Naim have always been associated with extreme high end and baffled the world not long ago when they extended their product line to Bentley in-car hifi with KW-fed 11 speaker extravaganza and a price tag to fit the car. Well, none of that. Now Naim went out and did an all-in-one package for the home sporting some rather nice specs and a compactness leaving little else to be desired.
The NaimUniti is a 50W integrated FM/DAB receiver with built-in CD transport and internet connectivity. It accepts USB devices, controls an iPod, reads CD-R discs and streams music from the network, including internet radio stations. Ogg Vorbis and Flac are supported as is Apple Lossless. On the input side there are 5 digital and 4 analogue. The latter including one specifically for the Naim Stageline phono stage for all that vinyl screaming for attention and so often forgotten in other solutions.
This one had me sold by looks alone. It doesn’t even come close to being an audio streamer. What it is, though, is one cool looking iPod dock.
The amplifier is built specifically to drive a set of accompanying speakers. The output transformer has been built into the speakers to keep the amplifier’s form factor down and thus its cuteness factor up.
CD drive
Wifi
Flac audio
Digital IO
Ogg-Vorbis
uPnP support
Video