Join us in Uniti on Thursday 9th of November at Jurys Inn Brighton

On Thursday 9th of November we will be showing the new Uniti range from Naim Audio, at the Jurys Inn located at Brighton Station

We will be joined by representatives from Naim Audio, who will not only demonstrate the products but answer any questions you may have about them.

It all begins with the Uniti Core

NAIM UNITI CORE

From there you are able to add your network player of choice, starting with the Uniti Atom.

Naim Uniti Atom

If you have a larger room or even a larger room and bigger speakers it could be the Uniti Nova that would suit you best.

NAIM UNITI NOVA

If you are one of those people who like to still play CDs and also have the ability to rip them to some local storage such as an SD card or USB drive then the Uniti Star would be just the job for you.

Naim Uniti Star

We will be demonstrating these through a pair of ProAc Response D20R loudspeakers and the ProAc representative will also be there if you have any questions regarding their speakers.

ProAc D20R Loudspeakers

So please don't be shy, come along and experience an evening of great products and great tunes, tickets can be booked here, if that isn't enough all attendees can enter our FREE prize draw* to win one of 3 Mu-So QB's worth £649 each.

*T&Cs apply. Mu-So Qb prizes are for the entire roadshow not per event. One entry per person. Prize draw will take place after the final roadshow event on the 9th November and the lucky winners notified by phone or email and published in the Audio T eClub newsletter.

Julian, Paul & John look forward to seeing you on the night.

Naim Uniti products are stocked at all branches of Audio T.

ProAc loudspeakers are stocked in Brighton and Preston.

Dreaming About Music Streaming? What Does It All Mean?

There are a raft of new products available that allow you to stream your music and the idea behind this blog, is to highlight one or two products and explain the basics of how to incorporate a "streamer" into your existing Hi-Fi system.

Streamers - Clockwise from top left: Bluesound Node 2 £499, Yamaha WXAD-10 £149, Sonos Connect £349, Naim ND5XS £2430, and Yamaha WXC-50 £329

Firstly perhaps I should explain what we mean by "streaming". There are two forms of streaming:

1. Directly from the Internet via a service like Spotify, Qobuz or Tidal. These services are a little like SKY, you pay a subscription every month and get access to their massive, and constantly updated, music library. Prices are usually £10-20 a month. The streamer needs to support the service you are interested in and not all streamers support all streaming services.

2. Music stored locally on a computer or network hard drive (NAS drive). Usually these are CD's that have been copied onto a computer / NAS drive, or music downloaded from the internet.

Bluetooth or Airplay could also be considered "streaming" but neither are a particularly high quality method so I'm not going to cover those. However a number of streaming products do include them.

Our Apple iPad Mini with the Tidal App. 9 out of 10 Streamers use an App as a remote control so you will need an iPad / iPhone or Andriod phone or tablet (like a Samsung)

So why bother with streaming?

The two main reasons are:

1. Easy access to your entire record collection without having to go looking for the CD.

2. By adding more streamers you can get music all around your house, easily controlled by a tablet or smart phone

You can make playlists, or you can just play a random selection from your whole collection, it's great to hear some of the older stuff that got buried at the back of your CD rack and forgotten about. If you subscribe to a streaming service you have access to millions of tracks and never need to buy a CD again!

What about quality?

Typically streamed music is around the same quality as CD. You can make it better if you get the more expensive kit but most of the time it's roughly comparable to CD quality. Tidal and Qobuz are better quality than Spotify if you are using a streaming service but are more expensive, but do allow you to stream (Qobuz / Tidal) and download (Qobuz) 24bit Hi-Res music. 

However copying (ripping) your CD's is where it can seem complicated because there are so many different file types used to store music. Pretty much everyone has heard of MP3, but that's the lowest quality 'lossy' format which in the process of conversion removes some of the information to allow it be compressed down to the smallest possible file size.

You could start with Apple Lossless, it's better than MP3, Itunes is easy to use and it's widely supported - it's a proprietary format and will only work with Itunes and the Apple ecosystem. However, we would recommend FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), it's the next step up in quality it's an open (not hardware dependent) lossless (No data is removed from the converted file) format and is widely supported. WAV is the original CD source file but it's uncompressed, so it takes up a lot more hard drive space and there can be problems with track information (meta data) being transferred correctly, so unless you are going for high end quality we would suggest using FLAC or ALAC if you're an Itunes user - FLAC will not play on ITunes. If this seems really daunting then there are several products that will rip and store your CD's, making the process as simple as possible. e.g. Innuos Zen Mini or Naim Uniticore

Time to look at kit.

If you want to dip your toe into the "streaming" water, Yamaha have just realised a new product, and at £149 it's very affordable.

Yamaha WXAD-10

The Yamaha WXDA-10 uses Yamaha's MusicCast technology which is also incorporated in a good number of other Yamaha products including most of their recent Home Cinema Amps. The MusicCast app is pretty good with all the normal streaming services like Spotify etc.

Yamaha MusicCast app

The WXDA-10 only has analogue connections so plug it into an aux input on your amplifier and follow the instructions on the app to set it up in 5 mins.

Another recent addition to our collection of streamers is the Bluesound Node 2 £499

Bluesound node 2

The Node 2 can be connected with normal analogue interconnects, but also has digital outputs.

bluesound node 2 back panel

It's an obvious sonic improvement over the cheaper Yamaha. The Bluesound boasts MQA (Master Quality Authenticated)  compatibility (yet another new high resolution music file format!) along with all the other usual features, and a decent app better used on a larger ipad.

Bluesound App

All the streamers mentioned or pictured are available for demonstration in store, where you can try the apps for yourself. We will always try to answer any questions you have.

Yamaha Hi-Fi products are available from the following branches of Audio T:
Brentwood, Bristol, Cardiff, Enfield, Manchester, Online, Oxford, Portsmouth, Preston, 
Southampton, Swansea, 

Bluesound Hi-Fi products are available from the following branches of Audio T:
Manchester, Online, Portsmouth, Swindon

Naim Audio Uniti Core CD Ripper & Music Server Has Arrived At Audio T Swindon

This month we would like to talk about the Naim Uniti Core, Naim's reference CD ripper, streamer and music server. It is one of the new Naim Uniti range that comprises 4 network music products: Uniti Atom, Uniti Star, Unit Nova and Core.

The Uniti Core enables you to save (rip) your CD collection to a hard drive. It stores your existing digital music collection, serves your music to Uniti systems, Mu-So, Mu-So QB and Naim Audio's standalone network streamers and backs it up for you. The Uniti Core can also be used as a player connected to a standalone DAC or DAC pre-amplifier and control/play your music via the Naim Audio control app.

Let's have a look and see what's included in the box: 

The Uniti Core comes supplied with a Powerline Lite mains cable, a BNC/SPDIF adapter (so you can use your existing digital phono-to-phono coax cable , 4 HDD screws and 4SSD screws. The Uniti Core does not come shipped with a built-in hard drive disc (HDD) or solid state disc (SSD) drive for storing the music as they don't know what capacity drive the customer might needs to store their music.

Naim Audio recommends either the Seagate Pipeline HD 3.5" internal drive or Samsung 850 2.5" SSD and both are available in different storage sizes. Once you have purchased your hard drive of choice, we can fit it it your Uniti free of charge - this service is available at all Audio T stores.

The Core is very well built and it sounds fantastic. Before you start recording/ripping your cd's you need to select the streaming format, either FLAC or WAV. We prefer WAV as the files are uncompressed and you can hear it.  The sound has more weight to it, a bigger presentation - very nice to listen to.

Here are a few screenshots

With your music ready for playback/stream, simply open the Naim Audio app and start browsing through your music library. There is only an IOS version at the moment but there will be an Android version soon.

When you click the little window on the bottom left it will enlarge the playback screen and you see all the controls. This is the same on all Naim Audio streaming products - extremely easy to use, reliable and sounds very musical.

So what about your existing music files on a NAS or USB drive? Select Manage Music > Import Music > select the drive with your music on and press Import and you're done. The Core can also see and access music on other shared network storage devices without importing them.

Have a look here :

And a rear view of the Uniti Core

We think setting up a music library for streaming should be easy and fun to do and this is exactly what is is. Me (Stefan) and Andy look forward to showing you how the Naim Uniti Core works, how to use it and of course most importantly how it sounds.

For all enquiries please give us call on 01793 538222 or visit us here in the Swindon shop.

Thanks for reading.

Stefan & Andy

Naim Hi-Fi products are available from all branches of Audio T: 
Brentwood, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Enfield, Manchester, Oxford, Portsmouth, 
Preston, Reading, Southampton, Swansea, Swindon