Looks as impressive as it sounds

Cons​

• -
  Really nothing noteworthy

 

[Zenek73]

Luckily we still have some european brands not made in china

 

[Katji]

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

Yes. "It is what it is." It does well when you go to Google for photos and basic specs. Quick online catalog thing. It's not like I'm going spend time reading Stereophile or 6moons reviews anymore.

 

[DSJR]

It was beautifully built, although covered in horrible DIN connectors, recessed and impossible to wire up terminals.

The two pin DIN (speaker terminals) is arguably the second most evil connector on the planet, behind the EU Scart. Oh and the SVHS connector. And the HDMI....

The internals were wonderful, although primitive in some areas and brilliant in others. I had a Beosystem series 5000 with all the components I picked up for not a lot of money at auction, including the wonderful tabletop 2 way master control panel remote, horizontal loading cassette deck and the 2nd generation CD player based on a Philips mech (CDM-1). The TT was a glorious piece of art and functionality, although the MMC cartridge was nothing to write home about, sound wise.

The 5500 stack system which replaced it had a bit more power (and sounded less lean/thin I felt subjectively) over the 5000, the 6500 was really very good and the final 7000 system was a delight regardless and with no apologies to any audiophile needed in my opinion (if I knew then what I know now...). The wafer thin CD drawer looked fab, but scratched a disc that hadn't been correctly centred (rather sensitive to nudging, I remember that drawer being). First issue 5000CD's were a Toshiba donor I think and the revisions they did in the service schedule improved it very well. By the time of the 7000 though, their speakers were mostly either powered passives or full actives and the 7000 system was quietly retired (in my opinion with honours) as vinyl was dying and the '2500/Ouverture' main unit with sliding illuminated doors and so on was selling very well indeed. The cartridges needed 70 degrees C minimum and I remember them from the SP10/12/14 all sounding a bit dull and bland if the room was too cold. the MMC4 and MMC2 from the last batch did have some life to them, but it had to be on the 'safe' side as the records owned by non-we-audiopeeps owners weren't always in best condition. Sadly, this brand has gone stratospheric and again, I suspect a lot of the emphasis is on non-audio people with shedloads of money wanting an art-form more than ever and I gather the franchise owners and the store staff tend to be chosen from non audio backgrounds (looking at this reviewed product here and its 'meh' performance for the price desipte the rags wettling themselves over it shows why B&O decided to take this path I think). Sadly, B&O apparently threw out their cartridge tooling and Soundsmith, who saw an opportunity, had to reverse engineer the designs to eventually launch their own models derived from these last MMC models I gather (and at a very high price too).

Back to Naim. their current 'separates' range does seem to have more modern build techniques on the circuit boards unless I'm mistaken, but not sure if under the 'DR' supplies and solid workmanlike casework, doesn't lurk the same old quasi-complimentary wine from 50's and 60's derived ideas... At least some of the later Nait integrateds now have an output inductor fitted

 

[Spocko]

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/

I'd go with the NAD M10 V2 or M33 both with Dirac Live which will make more of a difference in your enjoyment, and both look as "high end"

 

[Mart68]

What's especially amusing is the way the mainstream audio press is obsessed with "hi-res" yet many of their favourites can barely manage 16-bit performance.

my favourite is hi-res enthusiasts who express concern that they may not be getting 24/192 because the display doesn't show the sample/bit rate, even though elsewhere they are telling people that if they can't hear the improvement in SQ that hi-res delivers then they must be deaf.

 

[DSJR]

typical Naim, well over-priced for what you are getting. It's always been that way, even in the 1980s you were better off getting a JVC.

I know that now BUT - JVC, Sony, Panasonic/Technics and Yamaha insisted we took most of not all the product range and we weren't allowed to cherry-pick the handful of seriously good products in a range of (often) dross. Independant enthusiast dealers weren't awash with money and maybe you remember the very short product lifespans back then. A season, say six months, was usually it, after which you couldn't get any more once the shipment had run out, until the next new range which could be totally different inside and out).

 

[AudioSceptic]

The Naim Superuniti streamer, which I bought about 10 years ago, was by far the worst and most expensive "hi-fi" device I've ever owned:
• the first unit had a very noisy toroidal transformer. Replaced under warranty with a less noisy one, but still audible at low volume;
• the second unit, due to particular settings of the green "naim" light on the front, went by itself in mute every moment. They pretended to repair it under warranty but only changed the above setting;
• the wi-fi was not usable and I was forced to pair it with an Apple Airport unit;
• they promised an upgrade that would give compatibility with AirPlay, but never provided it;
• the firmware update procedure was extremely cumbersome;
• the green screen (oled) after a few years became invisible. This happened to all owners of the device and other models with the same type of display, but despite this, the company demanded around € 400 for the repair (I refused to repair it);
• finally, the remote control has also broken;

The first criterion I used when choosing a new streamer last year was "stay away from Naim".

I'm so glad I bought the little Denon!

 

[DSJR]

...even though elsewhere they are telling people that if they can't hear the improvement in SQ that hi-res delivers then they must be deaf.

I am now, without aids - and I don't bloody care once they're fitted and working 'cos I'm hearing good stuff in my reproduced music and TV broadcasts I'd forgotten my stereo or the telly could reproduce!!!

 

[Katji]

It was beautifully built, although covered in horrible DIN connectors, recessed and impossible to wire up terminals.

The two pin DIN (speaker terminals) is arguably the second most evil connector on the planet,

Once upon a time, I had to solder wires to a 5 pin DIN plug, with not much experience. See, I still remember, about 40 years later.

 

[Shadrach]

Naim was the audiophile high end amplifier in the UK in the early 80s. One of the alternative British products was Exposure. I bought Exposure amplifiers and at one point had one of their CD players as well.
Both makes did the job.
While performance isn't state of the art, I expect the review amplifier from Naim does the job much like the majority of amplifiers for the past 50 years.
The problem is the price and that imo has always been the problem with Naim.

 

[JSmith]

Some would say Naim is is high end - their ‘statement’ stack is £200k

Somewhere along the way HiFi got correlated with HighEnd, i.e. expensive... the two are not synonymous, although rags like What HiFi will prefer people believe otherwise.


JSmith

 

[sonci99]

Can somebody point to the correct graph where PRAT is depicted?

 

[AudioSceptic]

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..

Were they *ever* any good?

 

[gfx_1]

You know, B&O have always sold on their aesthetic and finish, but I now believe that even in the 80's, they were way ahead internally and technically, not that we 'flat earthers' then even looked at that brand remotely seriously, regarding it as a rich man's Technics or similar stack system (I was pulled up short later on I remember, hearing so many Beosystems 'sound' really very good in owners' homes in a good-all-round kind of way)

The Beolab 5 are nice sounding speakers, I've heard them and the TV's are nice too but if you have to look at the price less expensive alternatives are available. Beolab 3 in the same home other room were a bit bas heavy, maybe just a setting but not impressive.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Briefly considered this unit for a bedroom... until I came to my senses regarding the price (granted it was a refurb on ac4l - at basically half the retail price). HDMI is appreciated and rare in the segment, but even if the performance were fantastic... it'd be a really hard sell for the nicer footprint over a midrange AVR with far more versatility.

On the other side, in regards to power in a compact footprint (with streaming and amplification)... it's not worth the premium over the likes of the Marantz M-CR612 or Denon CEOL-N10 - both of which include a CD player and more power. Admittedly I can't confirm that they're any cleaner as far as signal or output... but the provided specifications would seem to indicate they both are. Unless you really want to see the Naim logo on your devices that is... then maybe it doesn't matter.

Similar here. I went for the Denon DRA-N5 Piccolo as I didn't want another CD player. It's done everything I wanted and the sound is not bad at all.

 

[sarumbear]

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....

It will be great to be able to test the product set that started the Naim phenomenon, NAP250 and the matching preamp. I can't recall the model number for the pro but but from late 70s. Eye opening to see how well they have progressed or went the other way round.

 

[sarumbear]

They were pretty crap then on the bench (why they 'sounded' different to everything else, especially in the CB era of the 80's) and they're not hugely better now. I suspect this dismissal of measurements was actually to hide shortcomings in these updated but old fashioned designs back then - Julian wasn't an electronics chap I remember, but was very well educated enough to adapt old established designs to his purpose. Been there with the brand since 1975 and boy, were we led a right dance in that time as to what we were told a 'good sound' was! It's now bought by new retirees with healthy pension pots who missed out on the 80's subjective 'flat earth 'fun'.' The 'feel' and basic looks are good in units like this though with the sexy rotating 'disc' on top.

Like the Hegel and Rega amps measured here, the performance of this thing is 'good enough for purpose.' By 80's standards, it's very good for a subjectivist product... I can't get past the arrogance this brand has always had, especially after I 'fell off their tour bus' in the mid 80's. The products started to gradually improve, but every new model meant a huge price hike over the internally pretty similar previous one and as I just don't get marketing for the sake of it, I despaired and ultimately, more than a little contempt took over.

Do you have any proof of what you said?