Naim Mu-so
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Keep the Box
We suggest you keep the shipping box or boxes for at least 30 days. It is actually a great idea to keep boxes for audio products for the life of the product. Having the box and all packing will increase the trade-in value should you decide to move up and they are handy to have should you ever need to send the unit in for repair.
How To Receive a Motor Freight Order
The trucking company will contact you to schedule a convenient time to deliver the order. Please note that you must be present for delivery.
Visually inspect the box to make sure you see no signs of damage. If you notice any damage at all, take some pictures with your phone and make a note of them on the delivery receipt the driver will ask you to sign. If it is obvious that the product is damaged, please refuse the order and contact us immediately at 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com.
Open your box as soon as possible and inspect the product for damage and contact us if you find anything wrong.
uShip In-Home Delivery
Due to current concerns surrounding COVID-19, uShip is able to offer THRESHOLD SERVICE ONLY at this time. To ensure everyone’s safety, uShip is advising carriers to refrain from making room-of-choice deliveries. Threshold service consists of the shipment being brought into the first door of the address or the lobby of an apartment/condo, and does not include set-up, installation, assembly or debris removal.
What to Expect: Most oversized items will be delivered within 2-3 weeks. Your carrier will place your item inside the first door of the address or the lobby of an apartment/condo.
Appointment Scheduling: Your delivery partner will call 24-48 hours prior to delivery to arrange an appointment window.
How to prepare for in-home delivery:
- Determine the clearest path from the street to your home
- Measure entrances and hallways to ensure your item will fit
- Remove any wall hangings or clutter to ensure a clear path and to prevent damages
- Remove old furnishings to allow placement for your new piece
Check your furniture for damages: We rarely expect damaged furniture, but in the instance it does happen, we have you covered. Once your item’s packaging is removed, check for any damages that may have occurred in transit. Take pictures of any damages and notate appropriately on the delivery receipt. Keep possession of the damaged piece and contact us via phone or email and we’ll start the process to repair/replace your new piece of furniture. For uShip customer support, please call 800-698-7447.
At Audio Advice, we pride ourselves on customer satisfaction. We'll bend over backward to make sure you're 100% satisfied and we won't accept anything less. We offer 30-day hassle-free returns and personalized service from real, live people.
If an item doesn't meet your expectations, you may return or exchange it in its original condition and packaging within 30 days for a full refund, minus shipping fees. Items shipped back in like new condition through standard shipping carriers will only incur a flat fee of $15 to return. If the items were initially shipped through free scheduled delivery via motor freight (commonly referred to as LTL), returning them will result in return shipping fees starting at $150. These items include but are not limited to, oversized items such as TVs, certain subwoofers, floorstanding speakers, furniture, and most items weighing over 75 pounds. Return fees will also apply for exchanges. We want to treat your system as if it is our own and want you to be completely satisfied with your purchase.
Please see the instructions below. We only accept returns for any product purchased directly from our website. If merchandise is not returned in its original condition or is missing packaging, manuals, accessories or other parts, or the resale value of the product has been impaired, a partial refund will be given and calculated on a case-by-case basis.
Non-Returnable Items
The following items cannot be returned or cancelled:
- Special/Custom Order Items
- Open Box Products
- Gift Cards
- In-ear headphones cannot be returned once the packaging has been opened due to personal hygiene reasons. Please contact our customer care team if you'd like help choosing.
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Turntables With a Broken Stylus: All turntables ship out with the stylus intact. If you return a turntable or phono cartridge with a broken or missing stylus you will be subject to a return fee. Please be careful when setting up your turntable and contact us with any questions.
Is It Easy To Return An Item?
Yes, simply give us a call at 888.899.8776 or you can email our support team at support@audioadvice.com. Many times our team of experts can help figure out why the product might not be working like you expected and get things fixed over the phone, so don’t be surprised if we ask a few questions, we love troubleshooting!
If our tech help can not make you happy, we will email over a return shipping label with a Return Number.
Hopefully, you saved all of the original item’s box and packaging inserts. You will want to pack back up your return or exchange in the same way it came out of the original box. Once you have everything packaged correctly, tape the box on the top and bottom to assure it stays together. If Audio Advice shipped the item to you inside a second box, it's a good idea to use that same extra box to help prevent damage on its way back to us. To avoid it accidentally coming back to you, use a magic marker to cross out the old shipping label or just tear it off.
The return shipping label we send you will have our address on it, just make sure you take the box to the right shipper (UPS, FEDEX, or USPS) as per the label.
If you are close to one of our stores, please let us know if it is more convenient for you to return it to us directly. You will still need to get a return number by contacting us and shipping and/or restocking charges may apply.
When Will I See My Refund?
It usually takes around 7-14 days for the refund to show up on the payment method you used. We do inspect all returns for damage and accuracy of the item inside the box before issuing a refund. Some items may be subject to shipping and restocking fees.
Can I Exchange My Purchase For Something Different?
Sometimes those big speakers just don’t fit in the room or you might have bought a small subwoofer and later found out you’d love a bigger one. If you would like to make an exchange within 30 days of receiving your item, just give us a call at 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com and we will help work out the details. Additional shipping charges and return costs may apply.
How Do I Cancel An Order?
If the item has already shipped out or is a special order item, it is not possible to cancel the order. Please contact us at 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com to start the return process.
What If I Find Shipping Damage?
We need to know right away about any shipping damage. Please contact us at 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com within 48 hours of your delivery so we can get the ball rolling on making things right. It’s very helpful to take some pictures and email them to us if possible.
Can I Refuse A Shipment?
You can, but unless the item is damaged, shipping and restocking fees will be deducted from your refund. If your item arrives damaged and you are lucky enough to be there, snap some quick pics and refuse the order. Then contact us so we can get a replacement on the way.
What Happens If My Order Is Defective?
This is actually pretty rare, most consumer electronics work fine out of the box 99.9% of the time. We’d like for you to contact us first by calling 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com so we can help get to the bottom of things. If your item is indeed defective during the first 30 days, we can usually exchange it for a new, replacement unit.
What About Service After 30 Days?
Audio Advice has a great relationship with all of our brands and can help you with warranty service by the brand after our 30-day guarantee period. Even after the warranty expires, we can arrange for service by the brand on products purchased from Audio Advice. Just call 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com.
How Do You Determine A Restocking Fee?
You may not believe it, but sometimes we receive items back that were put in the box with zero packaging and are completely destroyed or are missing many of the pieces that came with the item. We also track serial numbers and will get back different serial numbers. We’ve even seen different items than what we shipped out be returned. However, it’s very important to package your return properly so that nothing goes missing or gets damaged in shipping, which will result in a restocking fee or even no refund at all. If a product is opened and the market value of the product is reduced, then a restocking fee may be applied to the cost of restocking and the reduced market value of the product. The bottom line is if you treat us fairly, we will do the same.
Audio Advice strives to provide industry-leading support and service while also maintaining the lowest prices available on products for our customers. We work hard with our vendors to bring our customers the best products at each price point. As a part of that process, we work with our vendors to provide the lowest pricing in our stores and on our website.
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As always, our goal is to provide a terrific customer experience, including industry low prices. We appreciate your support.
Overview
Mu-so 2nd Generation evolves the iconic styling of its predecessor, adding a compelling new touch control panel ringed by an illuminated dial with a proximity sensor: it lights up in welcome as your hand approaches it. Easily access key playback controls, your favorite playlists and radio stations, Spotify resume, multiroom functionality and more from this tactile new interface. The system has a premium aluminum casing, in a new burnished grey finish, fronted by a new style of the speaker grille.
The High Notes
The Best All In One Units On The Market
A Great Legacy
Includes Naim Control App
Company & Product Overview
Naim is another British company Audio Advice is a big fan of. They have been quietly making great audio gear for over 40 years out of their factory in Salisbury, England. Naim has not spent a lot of money promoting themselves over the years but has let their products speak for themselves. Interestingly, they have one of the largest audio company user groups we have ever seen that is full of activity.
Naim started out making an external power supply for the Linn Sondek LP12 table and has focused on great power supplies since the beginning. Their 150+ employees design and make almost everything from the ground up in the UK factory. Even though they only make stereo components, their product catalog has over 50 pieces. Plus, they go from the stratosphere of $270,000 for their top of the line mono amps and preamp, down to very reasonably priced integrated amps.
Naim users normally fall in love with their sound, which we feel gets you very close to the emotion of a live concert.
About 5 years ago, Naim decided to enter the all-in-one speaker category with the Mu-so series. This was two fairly large speaker systems that offered a lot of the new types of connectivity for music streaming. These were very successful for Naim and introduced a whole new group of music lovers to the classic Naim sound. The look was also a departure from Naim’s conventional black all business boxes. Mu-so products have a very cool contemporary look with several color options on the sculpted grille.
Over the last 18 months, Naim has come up with a new platform for music streaming that first showed up in their Uniti series of integrated amps and recently made its way into all of their stand-alone music players. We suspected it would not be too long before the Mu-so series got an injection of this new tech. But in typical Naim fashion, they did not just add the new streaming engine but revamped almost everything in the Mu-so speakers to greatly improve their performance. Today’s review is on the new Mu-so QB 2 and Mu-so 2.
Design & Build Quality
When most people see a Mu-so product for the first time, their reaction is: wow, that is so cool! The Mu-so 2 and Mu-so QB2 do not look like conventional home audio products. They look like they belong in a modern art museum! The contrast of grey brushed aluminum, sculpted fabric grills, and acrylic accented with subtle lighting just makes you want to reach out and touch the large, multi-function knob recessed into the top panel. In other words, they are flat out beautiful!
The Mu-so 2 is much larger than the QB version sitting at about 25” wide, 11” deep and roughly 5” tall. The QB 2 is much more compact and cube-like being about an 8” cube. Both come with a black grill but have an optional Olive, Terracotta, and Peacock grilles. The grille fabric even looks like something you would see in a British woolen mill.
The Mu-so design goal is to give you an all-in-one, but great sounding and easy to use speaker system that can access your music in many different ways. Naim also wanted the Mu-so speakers to be able to easily fill up a room with big sound that had no strain as you cranked up the volume.
While the original Mu-so’s were simply astounding in the sound they produced for their size, Naim took the opportunity to completely redo both the internal cabinet and speaker drivers in both models. The improvements are not subtle, but huge!
Naim also took the control of the Mu-so 2 to a new level compared to the old with a redesigned, touch-sensitive multi-function knob.
The level of build quality on all Naim products is about as good as it gets. This is probably one reason Bentley chose Naim for their vehicles. The new Mu-so 2 series is impeccably finished and in many ways better put together than just about any piece of audio gear we have ever seen.
Features & Technology
Both the Mu-so 2 and Mu-so QB 2 share a lot of the same features and technology. We’ll first go over what they have in common, then get into the differences between the two models.
From an access to music standpoint, the Mu-so 2 series has a ton of options. You’ll have Apple Airplay 2, Chromecast, Bluetooth, UPnP for music files on your network, Spotify® Connect, TIDAL, and Internet Radio. We were also happy to see support for Roon added. Physical connections include a mini-plug analog audio input, a Toslink digital input, a USB input for a local USB music drive, and an ARC HDMI input (Mu-so 2 only). ARC is short for “audio return channel” which means if your TV supports this you can connect it to your TV with an HDMI cable to get sound into the Mu-so 2. With the 5” height of the Mu-so 2, you likely need to elevate your TV to keep the Mu-so 2 from blocking the bottom of the screen should you decide to use it as a soundbar.
The fact that the Mu-so 2 series supports Airplay2, Chromecast, and Bluetooth means you could stream virtually any music app from your phone to the units. The Mu-so 2 models also support your Hi-Res music files with the capability of playing back WAV, FLAC, ALAC, and AIFF up to 24bit/384kHz. They do not support DSD files though.
Naim includes a hardwire ethernet port on both models, plus the new ones have enhanced their WiFi capability to be Dual Band. The touch-sensitive interactive wheel has had some function updates. It allows you to choose sources, skip/play/pause tracks, choose from favorites, and indicates how you might be connected to it. And it just flat out one of the coolest volume knobs we have ever played with!
We suspect most people will use the redesigned Naim app for control. Naim has been updating their app for many years and it’s gotten pretty darn good over time. It is especially fun to use if you have a large library on USB or a NAS drive as it fully integrates your library with Tidal. This allows you to see what you own from an artist, then scroll down and see their work that is on Tidal. Using the app also allows you to use either Mu-so 2 in a whole house music system where you can group up to 5 units together. Multi-room use is also not limited to the Naim app. With support for both Airplay 2 and Chromecast, you can use your Mu-so 2 models in either environment with other speakers that support these functions.
The original Mu-so’s had a room compensation feature that let you tell the unit where it was located in your room to optimize the audio. The redesigned engine in the new Mu-so 2 series has almost 13 times the amount of processing power of the original units, which means their DSP for room compensation works much better than before. While it is not the same as some of the more sophisticated room EQ features found in new home theater receivers, it does a good job of compensating for situations where your Mu-so 2 is against the wall or in a corner.
When Naim added the new streaming and DSP engine to the new Mu-so 2 series, they also partnered with Focal to do a redesign of the speakers used in the new Mu-so 2. This also led to them upgrading the Naim amplifiers used the power the speakers. The only thing that stayed constant was the tweeter. On the Mu-so 2 model, the internal cabinet became bigger, giving it the ability to reach deeper into the bottom end.
When you compare the speaker layout on the two models, it's clear the Mu-so 2 should provide a much bigger and deeper sound than the Mu-so 2 QB. The Mu-so 2 has two five-inch oval-shaped woofers in the center, augmented with a port in the base of the unit. These are flanked by the 1” dome tweeters and 2” midrange drivers. This layout coupled with the 25” width of the Mu-so 2, throw out what is a pretty convincing stereo sound stage. The bass you get out of the new Mu-so 2 will have you scratching your head, wondering how they pulled off such accurate bass in its modest-sized enclosure. We suspect the new DSP engine has a lot to do with it.
The Mu-so QB 2 uses a similar configuration, but it is designed more to fill a room up, rather than present a true stereo image. The QB has just one woofer with the two midrange and tweeter drivers angled off to the sides. This does not give the same stereo effect as the Mu-so 2, but it does an outstanding job of putting big sound in a modest-sized room.
Performance
We tested setting up the new Mu-so series with both an iOS device and an Android device. The iPhone was as easy as any set up with have ever done, but we have to say the Android app is a little quirky. Once you get it set up the first time, it works just like the iPhone app, but there are a few tips we’ll give you on how to get up and running quickly with an Android phone. We’ve put together a quick start guide for Andriod users we’ll send out in the box with your new Mu-so piece.
Set up uses the Naim app, which, especially on a larger screen, is a joy to use. But what bowled us over on the Mu-so pieces was how much better they sounded than the originals. The Mu-so 2 has the tightest and deepest bass we have ever heard from an all in one music system. We played some classic Chicago (Dialog) and the intro bass line was tight, fast, and very deep. Naim and Focal really did a great job on the new speaker and amp design to stretch as much sound as possible from the Mu-so cabinet.
Another stunning cut was the old Girl From Ipanema. This recording is old school left and right stereo and the Mu-so actually showed pretty decent stereo separation for an all in one speaker.
When we tried the Trinity Sessions from the Cowboy Junkies, you can hear all the subtle harmonics quite well. Another thing we noticed in both pieces is Naim’s devotion to keeping the timing of the music together. You’ll be tapping your toes to the music with either of these Mu-so 2’s.
When you think about it, Mu-so’s heritage comes from a British company with a long history of making great sounding audio gear who is also driven to keep innovating for better sound. It is no surprise the Mu-so 2 models sound a lot better than the originals, AND offer the best sounding all in one speakers we know of.
Overall Recommendation
Naim has really upped the game with the new Mu-so series. These two models are hands down the best sounding all in one player we have ever heard. If your goal is to simplify things and get great sound out of a single box where all you need is a power cord, you’ve found your answer in the new Mu-so series. For larger spaces we do recommend the Mu-so 2 over the QB but make no mistake, even the QB blows away all of the competition.
Details & Specs
Multiroom and App Control Mu-so 2nd Generation works brilliantly on its own or as part of a multiroom music set-up. There are three easy ways to make it multiroom: combine it with other networked Naim products (including 1st Generation Mu-so and Mu-so Qb) via the updated Naim app; with other AirPlay 2-compatible wireless speakers via the Apple Home app; or with other Chromecast devices via groups controlled by the Google Home app. Available for iOS and Android devices, the updated Naim app allows you to browse by artist, genre, album and more, complete with artwork and extended music information. You can also control volume, light settings, room modes and create playlists. As a further option, Mu-so 2nd Generation is Roon Ready, too.
