Naim Audio MU-SO Home Audio System

This speaker is simply astounding. The range of sound is simply stunning. The resonance is memorising and for me this is a beautifully balanced system. I always wondered if NAIM was just a name but now I understand the quality of there equipment.

Pretty easy to set up even for a novice and able to play my iTunes through it. Really impressed with the sound quality. Almost as good as my separates. Easily fills a large room. Very pleased with our purchase

I bought this 2 years ago. It was great until I did a software update recently, after which it stopped working. It was only just out of warranty so I got in touch with NAIM. Their response was: "we would be unable to fix this unfortunately as this is a sealed unit and cannot be taken apart for repair, sorry for the inconvenience." Unbelievable! Spend a grand only to receive this nonchalant knock-back. VERY unimpressed.

…finally managed to get something worth listening to out of the darned contraption.Several reviewers have noted that the setup isn’t as straightforward as one might like – I was initially very disappointed with the fact that my iPod (with 60GB of music on it) is so old that it wouldn’t recognise the Muso. Hmmm. Loading up the App on my old iPad mini was easy enough, but then I couldn’t get Muso to work with Spotify on my mini iPad. Grrrr. Now I decided to try radio streaming just to get some noise out of the Muso - and what an awful noise it was, all flat and booming - quite terrible in fact, much worse than simply listening to Radio 3 on my laptop with a £10 pair of USB headphones.I’d just about decided to send the thing back to Amazon, when I decided on a fourth (and last) attempt to get something worth listening to out of the Muso – Bluetooth from my laptop (itunes) to the Muso. Bingo! I mostly listen to Classical stuff, and this setup finally did the trick. Voice/Choral stuff sounded good (Tallis:Spem in Alium, Strauss: four last songs, Schubert: various Lieder), Piano Sonatas sound good (the Emil Gilels Beethoven cycle), it’ll even handle Ton Koopman’s Bach organ cycle rather well. In general, the fewer instruments there are, the better. Symphonies sound ok (even Saint Saens Organ symphony sounds reasonable) though occasionally there is a little lack of separation – but you can’t expect miracles from an £800 box.It’s a bit of a pain needing my laptop and iPad to control and get the music I want out of the Muso, but it is now bringing me significant pleasure so I’ll persevere with it. One last thing: you might want to leave the Muso on for a couple of hours to “warm up”, as the musicality does seem to get better with time. Perhaps this is a throwback to the old days when one had to leave one’s Naim amps on permanently for best musical effect.

Great sound many uses

The MU-SO certainly has excellent sound quality. The device is impressively well balanced, with rich mid, bright treble and clear, punchy bass. The sound is really nice, clear and a pleasure to listen to. I'm very impressed at this element of the device, especially considering it's size. We have it in a large room (8x20m) and it fills the space well - I wouldn't recommend it for a small room, as it would be somewhat wasted.However, I'm not overly impressed with the rest of the unit. Primarily, it's app and connectivity.This device competes with Sonos and similar wireless devices. Yet competing devices offer a much better experience when using them.The device has a number of buttons on top of it, but they are essentially useless. The remote control is equally poor. You really can't use the device without the mobile app. However, the Naim app is clunky, often unresponsive, and very unintuitive. Putting on Spotify is a pain, as you can't simply open Spotify and connect to the speaker - you need to open the Naim app, then launch Spotify via the app. Finding a radio station is equally painful. There's a good 5 second lag between any action you take on the app and the speaker responding. All of this combines into an unpleasant experience.For example, if I want to turn the speaker down and I haven't got the app open, I need to:1) open the app2) wait for the app to scan for the speaker3) select the speaker and reconnect to it3) open the media player currently being used via the app (e.g. radio or Spotify)4) wait for the app to load the media player4) turn down the audioThis whole process takes about 30 seconds. It's easier to just get up and turn it down on the device, but this entirely defeats the point of the device.The ports on the app are equally limited, with only a single 35mm input and a USB 2.0 port. So you can't connect your TV or any other devices via cable - meaning you have to open the app to switch from one wireless source to another.Overall, with a much improved app, this could be a good device. As it is, I find it frustrating and prefer my Bluetooth amp/speaker setup which is much more user-friendly.

I have a lot of Naim products, including a Muso.The sound quality is simply breathtaking and nothing comes near to it in comparison.At this price, its a steal as there is a new version which costs around £1200.Also, whenever I have had occasion to use Naim Customer Service, they have been exemplary.

Clever all in one. Just remember “rubbish in, rubbish out” so don’t expect mp3 files from years ago to sound great. Tidal in highest quality mode or Naim radio sound superb. Also use with library of ripped cds from my nas. Naim app on iPhone works great. Apple Music app not so good. If you don’t want separates this is a great compromise. If space is an issue the Qb is nearly as good. They work well in multi room too. Treat yourself