NaimUniti early review: Expensively incredible audio system

Two thousand pounds might sound a mindboggling amount of money to spend on an audio device, but when you tot up what goes into a NaimUniti, it starts to make a wee bit more sense. There's nothing quite like this on the market anywhere, at any price. First and foremost, the Uniti will take your audio, amplify it and pump it out of some speakers -- which you have to provide too.

It also grabs hold of radio from virtually any source, be it FM, DAB or even Internet radio stations. Radio stations that have a listen again feature, such as those from Absolute Radio and the BBC, can simply be selected from the audio menu, meaning you no longer have to actually hear shows live to enjoy them. While this isn't a brand-new feature, it's still fabulous to have access to all that content at any time and trust us -- it will change the way you use radio.

The NaimUniti also has a CD player, which is quite similar in its nuts and bolts to Naim's CD5i, which in itself costs £1,000. Merely loading a disc into the player is enough of an event to justify the price. Rather than a motorised tray, the Naim employs a manual drawer, which extends out from the player at a jaunty angle. This is supposed to improve audio quality and reduce noise during playback, as you'd expect frpm such a high-end system.

You can hook up an iPod, either using a 3.5mm jack at the front of the machine, or, for best quality, using the proprietary audio lead. The bad news is, to use the proper cable, you'll need to buy it separately, and that'll set you back £95. Rather irksome when you've just dropped two grand.

The Uniti can also accept digital audio inputs from as many as five sources. There are two optical and two coaxial digital inputs at the rear, and the 3.5mm jack at the front accepts digital audio too. Analogue gets three RCA-based stereo inputs and a single turntable DIN connector. There's a headphone output on the front too, as well as stereo jacks at the rear, a pre-amplifier output and, of course, stereo speaker jacks.

As with so many modern devices, this Uniti can also browse your home network, using UPnP, to find machines sharing their music libraries. This will almost certainly appeal to people with very large digital music collections on their home computers, or those using NAS devices to hold their home media.

Anyway, while that's all well and good, why not look at our photos, which will give you an idea of how awesome this machine is. We'll be performing a full review on this system too, so keep an eye on our reviews channel for our comprehensive thoughts.