Shining out among a market of mediocre wireless speakers, Naim Audio’s offering is a Mu-so of fire that can ascend the brightest heaven of invention.
Once upon a time, Naim Audio was a dyed-in-the-wool amplifier-centric hi-fi company that was regarded as something of an industry rogue in terms of ‘going its own way’. But in the last 20 years it has not so much reinvented itself as evolved out of all recognition, raising its core of truly hi-fi amplification to new levels (witness the $200k+ Statement pre-power amplifier) while investing ahead of the pack in streaming audio trends. Its merger with French speaker company Focal brought an injection of design flair to the latest Naim products, and now we find it producing equipment like this Mu-so wireless speaker which, as one commentator recently put it, out-B&Os B&O.
But has Naim retained its emphasis on audio excellence while shifting into such potentially populace-pleasing products?
Equipment
The Mu-so is a fairly wide and weighty wireless speaker, and impresses from the moment you lift the 13kg unit from its packaging, with the unusual acrylic base on which it sits providing a particular dose of flair, especially once power is applied and the bright whiteness of an illuminated Naim logo on the left spreads through the translucent acrylic, creating highlights far out to the right edge. The body of the unit is 63cm wide and is actually a wooden cabinet, but covered with a textured finger-sensitive anodised aluminium skin and extruded aluminium rear heatsink. It comes as standard with a black front speaker grille, but three other grille colours are available as $170 options — the official colour descriptors are ‘Deep Blue’, ‘Vibrant Red’, and ‘Burnt Orange’ (kinda Jaffa).
It has physical inputs in two places — an analogue minijack input and USB slot on the right side, plus an optical digital input, Ethernet and power connections in a recessed bay underneath the unit. This is a sensible division of position, given the minijack and USB are most likely to be used on the fly, while the bottom connections are more likely to be permanent ones. (Naim notes that to access the bottom sockets, rest the Mu-so temporarily on its rear heatsink, not on its front grille or side cheeks.)
The Mu-so is, of course, also loaded with wireless abilities, and these include streaming via Apple’s AirPlay system, via Bluetooth (including the aptX codec if your Android device supports it), and from network shares via UPnP. And the Mu-so has Spotify Connect, so if you’re on a paid subscription to Spotify you can then control the Mu-so direct from any Spotify app, while the music streams directly from the internet to the Mu-so, not via your device.
There is also vTuner-based internet radio which, as we’ll see, is unusually well-curated within Naim’s control app.
Setting up
Setting up was fairly simple using that ‘Naim’ app, which walks you through the Wi-Fi set-up by asking what colour the indicator light is—though without indicating where that indicator light might be. It’s not, as you might think, the bright white Naim logo, nor the whizzing white lights around the spectacularly large and thrillingly weighted top knob, but refers instead to a small LED on the right-hand side by the minijack and USB inputs. To activate Wi-Fi, you have to poke a pin into a reset hole next to this light (it took us a while to find ourselves a pin in this day and age), but that done there was just a waiting period while it flashed yellow to set up, then the usual opening up of our smart device’s Wi-Fi settings to log on to the speaker.
Instead of the usual method of logging onto the speaker’s Wi-Fi hotspot and us typing our home network password, we were able to choose an easier option simply to ‘Set up AirPlay speaker’, which transfers that information automatically. Another flashing yellow wait, and our Mu-so was online. Top marks for that.
Performance
The app offers online registration, then defaults to its home screen, which shows available inputs and a set of five ‘presets’, which had been pre-populated with internet radio stations by Naim, including, of course, the company’s own Naim Radio, which streams many of the excellent artists from Naim Label’s artiste roster. Interestingly that default preset linked to the 128k stream, whereas a 320k version was available under the main ‘iRadio’ section. You navigate via the usual choices of genre and location for both stations and podcasts.
There is also a useful section marked ‘Naim’s Choice’, where Naim curates some of the higher-quality internet radio stations, in terms of both material and streaming quality. The main BBC radio channels are included in this list, and Folk Radio UK was an excellent discovery here for our tastes. But of course the wonders of internet radio are such that each user can find their own delights, be it Venezuela’s Rumba 104.3 or Moldova’s Radio Zum. You can save these favourites to presets by taking them fullscreen and pressing the little ‘star’ key; if you keep adding presets, the list on the app’s home page just keeps extending for you to scroll through.
We moved to the next input, UPnP, which showed our UPnP network shares and allowed us to navigate through the usual options, including by folder. As we ran through our test tracks we were pleased by its ability to play our collection of high-res tracks, even though we gather that with a wireless connection these will be rendered to a maximum of 48kHz. That’s fine by us on a system of this size — the ones that annoy us are players whose apps show the high-res tracks but then fail to play them. For full high-res streaming you can give the Mu-so a hard Ethernet connection to your network — or you can turn to the optical input (up to 96kHz) or to the USB input. This last proved to be versatile in accepting an iPhone or iPad USB connection and then playing back under the control of that device, or allowing connection of USB sticks or drives with audio files that can be browsed through the Naim app. In this way you can play files all the way up to 24-bit/192kHz for WAV, FLAC and AIFF, up to 24/96 for Apple Lossless, plus MP3, AAC, WMA and OGG (OGG up to 16-bit/48kHz).
Via Wi-Fi UPnP we experienced only a couple of high-res streaming slips (one 24-bit/96kHz Apple Lossless track, one a 24-bit/192kHz FLAC— both were listed and loaded, started playing then were rapidly dropped. But the vast bulk of our 24/96 and 24/192 AIFF, FLAC and WAV files emerged cleanly and sounded untroubled by their 48kHz rendering.
Untroubled, and delightful, indeed. It’s worth nothing that the Mu-so’s projection of sound is extremely directional — sitting just slightly off to the right, we at first thought only its left speaker was working. But that was just the way it fired out the sound — for a good sense of stereo, you should sit dead centre in the sweet spot with the Mu-so firing directly at you. Not that it won’t otherwise fill a room with enjoyable sound, but bear that positioning in mind for critical listening.
Because this is a rare one-box wireless speaker with which you can enjoy music to the level of critical listening rather than mere background. It has an exceedingly sophisticated sound. There is not a trace of the forced EQ so common in one-box solutions (boofed-up bass and fizzed-up treble), nor does it sound boxy or tame as a result. Its size and speaker complement helps, of course — the Mu-so contains true stereo three-way drivers, with a pair of racetrack bass drivers (supported through a flared and ribbed port), twin midrange cones and silk-dome tweeters, while Naim’s longstanding expertise in amplification will ensure there’s plenty of pure stuff from its six 75W amps to do the work behind those drivers.
The result is a big, rich and real sound. No wireless speaker we’ve yet heard can stand up in a comparison with a set-up of traditional amp and stereo speakers; there are levels of voicing and imaging clarity that a single-box solution is just never going to achieve (or perhaps we should say that we look forward to the one that does). The Naim Mu-so does, however, bring remarkable refinement to the breed. It sounds like hi-fi, not like processed music.
Things could vary wildly according to material, however. We started our UPnP streaming with a remaster of Ella Fitzgerald with Count Basie, and while there was just enough bass to underpin things, it was a little light in weight; we kept the default loudness setting in place (even though it seemed to make little difference).
But when we switched to a 24-bit/96kHz of Eric Clapton (and Friends) ‘An Appreciation of JJ Cale’, out wafted a big rich and rounded bass guitar, impeccably balanced against the rest of a thrillingly recorded band. Such variation in material might suggest a need for tone control or EQ settings beyond the simple ‘loudness’ selector offered in the app, but in fact that proved very rarely to be the case. The Mu-so simply made the most of each individual piece, a rare thing indeed.
The Mu-so integrates Tidal into its app, and we took advantage of its offer of a 90-day Tidal subscription just as George Harrison’s whole back catalogue was loaded up. The app led us through curated playlists by Dhani Harrison, Eric Idle and others who knew Harrison. With the option to stream at full CD quality, Tidal is a tempting service, and the Mu-so offers a perfectly integrated implementation of it.
A glitch: around this time, following the app going into an auto-sleep, the Mu-so disappeared. The unit itself was clearly still networked — it was still streaming the Dhani Harrison playlist, and we could see it as an AirPlay device. The app just couldn’t see it for some reason, even after reinstallation. Three more reinstalls, and we gave up. Half an hour later, it was back. Thirty minutes after that, it disappeared again, though again it continued streaming a Tidal playlist. Who knows the cause? Networking remains an imperfect science wreathed in mysteries.
During these gaps in app existence we used it as an AirPlay speaker, and addressing it from iTunes on our Mac Mini was simplicity itself. When not sitting at the computer we could control the Mac Mini’s track selection using our iPad and the ‘Remote’ app for highly convenient sofa operation. Since this AirPlay quality equals that of Wi-Fi UPnP, it’s a fine way for iTunes users to play their collection through the Mu-so.
We gather the Mu-so can also operate in multiroom mode for up to five rooms, with either more Mu-sos or the new smaller Mu-so Qb (see panel) — but having only this one Mu-so, we could not investigate this, other than to turn the option on and off.
So easy was operation via Naim’s app that we only came to use the physical top knob during our last few days with the Mu-so. Don’t neglect it — it is a beautiful piece of engineering, combining touchsensitive controls with the large weighted dial that is a complete delight to spin. Few things please us quite so much as handling a well-fashioned knob.
Conclusion
We don’t hand out our Sound+Image Awards lightly, and our recent Highly Commended award for the Mu-so confirms our delight in its combination of fine musical performance, ease and versatility of operation, and its quite stunning shininess, light and top knob. It may retail at $1699, but if you can fit one into your home, and you can keep sticky fingers off its shiny surface, we can’t imagine any purchaser being anything less than utterly delighted by the Naim Mu-so. Jez Ford
SPECS
Inputs: minijack analogue, USB-A (sticks, drives, iOS), optical digital, Ethernet, Bluetooth with aptX, AirPlay, UPnP
Drivers: 2 x25mmtweeters, 2 x 5cm midrange cones, 2 x 12x6cm racetrack bass drivers
File support via Ethernet/USB: WAV, FLAC, AIFF to 24-bit/192kHz; ALAC to 24/96; OGG, WMAto 16-48, AAC, MP3
File support by Wi-Fi UPnP: same up to 48kHz max.
Power: 6 x 75W (no distortion figures quoted)
Dimensions (whd): 625 x 256 x 122mm
Weight: 13kg
Warranty: Two years