When Naim released the Mu-So product line, they had the audiophiles pretty much convinced that multi-room audio could be done the autonomous-speaker-way hitherto personified by Sonos, without the transistor-radio-sonority personified by not only Sonos but their competitors as well, was actually feasible. Now they have brought some of the design decisions from Mu-So over to the Uniti line of products and, by the looks of it, become a serious contestant of the Linn throne. Even the Mu-So button has spawned.
The new Uniti comes in four flavors. The Atom, Star and Nova on the front end of things and the Core at the back. The Atom, Star and Nova are streamers with rudimentary external storage options with a capacity of 20,000 tracks and a 40W, 70W and 80W amplifier respectively. The Star and the Core have built-in CD transport and accompanying ripping facilities. The Core has an internal storage of up to 8TB and room for 100,000 tracks. Whether more Uniti Core units can be addressed simultaneously remains unknown at this point. After all, 100,000 tracks is only 5-6000 CDs.
The new Uniti devices are compatible with the the existing Uniti range.
Loudspeaker high-ender Bowers & Wilkins have left their 1965 roots in an acquisition from ex-Facebook CFO Gideon Yu and his company EVA Automation. In these circles it’s a bit of a tic inducing piece of news. Now what? What do rich guys know about music? Well, for starters only rich people could afford the high-end products to begin with and there is nothing genetically music hating about being rich, so perhaps it is a need for capital no one knew existed. Welcome, Gideon Yu, to a spot in the world where words do truly buzz and products are given the love so many products surely miss.
A star burned out today. Perhaps not the one shining the brightest but arguably the firmamentally most prominent of stars. A man of artistic integrity to the point where it almost broke him followed by a restored artist balancing arts with the personal integrity he then lacked. Eventually the mark he left on the world is unequivocal and his latest album a worthy swansong, as it so tragically turns out. It would have been just like him to do that deliberately, wouldn’t it?
CD drive
Wifi
Flac audio
Digital IO
Ogg-Vorbis
uPnP support
Video