I just got one of these the other day. I have posted about the sound quality on other forums. I’ll just say here that I love the integration with roon. Finally have an amp where roon controls the amp volume. I also finally have a device remote that controls play/pause/skip track forward and back. It may not seem like much, but the little things add up. I can just start playing an album and roon will wake up the device. There is also a power button in the volume setting to shut the unit off within roon.
In device setting have option to set different time settings to put the unit to sleep after so many minutes of no music playing. Adding the unit to roon involved not setup changes. Just find the device and all the settings set. I know these features aren’t exclusive to Naim, but most are new to me. Also love the album art which I can see from 6 feet away.
As far as the balanced headphone jack in the back, it’s no issue for me. I always leave it plugged in and have 10 ft cable, so lose about a foot coming from the back. Could be a big deal if have short cable. I do agree the balanced jack is ugly and could ruin the looks if not using it if it was on the front.
I think Naims Roon Ready implementation is fantastic and one of the best I have experienced as you get pretty much all the bells and whistles especially in the all in one amps like the Atom, Nova and Star with the volume control and it works so damned well and sounds pretty darn good to.
I’ve been mostly posting about sound in the Naim forum. I can just say it’s sounding better and better the longer I burn it in. This excels in texture and rhythm. It’s a little less open sounding than prior amps but it has great weight to the music. Something I found lacking with Hugo 2 and even on the Chord Dave when I had the HF filter turned off. The Naim is definitely not thin sounding at all.
Bumping this to see if anyone has an answer to @Aidan_Gaule 's question. Has anyone heard this as a pre into a power amp with passive speakers? I listen with headphones just often enough to make this more attractive than the regular Uniti Atom. If it sounds great as a preamp I think I’m sold.
There are a number of reviews out of this and one sings it’s praises with actives. It’s had a whole new improved pre section to handle this side of things. I would just book a demo and listen to it if you can. Demand has been high so they are thin on the ground here in the UK with some quite long waiting lists at some dealers.
He uses a NAP100, many Naim users though report not a great uplift using a power amp on the regular Atom and it looses some of its musicality. But some do and they use a NAP250 or the NAP100 some use older ones and are happy. It’s cheaper than moving up to the Nova but that also has an improved pre over the Atom and most prefer that than any combo of Atom and NAP. One thing though is their is no way to deactivate the power amp in the Atom so it’s still using it in this combo albeit with no speakers attached, on the older unities you had an option to turn of the internal power amp when using pre outs.
The new Atom HE has an all new pre amp that’s supposed to be very good and works much better with separate power amps or actives as it’s been designed for that way of working.
I have toyed with the idea of adding a power amp but for me it then it’s more boxes which is not what I want. I bought an all in one to cut down boxes not add them. Will likely get a HE for my headphone rig and eventually upgrade to a Nova at some point.
Its.desinged as an all in one system that has an inbuilt streamer capable of DSD128 and PCM upto 384/24 and it’s very good. There is no need for usb input . It has coax or optical for a cd player or other digital input such as TV or Blu-ray player. Coax handled 192/24 , very few devices support 192/24 over optical and is very cable dependant.
No idea why you would want balanced in, yes it resamples analogue to allow for multiroom use which is handy in a fully Naim eco system. It resamples to pcm for DSD as the DSP stage of the system needs pcm you cannot apply any DSP to DSD signal. Most non NOS DACs generally resample not exactly unique.
If all this matters then it’s not for you. As said it’s designed as an all in one entry level system that does pretty much all you would need without additional sources. If you want to add in an external streaming system then why would you want this in the first place, just buy a dedicated streamer DAC and head amp.
That seems like an overly negative view to me, but I accept that we all have different wants and needs. In response to some of your points:
I’m struggling to see why this would be necessary on such a device, especially when the small box has so much stuff crammed into it which is already a compromise between function and performance.
This is there to provide multiroom functionality to all inputs including analogue. When done well with matched ADC/DAC I don’t think there would be a significant compromise to sound quality at this level. It is, after all, Naim’s entry level product, you wouldn’t have this on a separates system.
This is the standard spec for Toslink. In some cases you may get away with 24/192 but that will depend on the implementation in the source and the cable as well as the Atom so it would mislead people to claim that it was higher for any individual device.
This is a design choice in order to keep electrical noise to a minumum and is used by all Naim streamers and most others. 100MB is more than enough for any hires audio signal so there is no benefit to using GB Ethernet.
Naim have always preferred electrical SPDIF for optimal audio performance, but yes, if you want to use USB you will need to look elsewhere.
I am currently using an Atom connected to a Purifi EVAL1 Class D amp to drive my Dynaudio Contour S 3.4 LE loudspeakers and I am enjoying this combination a lot. But as I am only using the Atom as a preamp, I decided to go for the Atom HE. I hope to get it delivered by the end of August, or early September. I can post some comments on the sound quality as a preamp as soon as it replaces my ‘regular’ Atom.
Well, the Naim Atom Headphone edition has arrived two weeks ago. It should be run in by now. Anyhow, it sounds marvellous. I was very happy with the Atom as a preamp, but the Atom HE is (not surprisingly) even better. The footprint and functionality are exactly the same as the regular Atom, which is great as the whole family loved the Atom. In terms of sound quality the HE sounds more refined as a preamp and it is much more powerful as a headphone amp.
Listening through my AKG K702 I noticed that I can half the volume compared to the old Atom to get to the same sound level. But 99% of the time I listen through my loudspeakers and it sounds simply stunning. Very open, detailed, dynamic, involving and with lots of PRaT. I guess the HE sounds more engaging, involving and confident compared to the normal Atom.
I have connected the power amp via XLR and the powered subwoofer via RCA. This works great and without any issues. So I am very happy with the purchase.
That’s easy: walk up to the device and wave your hand before the screen (which activates the proximity sensor). Or use the dedicated button on the remote. Or check it in the Roon app.
