Naim’s Uniti Atom community amplifier (8/10, WIRED Recommends) has change into one thing of an audiophile back-pocket gadget. The British model’s all-in-one streamer and amp gives implausible audio high quality match to energy nearly any stereo audio system you may lay your arms on, alongside a truckload of connectivity choices, from HDMI eARC and analog connection to Chromecast, AirPlay 2, and extra. It’s simple to make use of and marvelous to listen to.
However what a few Uniti Atom aimed primarily at headphones, with a price ticket pushing $4,000? That’s a loopy concept, proper? So I assumed till I fell head over heels for Naim’s Uniti Atom HE (as in Headphone Version). As outlandish as the value could appear, for the right buyer—someone with very expensive headphone tastes who values candy simplicity as extremely as an evening of listening bliss—it’s a fairly nice package deal.
Fashionable Appears to be like, Phenomenal Sound
Naim’s Uniti design type is iconic, and the corporate has modified little or no on the outside for its Headphone Version mannequin. As with its siblings, the Atom HE sports activities a classy, neo-industrial aesthetic, with brushed aluminum trim, blocky warmth sinks alongside the edges, and Naim’s signature jumbo quantity dial on high that lights up once you give it a spin.
The colourful front-side show welcomes you with vivid album covers once you play out of your favourite streaming providers. It’s additionally movement delicate, calling up the track identify and playback time once you method it (although, considerably frustratingly, it’s not a touchscreen). A protracted, shiny distant gives the identical intuitive structure as the unique, with backlit buttons that gleam once you decide it up.
The one actual seen change between the HE model and the 2017 Atom I repeatedly use to energy assessment audio system is the HE’s twin headphone ports set beneath a lighted headphone button on the entrance. The button is used to swap between the headphone outputs and the gadget’s different foremost use case, which is as a streaming preamp for powered audio system or an amplifier.
On the subject of the sound, it’s maybe no shock that this gadget sounds actually, actually good. As I cycled by a number of high-end headphones, the Atom HE offered sparkling-clean playback with enormously spacious sound staging. Devices completely gleam with clear definition, dynamics appear to broaden into the ether, the noise flooring is all however nonexistent. The Unite Atom HE lets your music bounce across the open house like an echo in an enormous auditorium.
It didn’t damage that I bought to audition the Uniti Atom HE with a pair of headphones from Naim’s sister model, Focal, known as the Utopia—they run a whopping $5,000 and print sound like one-way tickets to audio nirvana. This setup was virtually too fancy for even an skilled reviewer like me. I had a palpable diploma of underlying apprehension the entire time I had this automobile-priced system in my listening room. Then once more, perhaps that’s what methods like this are for.
{Photograph}: Naim
The Uniti Atom elevated all of the wired headphones at my disposal, together with Sennheiser’s HD 660S2 (7/10, WIRED Recommends), Grasp and Dynamic’s MW65 (9/10, WIRED Recommends), the newest Beats headphones (7/10, WIRED Review), and all the pieces else I plugged in. All appeared to glow with newfound luminance, as if dusting off their drivers for a purer, extra concentrated sound.
