Ed Selley

Naim on stream Naim has launched a new, streaming all-in-one system with a difference – there’s no CD drive! But as Ed Selley discovers, it’s music non-stop Considering that Naim waited the best part of a decade before producing its first CD player, the speed that the company has adopted hard drive and audio streaming products is impressive. In the last few years, we have been treated to the HDX hard drive server, the ‘NaimNet’ multiroom system and the Uniti all-in-one system with streaming capability. The Uniti has now morphed into a complete range of products with the Uniti Serv, CD-ripping music server and the product tested here, the all-in-one streamer/player, the UnitiQute. Finally, Naim has just announced the NDX streamer.

Bigger on the inside Pro-Ject expands its super-affordable Box Series with a new £300 CD player and Richard Black reckons small is beautiful How small can a CD player be? If it’s a portable with a flip lid and just one mini-jack output, the answer is little more than ten millimetres thick and a fraction bigger than the diameter of a CD. But we don’t reckon front-loading players will ever come much smaller than this Pro-Ject, which has a top surface just 50 per cent bigger than one CD jewel case and height (including feet) equivalent to four of them. It’s magic What’s the trick? The transport is of course a slot-loader, which saves a lot of the space that a tray would take up and the electronics portion is a single board, about 15mm by 150mm – with a grand total of six integrated circuits on it, including power regulators. The slight cheat is the external power supply; Pro-Ject’s usual wall-wart which outputs 16v AC.

Format specialist Marantz plugs the yawning gap that exists between high-resolution audio and video sources. Alvin Gold may have found 'the one' The idea of universal disc players is not new. They’ve been around in the form of computer drives for a long time, as well as domestic disc players, but the players are usually not quite what you might expect from the description on the tin. The players, for example, have traditionally limited themselves to CD, DVD-Audio and SACD, while computer drives will invariably include DVD-Video, Blu-ray and baseline audio compatibility in the form of compact disc.

Get into the groove Jason Kennedy is a sucker for the latest sub-£500 vacuum vinyl-cleaning system from ‘Chi-fi’ analogue specialist Hanss Hanss Acoustics is a Chinese firm with a penchant for all things ‘vinyl’. It has some pretty impressive turntables and a rather good phono stage in its range, so the debut of this innovative and attractive record cleaner was only to be expected. A curvy box built out of extruded aluminium, the RC20 is significantly less imposing than the competition, yet it offers much the same spinning and sucking abilities – skills that are intrinsic in the pursuit of vinyl freshening. It doesn’t offer the cleaning thread found on Keith Monks machines, but neither does it cost that sort of money.