Naim

From standalone wireless speakers up to $41,000 audiophile sources, Naim has put streaming and multiroom at the heart of its hi-fi. If it’s in your price bracket, it’s hard to go wrong.

Naim Mu-so Generation 2 Naim Mu-so Qb Generation 2 Naim Uniti Atom Naim 555 / 555 PS DR

For longtime hi-fi watchers, Naim is perhaps the most unexpected company to have become such a high-level leader in the art of streaming and multiroom audio. UK-based Naim Audio, which co-exists with French speaker company Focal under common ownership, built its reputation on amplification from its very first products in the early 1970s. At that time it was almost a renegade company both in its attitude, led by the legendary Julian Vereker and later Paul Stephenson, and also in even suggesting that amplification was an area requiring hi-fi attention — back then, the emphasis was all on loudspeakers, not much even on the source. It was Scotland’s Linn which was pushing the source-first philosophy with its Sondek turntable, and it was Linn and Naim together, although great rivals, that did so much to establish the classic balance of separates hi-fi — source, amplifier, speakers.

Neither company, however, was much taken by the rise of the CD, and as a result, both companies were quicker than most to recognise the value of high-quality file-based replay and streaming. Naim put streaming at the heart of its hi-fi systems as early as 2008. Granted, that’s not as early as Napster or the iPod or even Sonos, but then Naim wasn’t interested in the grotty quality of MP3 files which were the mainstay of file-based playback back then. As soon as higher quality became a possibility, Naim was there. As with Linn, it even had its own recording label which could create music at the level of quality required to demonstrate the advantages of high-res files over CD discs.

What nobody expected, however, was that Naim would create one of the most successful wireless music players yet to hit the market — the Naim Mu-so (pictured above). This went above even B&W’s innovative Zeppelin in its sound quality, its ease of use, its many ways to play and its drop-dead gorgeous substance and style, including the best-ever knob in hi-fi. We know long-time separates users who have swapped their systems for a Mu-so — something we’d never suggest for pretty much any standalone wireless speaker, but this speaks to the quality of the Mu-so, now in its second generation.

Meanwhile Naim also has a range of network players and the Uniti ‘all-in-one’ systems (amplifiers with built-in streamers), all of which can bond together in a multiroom system using Naim’s own app, or indeed with a great deal of equipment from other manufacturers, since their many ways to play include both Google’s Chromecast inside and Apple’s AirPlay 2. Also in the Uniti range is the ‘Core’, a CD ripper and music server that can act as the repository for music for a whole home, able to deliver 12 independent multiroom high-res streams if so required.

The ‘New Uniti’ series has brought together everything Naim has learned — the wireless, multiroom and control elements of the Mu-sos, with the solid hi-fi amplification developed over decades, and even trickle-down tech from the developmental fillip of investment in the company’s massive and exceedingly expensive ($200k+) Statement flagship amplifier. Because as you can see opposite, even Naim’s highest level products like the ND 555 network player can join the multiroom party at Naim.