Naim’s New High-End Sound Converter Aims At Computer Music Listeners [CES 2013]

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Probably sounds as good as it looks
Probably sounds as good as it looks

High-end hifi people Naim announced a stylish new audio playback gadget designed to make listening to computer-based music as good as possible. Needless to say, you have to shell out serious money for this kind of serious sound.

The first box is the DAC-V1 digital to analogue converter (pictured above and below).

Yummy
Yummy

This rather cute box is priced at £1250, which works out at fractionally over $2000 if you do a direct currency conversion. I suspect the actual retail price in dollars will be lower than that. Even so, it won’t be cheap. Naim itself uses the words “high end” to describe its products, and they’re priced accordingly.

It’s small, just 20cm across, and has five digital input ports at the back for connecting TVs, consoles and other media playing devices. Naim says it “eliminates jitter to optimise sound” but even so, the better quality your digital music files are in the first place, the better they’re going to sound after being played through this.

You can simply plug headphones in, but if you want to use speakers you’ll need to use an amplifier too. Naim has thoughtfully announced a new one of these too, the sleek and minimalist NAP 100 (pictured below), a snip at £650.

They don't come more minimal than this
They don’t come more minimal than this

Both machines go into production in February, so you’ve still got time to save some more pennies in the piggy bank.

CES 2013 small banner

Source: Naim

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