High End 2014 • Hot Product

Muso is the most controversial product Naim has made to date. Some might feel that the $200,000 Statement electronics announced at CES were a little off the scale for this British electronics stalwart, but Muso takes the biscuit. It breaks all the rules: It’s not black, it’s all in one box, and it's designed to appeal to the masses.

Muso is a clever piece of engineering built for the wireless age. It receives both Bluetooth and Airplay, has a USB input for iPods and USB sticks and both optical and 3.5mm analog inputs. It can even stream off a network and will work with an as-yet-unnamed premium streaming service (nothing has been said, but if it’s not Spotify we’ll be surprised). Muso’s aluminum skin covers an MDF chassis, a long reflex port vents through the case bottom, and the control knob allows a multitude of functions.

At $1000 it also has the most watts per channel of all Naim amps, save for the Statement: six channels of 75 watts, a total of 450. Okay, they are class-D watts, and if you used them all the tweeters on this cute unit would explode, but they are RMS watts nonetheless.