There are so many streaming music systems on the market that it’s hard to tell many of them apart outside of the industry-leading Sonos products.
Nativ, however, is a high-resolution music system with a distinctive design that adds video streaming to the mix. It’s made up of two separate devices with audiophile components: Nativ Vita, an 11.6-inch, touchscreen music player that provides a whopping 4 TB of music storage, access to a streaming service and whole home audio; and Nativ Wave, a digital-to-analog converter that connects Vita or any other digital device to an amplifier or AV receiver. Wave comes with a headphone amp for connection to a set of headphones (not included).
Vita resembles a tablet and can also be used without Wave to stream music directly to wireless speakers and headphones. It can also be attached to a TV via HDMI or wirelessly via Google Cast to view music videos. The built-in multi-directional microphone enables voice control to tell Vita what music to play, adjust the volume or skip to the next song.
The open-platform system also supports Apple AirPlay, Spotify Connect and streaming via Bluetooth aptX wireless audio. Nativ Vita ships in October at $1,599 and Wave ships the same month at $1,899. But early bird Indiegogo backers have been able to get them for a pledge starting at $699 each. Its makers are out to raise $100,000 by June 6.
At its price point, the Nativ system is clearly being targeted at audiophiles, similar to Pono, and its distinct visual design stands to appeal to many of those types of consumers … assuming that its sound performance is as good as its makers claim. It’s also not clear just how much of a selling feature the ability to stream music videos is for most consumers.