Best Buys Audio & AV 2019-#223
five years on from the original Mu-so,
comes the Mu-so Generation 2. So what’s
changed, what’s the same?EQUIPMENT
First, though, a quick summary of exactly
what the Mu-so can do. It’s a wireless
speaker, with many ways to serve your
preferred music to it — Naim’s own app
enables UPnP network streaming via
Wi-Fi or Ethernet, also Apple’s AirPlay 2,
Google’s Chromecast, Bluetooth: all these
are included, along with access to all the
main music services, including Spotify,
Tidal and internet radio. Roon users
will find it Roon-ready (three ways, in
fact, given AirPlay and Chromecast also
provide Roon access). It has decoding
onboard to play high-res audio files up to
24-bit/384kHz and DSD128.
You can plug in additional sources as
well — there is one minijack analogue
input, one optical input and, new to the
2nd Generation, an HDMI socket which
can receive sound from your TV via the
Audio Return Channel if plugged into an
ARC-equipped HDMI input of your TV.
That gives the new Mu-so the potential
to be used as a soundbar (though some
previously used the optical input for
this purpose anyway). It’s too large to
sit in front of most TVs, of course, but
position it under a wall-mounted TV and
you can have a very cool-looking music
and TV sound system.
At first glance there’s not too much
aesthetically revised between the original
and the new — why would you, given
the praise heaped on the original, and its
enormous top knob in particular.
So the aluminium casing has a refresh
in burnished grey, though it still feels
entirely industrial when you heft up
its 11.2g. The standard grille with its
weird bulge to the right remains black,
but there are new replacement grille
colour options of olive green, peacock blue, and a
‘terracotta’ kind of copper-orange.
There is a tiny size change externally — the
length has been increased by 8mm, with height
and depth unchanged. But the new cabinet is
better braced, for improved rigidity, while the rear
heatsink fins have been reduced in size. This has
reduced the weight by nearly 2kg and has also
somehow allowed Naim to add a claimed 13% in
useful additional internal volume.
Inside, Naim claims that no fewer than 95%
of the internal components are either entirely
new for this launch or had already changed in
production-run alterations since the original
first-gen Mu-so.These include a much faster
processor in charge of the signal processing, up
14-fold from a single-core 150 million instructions
per second (MIPS) to a multi-core 2000 MIPS.
connections tuck into quite a tight bay (especially
for HDMI) under the right side.
We started with just that one mains plug
connected, yet what a wealth of music the Gen 2
could provide, once we had followed the Naim
app’s instructions to get it on the network. Our
iOS app used AirPlay set-up to do this, which we
find to be delightfully reliable, and after restarting
the app and logging on to Tidal we were playing
Sound+Image’s ‘MQA Masters favourites’ playlist
within five minutes of attaching that power lead.
And the Mu-so’s relaxed confidence was
obvious from the first tunes. These files were
arriving at 16-bit/44.1kHz FLACs, TIdal putting
at our fingertips full CD-quality files of “all the
music in the world”, flowing through the wires of
the world to our router, and from there wirelessly
to the Naim Mu-so Gen 2. How realistic the glass
smash in the intro of Blur’s Parklife; how punchy
its bass. How smooth Coltrane’s My Favourite
Things drifting by on a sunny afternoon. A slight
edge and a thinness to Stevie Nicks on The
Chain has us checking the audio settings, and we
removed the default Loudness setting.
This smoothed and filled the
edginess without
muchOne function of this processing is a new software
control of driver movement which is introduced
only when the Mu-so is pumping hard towards
its end stops; the new algorithm should limit
distortion occurring at such extremes. The drivers
themselves are also new, Naim working with its
sister company Focal on the replacements; the
specs sheets are a bit vague, but removing the
grille reveals a stereo system with three drivers for
each channel: a 20mm dome tweeter, a 50mm
midrange, and a racetrackshaped 14 × 7cm
woofer. The midrange drivers are at the outsides,
the woofers central, all firing directly forwards
Naim’s app has evolved in the years since the
original Mu-so launch, and is certainly the best
way to browse your music collections and those
available online, but you also get a small physical
remote control, plus of course there’s that giant
knob on top, which Naim has also updated, now
with 15 touch sensitive buttons, a proximity
sensor that wakes the display as you approach, and
lots of Naim’s traditionally arcane symbols for you
to puzzle over.PERFORMANCE
It is quite the hefty object when you lift the Mu-so
from its carton, and we thought for a moment
Naim had replaced its glorious knob with a tacky
plastic one, till we remembered they ship with an
‘mu-so’-embossed cap over the top. Our
review unit was so fresh off
the boat that it had
no Australian
power lead
provided,
and knowing
that Naim has
a certain level of
mythology around
mains cables, we did
not substitute one of
our own, but rather
used the UK-terminated
Naim lead and plugged it
into the wall using a sturdy
adaptor. At the Mu-so end theMu-so Qb – spread the music
Naim also has the ‘half-sized’ Mu-so Qb (it’s
almost but not quite a cube) which, when we
reviewed it, we thought pretty much unbeatable
in sound terms for its size, competitive at the
price with the best wireless speakers on the
market. The Qb retains the wide abilities and
multiroom of the larger Mu-so, while shrinking
its form factor with remarkably little trade-off
in reduced sophistication of sound. It’s based
on the original Mu-so, of course, so that we
wouldn’t be surprised to see a Qb Gen 2 in a
year or two, with added Chromecast, Roonness
and other developments taken from its Gen 2
big brother. The Qb’s RRP is currently $1299.The legendary knob
on top of the Mu-so 2
has a proximity sensor, so
it knows when you’re coming.