Naim DAC £2100 A Digital to Analogue Converter from Naim? Shurly shum mishstake! Well, no - the Naim DAC is real, and it's taken the HiFi world by storm, with glowing reviews from fans and sceptics alike. Nearly 20 years since ARCAM launched the world's first DAC (The Black Box), Naim have finally produced one themselves. Why the delay? The answer to this is rather technical - so we're not going to try to explain it in any detail here - but Naim have always held the view that the difficulties inherent in separating the reading and converting halves of the player far outweighed the advantages .... especially if you started to mix and match transports and DACs from different manufacturers. However, the increasing demand from customers wanting to store music as digital files led to Naim's R&D team resolving to overcome these problems - with incredible results. There are numerous publications detailing the DAC's perfomance and technical attributes - not least on Naim's own website (naim-audio.com) - so we'll just summarise them here. Basically, the Naim DAC uses components from Naim's flagship (and £16K !) CD555 player to convert the digital information fed to it into glorious analogue sound quality that genuinely rivals that of high end CD player and turntables. The digital source could be a CD transport or player from any manufacturer ( Naim's new CD5 XS or CDX 2 are ideal, of course), a Hard Disk player (like Naim's HDX) or UnitiServe) a laptop or PC, a SKY+ box, an i-pod or even a memory stick! Of course, the DAC can't work miracles - the rule "rubbish in, rubbish out" is bound to apply - but the results from even quite lowly sources are astonishing. Feed the DAC with a high quality source, like that from a Naim CD5 XS for example, and you have true high-end performance. This can be taken even higher (much, much higher, in fact), if you add a Naim XPS or 555PS powersupply to the DAC. So, there we have it: whether you want to continue to collect new music on CD, or download it at High Resolution onto some sort of Hard Disk, the Naim DAC is the future of high end music.

Naim UnitiQute £1425 What is it? Basically, a NaimUniti that's been put through the hot wash and shrunk! The CD player's been lost, and the amp section is smaller, but most of everything else remains. So, is it a onebox Naim system for those who don't own any CDs, or those restricted by space (just how small is your house?!) or budget or those who've already got a 500 series HiFi in the lounge? Well, all of those reasons might be valid, but the real beauty of the UnitiQute lies in its ability to bring music stored elsewhere in the home into remote rooms. This music could be stored on a PC, or a Hard Drive connected to a PC, or (for the best sound quality) stored on a Naim Hard Disc storage device like the UnitiServe mentioned on this page. The UnitiQute will connect to these remote music stores over your Broadband network - either via Ethernet/Cat5 cable or Wirelessly, and thus give you the potential for high quality music in more than one location. The UnitiQute is simple and intuitive to use (unlike many computer-style products!). Highly Recommended.

Naim UnitiServe £2045 Now on dem! What is it? Well, as always, you can read the full brief on this exciting new product on naim-audio.com, but here's the basics: This product is a simplified version of Naim's acclaimed HDX. It has a terabyte Hard Drive - that's one trillion bytes, or one million megabytes! Seeing as an uncompressed album takes up about 650 megabytes, the UnitiServe can store about 1500 albums internally. If that isn't enough, it will connect to your Broadband network and locate music stored elsewhere in the house (eg on PCs or other Hard Drives); thus, the music storage facility is limitless. The UnitiServe 'rips' CDs inserted into its front slot in about 8 minutes. The copies are perfect. It can also simply play the CD without copying it. Additionally, the UnitiServe can now access Internet Radio; this is especially exciting since there are an increasing number of high quality (320HD) transmissions coming 'on-stream' - some of which Naim have 'tagged' in their Naim Choice section of the Internet Radio menu. The UnitiServe is designed to be used in either of two ways: firstly, it can output to a digitally equipped amplifier (like the Naim SuperNait), a Naim Uniti or UnitiQute or, for ultimate sound quality, the Naim nDac. As a source, it gives similar sound quality as the Naim CD5XS - ie: very good indeed! The second method, is for the UnitiServe's musical content to be 'streamed' to one of Naim's Streaming devices, like the NDX; this can, amazingly, produce even higher sound quality than the original CD seemed to contain! It has to be heard to be believed! The UnitiServe can be controlled by a variety of means, and is a delight to use. Like the UniQute, its a real family-friendly product: its internal store of music can be accessed by all the computers on your Home Network. So, if, for example, you have precious LPs which are 'forbidden' from use by the family - record them onto CD, load them onto the UnitiServe and let your children enjoy (suffer) Frank Zappa as you did!

Ovator S-400 loudspeaker £3250 We now have the fabulous Ovator S-400 loudspeaker from Naim on demonstration. This new, 'smaller' model follows the lead set by its bigger brother the S-600. If you aren't aware of what Naim have been up to in loudspeaker design (full details of which are available at naimaudio.com), then the most salient fact is this: the speaker does not have a conventional High Frequency drive-unit. Instead, it has a Balanced Mode Radiator, which covers the frequency range from 380z upwards. To put this into context, this frequency corresponds to G on the top string of a guitar (or the opening note of "Whiskey in the Jar", if you prefer!) which means that the BMR covers all of the fundamental and main harmonics of the most expressive instruments - eg guitar, piano, saxophone and the human voice, without the need for a cross-over between conventional tweeter and mid-range drive-units. The resulting increase in clarity and musical insight is breath-taking! Coupled to this innovation, the S-400 boasts a pair of forward facing bass drivers carefully housed in their own , massively braced, sub-enclosures - this is a very substantial loud-speaker! At £3250 the S-400 is hardly cheap, but when you consider the performance it delivers, it might just be the bargain of the century!

Naim NDX £2995 The Naim NDX is a remarkable product which manages to pull off a very neat trick with music stored on your Network's hard-disk storage devices. If you want a full technical briefing on how it does this, then you can read about it on Naim's website; but here, I'm just going to outline what is apparent to the ears. If you have music stored on, for example, a Naim UnitiServe, and you feed this music directly into a Naim DAC, you get (obviously) a very high quality of sound. However, if you stream the same music through your Broadband router to the NDX, and then on to the DAC, you get a vastly improved sound quality. This is all the more astonishing when you consider that the music has passed through about £10 worth of router! Something very strange is going on here! However, the long and short of it is that the NDX makes streamed music, and Internet radio, a true high-end source. Note, the NDX has its own high-quality DAC onboard, so you don't need the separate Naim DAC - though this is superior still.

Naim XP5 XS £1595 Naim and Power Supplies - a marriage made in HiFi Heaven! Like all PS units from Naim, the XP5 is, on the face of it (pun intended!), a plain ('tho very stylish)) black box with no visible switches. What it does for sound quality is, again like all Naim PSs, quite remarkable, however; breathing increased detail, space and presence into the music. The XP5 is designed to be a more affordable upgrade to the ND5 XS, NDX, HDX, CDX2 and DAC than the, already available, XPS2 and 555PS units. It comes complete with the multi-pin Burndy lead to connect to the other Naim product - you simply unplug the large blanking/shorting pin from the back of the DAC etc and plug the Burndy in instead. At just £1595 the XP5 is fantastic value - well worth a try! NB/- the XP5 is also backwardly compatible with the older, olive-fronted, CDX, CDS2 and CDS3 head units. Conversely, the olive fronted XPS Power Supplies from that era cannot be used with modern Naim Streaming units like the NDX.

Naim SuperUniti £3250 You know that age-old adage about being a "Jack of all trades and a Master of none"? Well, it would be expected that this would apply to Naim's new super-clever box of tricks, the SuperUniti. How wrong would that be! Naim have, somehow, managed to cram into one, Classic Series-sized box, most of the goodies from the DAC, NDX and SuperNait (total combined cost £7850), without throwing all the performance away. The SuperUniti is a superb "Have your cake and eat it" product; all it needs is a Broadband internet connection, a music store somewhere on your Home Network (a Naim UnitiServe, a NAS drive or your laptop) and a decent pair of speakers and, there you have it, a very high quality, modern HiFi system that will delight all listeners - and it's simple to operate too! The SuperUniti has a very powerful (80W) Poweramp section, and so is more than up to the job of driving Naim's excellent Ovator S-400 speakers - come and listen for yourself!

Naim ND5 XS £1925 In tradition with Naim's time-honoured policy of engineering from the top down, here we have the ND5 XS Network Streamer - son of NDX. This new model has all the functionality of its highly regarded forebearer, but is built into the smaller XS casing, with a slimmed-down transformer. Consequently, it costs only two thirds as much, but offers a greater fraction of the performance than you might expect. All file formats can be streamed, including the latest (forthcoming, would be a more realistic term!) 192KHz resolution. The ND5 XS can be used on its own, streaming fabulous sound into any amplifier, or its performance can be further enhanced by using it in conjunction with the nDAC and/or adding on an XP5 XS Power-Supply.