SPEAKERS
88
Fl·ËËFŚEyears after launching the
original Mu-so,its flagship wireless speaker,
hi-fi specialist Naim has finally decided it’s
time foraredesign. The result is the Mu-so 2.
From the outside,not much has changed.
Naim’s brutalist slab is still striking in its own
unique way: its precise,squared-offedges
and glowing Perspex base are softened
judiciously by the rippled fabric weave
stretching across the front grille and the
large rotary volume dial on the toppanel.
Delve deeper,however,and you’ll find
there have been extensive changes under
the hood. During development, Naim enlisted
the help of French speaker manufacturer
Focal to hone the Mu-so 2’s performance.
The speaker’s six drivers have been given
particular attention. The two tweeters are the
same as theywere in the original Mu-so,but
Focal has had ahand in upgrading the two
pairs of mid-range and bass drivers.
BIGGER ONTHE INSIDE
The Mu-so 2isalso about acentimetre
deeper than before,aseemingly tiny change
that nonetheless significantly increases
internal volume,and with it an improved
internal bracing and baffle design to extend
the bass response while keeping music-
muffling vibrations to aminimum.
Those distinctive fins at the Mu-so 2’s
rear are thinner than theywere on the Mu-so,
but that’s not just forshow: the increased
surface area helps them to dissipateheat
from the six amplifiers more effectively,and
theydouble as aWi-Fi antenna, too.
The digital signal processor has received
aheftyupgrade.Itnow reaches 2,000MIPS
(million instructions per second), where its
predecessor achieved only 150MIPS. Naim
recently added AirPlay2support to the
original model –something that’s already
included here –with afirmware upgrade,
so this new processor bodes well forany
future software upgrades that
might be required.
The Ethernet, HDMI,
optical and analogue
connections are easy to miss;
they’re all well hidden on the
Mu-so 2’s underside.This
makes them abit of pain to
reach, so it’s areliefthat the
single USB2 socket is more
sensibly located on the
Mu-so’s right side.
The Naim app foriOS
and Android makes light
NAIM Mu-so2
★★★★★
£1,299•From http://www.johlewis.com
VERDICT
luxuriousandɛne-soundingslabof
metal, butformosthomesitѱon͙tbe
ѱorth theexpense
work of everything from initial setup to
day-to-daycontrol. It’s easy to navigateand
makes setup fairly painless, although there
are acouple of annoyances.
First, unlike pretty much every other
music streaming or playback app ever made,
the slider that appears at the bottom of the
screen during playback doesn’t skip through
the track timeline: it adjusts the volume.
We only discovered this by accidentally
cranking up the volume sky-high in an
attempt to jump to the end of asong.
GIVE USAWAVE
Second, Spotify integration is almost
non-existent: click the Spotify shortcut and it
simply gives you an option to open the
Spotify app.Given that Naim has done a
pretty fantastic job of integrating afront end
forTidal, this seems atad jarring. It’s not
necessarily abig deal, however; we suspect
many will prefertouse the Spotify app
anyway, as it’s more familiar.
Tidal subscribers get afar better deal, as
the integration is seamless. There’s access to
all your playlists and favouritetracks, and the
clean, sensible layout means you won’t find
yourself switching to the official app in
irritation. In fact, in some ways, it’s even
better,asitbrings artist biographies to the
forefront rather than hiding them in a
context menu, which is great forbrowsing
and discovering new music.
We love the app’s almost-universal search,
too. Youcan simultaneously search formusic
across Tidal and all your local or UPnP-
connected devices, which makes incredibly
light work of finding the music you want to
listen to,ordiscovering different versions of
tracks you might not have realised were
available forstreaming. It’s just ashame
Spotify isn’t included in this.
Youdon’t always have to reach foryour
smartphone or tablet, however.Ifyour device
isn’t to hand, you can walk over and dab one
of the touch-sensitive buttons or simply tap a
button on the remotecontrol. Your options
are more limited as there’s no waytobrowse
tracks on the device itself,but you can
resume playback of tracks in your play
queue,fire up one of your internet radio
presets (you can pick up to five) or initiate
playback from aUSB device.And, of course,
you can quickly skip tracks, too.
Aurally,the Mu-so 2isabit of an odd one.
Most of the time,it’s great: the two relatively
tiny bass drivers lend genuine weight and
sub-bass hefttobasslines and percussion,
and the mid-range and treble deftly unpick
layers of instruments and vocals. The sense
of scale and impact is impressive,and there’s
no distortion even when the volume is
pushed up to bone-shaking levels.
At the same time,there’s no hint of a
stereo image at all. There is asense of airiness
and front-to-back depth, but the Mu-so 2
doesn’t really attempt to scatter sound
around the room to give the impression of
sound coming from multiple speakers.
EXCESSYOURSELF
As good as the Mu-so 2iselsewhere,it’s
difficult to square this
peculiarity with its
gargantuan £1,299 price.
That’s why we’d rather have a
set of Bowers &Wilkins 607,
which deal out impeccably
detailed sound in true
stereo fashion for£900 less.
Youwould get more volume
and farmore extensive
connectivity options from the
Mu-so 2, but that’s not a
particularly convincing reason
to spend so much more.
NOVEMBER 2019|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE 381
