It's not often that you get offered the chance to try something that looks set to alter once and for all the way your streaming music system performs.
And it's even rarer when the special something can be bought for just £15.
But that's what's just happened, courtesy of Naim's new WA5, a replacement antenna for the NaimUniti, UnitiQute and NDX (which by the way is reviewed in the July issue of the magazine, in the shops next week).
The idea's very simple: you remove the standard WA2 Wi-Fi antenna provided in the box with those units, and in its place screw on the WA5, available from all good Naim retailers.
What you gain is – well, gain: the WA5 offers 5dB of it (hence the model designation), which is more than double that of the WA2, and this, Naim says, "strengthens the host products' connection to the network, making loss of signal much less likely".
So does the WA5 make the bass more powerful, the treble more crystalline and the midband more fluid, natural and expressive? Nope.
Does it open up the soundstage, making it sound like the walls of your room have just been pushed out and a concert hall spread before you? Again, no.
Maybe it makes even the humblest 128kbps MP3 rip sound like a 24-bit/96kHz FLAC file, meaning you can save a fortune on downloads and store even more music on your NAS device? 'Fraid not.
What it does do is enable me to connect up the NaimUniti in the notorious Wi-Fi dead-spot that is our spare bedroom/study, so I can at last stream music from the NAS and router downstairs.
And all without having to spend an entire weekend blackening my thumbnails trying to staple Cat5 cable around skirting-boards, up stairs, under carpets and all over the shop.
So, no measuring cables, buying cable-staples, lifting carpets and crawling around with a hammer – all I have to look forward to for the next three days is music, and lots of it.
That's more than revolutionary enough for me, and at £15 an absolute steal.
Have a good Bank Holiday Weekend!
