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Need advice to pick the perfect Amp/DAC stack for my headphones

ocinn

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Monosauras

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Assuming they retained the dac from the standard atom, it’s downright awful. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ds/naim-uniti-atom-review-streamer-amp.35213/

The new D70/A70 is stellar and should be cheaper than the 90 stack.
From reading up on it, it seems certain components of the Atom were changed and upgraded for the HE, but I am not entirely sure whether the dad was one of them.

I'd need to buy a streamer with any other combination, but if I assume the basic Wiim Mini then that's an extra $139AUD, so negligible.

D70/A70 stack would cost me $2048AUD, so just over $1000AUD less than the Atom is going for at the moment. Does the fact that the Atom is heavily discounted change its value compared to the other options mentioned?
 

ocinn

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From reading up on it, it seems certain components of the Atom were changed and upgraded for the HE, but I am not entirely sure whether the dad was one of them.

I'd need to buy a streamer with any other combination, but if I assume the basic Wiim Mini then that's an extra $139AUD, so negligible.

D70/A70 stack would cost me $2048AUD, so just over $1000AUD less than the Atom is going for at the moment. Does the fact that the Atom is heavily discounted change its value compared to the other options mentioned?
WiiM mini into the D70/A70 stack will run circles around that naim. As has been shown here and everywhere, modern naim products are not that good, even if the chips they are are top of the line.

There is absolutely no way that Naim could even come close, especially considering their track record.

But then again we are talking about the bleeding edge of objective performance.

Something as simple as the ~$310 AUD SMSL DL200, would be audibly identical to the 70 stack for 99.9999% of the buyers that don’t have the absolute most insanely challenging headphones to drive.
 

Dreborn

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Great thread! I am in exact same boat and we have the exact same headphones. :) I do love my focal 2022

I tried the naim HE next to the jds element iii and honestly couldn’t tell a difference. MAYBE the naim was a bit cleaner but not 3k difference

About to pull the trigger on the rme adi 2 like you did. How’s it going after all these months?
 
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