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orits otherwireles m odes,the Atom HE is fuly capable ofhandling hi-res PCM oreven DSD given a reasonable hom e networksignal strength, although many wil want the reas urance ofthe wired Ethernetconnection located on the rearofthe unit. So regardles of input, al signals pas through Naim’s long-refined SHARC-based digitalsignalproces ing,and the com pany’s favoured TIPCM 1791 DAC,and thence to the outputstage – which is som ething Technical Director Steve Sels and his team have reportedly spentm uch tim e fetling.Yes,this is a headphone am plifier,with both 6.35m m unbalanced and 4.3m m Pentaconn balanced socketson the frontpanel,plusafour-pin XLR balanced headphone outputto the rear,butit can also be used asa pream p,thanksto both RCAsand XLRsround theback. IN THEBALANCE Now this is rather interesting,as there’s no sign of Naim ’s usualDIN connectivity here, although the company is at pains to em phasise thatthe curentUnitim odelshave never ofered such provision. However, balanced XLR preouts– and m atching power am p inputs– are only curently found on the company’s flagship Statement pre/power [HFN Jun ’15], alongside the fam ilar DINs used for unbalanced working. So it wil be interesting to see whether Naim launches m ore m ainstream power am ps (and indeed pream ps)equipped with balanced XLRs.
ahigh-resUPnP/DLNA interface able to handle filesup to 384kHz/32-bitand DSD128.There’salso Roon-ready capabiltyforthose who swearbyit,such asm yself.But backto theUnitiAtom HeadphoneEdition,and having had good experiences using both Unitiand M u-so system saspartofm ultiroom set-ups–anotherfacetof the Naim eco-system , although the com pany is no longerunique in thisrespect– Iwasinterested to see how this unitwould adaptto the headphone world. TheAtom HE m aynotbethecom pany’sfirstforayinto headphone listening – that was the Headline headphone am p.Also,the DAC-V1 was designed in partas a bridge between PCs and ’phones.Sim ilarly, m uch playwasm ade ofthe qualityofthe Supernait3’s integralheadphone am p a couple ofyearsback – but the Atom HE is otherwise Naim ’s m ost com plete ofering to date forfansofpersonallistening. Notonly can itstream m usic from the user’s own colection,be itlocated on network storage orUSB devices,it can also deliver online services including SpotifyConnect,Q obuzand Tidal,notto m ention the ‘hi-res’320kbpsAAC BBC radio stream saspartofits Internetradio capabilty. PREAMPTOO Althese servicesare bestac es ed via the Naim app, although the unit also com eswith an RF rem ote handset.In addition there are both opticaland coaxial digitalinputsaswelasasinglesetofanalogueins,the laterdigitised at48kHz.Itshould be noted thatone of the gains m ade in the developm ent of the curent N aim platform was greatly im proved W i-Ficapabilty. Despite the absence ofany externalantennae forthis
M ostofm y listening to the Uniti Atom Headphone Edition was, unsurprisingly, caried out using a variety of headphones, but I also tried itrunning asa pream p into m y m ain system .
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