hdx better than cdx2 ?

A recent review in a well known magazine would suggest that the HDX is by at least on par with a CDX2 (especially with the XPS2) or rather demo the HDX before you buy your next CDP. Having not heard the HDX yet, the above is a bold claim.
Any users of the HDX out there would need to clarify.

ATB

John

I heard the HDX during the Naim summer tour through 500 series kit with SL2 speakers and was.......well completely unmoved actually.

I would say it was well short of a CDX2 and certainly no match for a CDX2 with a XPS2.

Whilst hotel acoustics are notoriously fickle the same reference system sounded fabulous with a decent analogue source so I came away tempted to revisit my ageing Sondek rather than invest in the HDX.

....question I'm left with is why doesn't the HDX sound as good as a naim CD player...I can't see any reason why it shouldn't!

Was that a pre production prototype Martin?

The final version has improved on the prototypes,

Regards

PB

quote:

question I'm left with is why doesn't the HDX sound as good as a naim CD player...I can't see any reason why it shouldn't!

Having looked inside an HDX at a Summer Sounds event, I couldn't see any reason why it should

Hi Guys

Prototype?

...no I think it was the real McCoy ....at least Naim didn't make any excuses for it.

abbydog:

... Ahhh, I didn't look inside I just assumed they would replace the CD transport with a hard drive and leave everything else pretty much the same (after all the rest of the functionality is something an iPod Touch could manage). ....mind you having just invested in a 555PS I must confess to being relieved that Naim don't appear to have pulled out all the aural stops with the HDX.

having just invested in a 555PS I must confess to being relieved that Naim don't appear to have pulled out all the aural stops with the HDX.

The company certainly needs to! Other solutions have certainly pulled out all the stops, and if Naim are holding back, then the HDX will not compete, and only catch on as a tiny minority sport.

If Naim want to still be making source components in five years time, they need to get this right, and be competitive with the offerings from other manufactureres, and price competitive as well. Either that or settle with the fact that they still make the best amplifiers, and let others make the source components, as in the old days with the Linn Sondec, for example.

I think this is an either or moment for the company. Either they join the revolution, and get a DAC out that is in the hundreds of Pounds Sterling and competitive with the best currently out there or simply stick with the CD players till the sales gradually fall off, without developing new replacements as the medium ceases to be used that way at the top end. Or they struggle and eventually drop out of top end source making.

Strangely going into high class car audio may indeed proove the way forward for Naim. Premium product at a premium price ...

George

Gutsy post, George...

BTW, surprised this thread hasn't been dispatched to distributed audio yet...

quote:

Originally posted by Martin_C: ...question I'm left with is why doesn't the HDX sound as good as a naim CD player...I can't see any reason why it shouldn't!

Same here. But the production unit I auditioned definitely didn't.

Richard.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by GFFJ:
having just invested in a 555PS I must confess to being relieved that Naim don't appear to have pulled out all the aural stops with the HDX.

The company certainly needs to! Other solutions have certainly pulled out all the stops, and if Naim are holding back, then the HDX will not compete, and only catch on as a tiny minority sport.[/QUOTE

George

I agree wholeheartedly. Naim have always been associated with the best. They have an enviable reputation. But that is the point, they have something to lose. I would have thought their goal was to pull out all the stops and produce a market storming music server that was at least the equal of anything else on the market.

We live in an ever faster changing world. I prophecy that in a few short years we will all be carrying around on our key ring, our complete musical library on the forthcoming Intel phase change flash drives.

Richard

quote:

Originally posted by Richard Lord:

We live in an ever faster changing world. I prophecy that in a few short years we will all be carrying around on our key ring, our complete musical library on the forthcoming Intel phase change flash drives.

Richard

1000 LPs on a key ring? Think I'll need bigger pockets.

Willy.

I really hope the HDX really is good as it possibly can be. With all this talk of Mac's and DAC's it has strong competition. There needs to be an audible benefit to spend the extra cash.

Also, not having yet another box on the rack is another benefit. A Sonos (or a laptop) and a discretely hidden Lavry is far more appealing to me! The user interface is far nicer than trying to see a small screen from 10ft away too!

Julian

Dear Julian,

I hardly would count a Macbook/DAC solution as one more box as it will replace a desk-top PC! So a net reduction of the monitor and keyboard/mouse etc. and trading of a large ugly white case for small Laptop case. The HDX really needs to be a step change better than what this arrangement can achieve to make it competitive. In other words significantly finer than CDS3 territory. I can't say that my experience at the Roadshow dem made me think it was. Very fine, but not definitively finer than CDS3 on the material I was able to copy to the HDX and it was not pleasant at all on the pre-programmed dem material - albeit that this was too loud and agressive as sound for me ever to get past the sound to the possibility of there being some music underneath, somewhere.

I suspect the term "white elephant" may well be applied in time unless the revision is not a revelation. Naim enthusiasts must live in hope that this is the case as most of us were auditioning something sub-par on the basis that a revision was felt necessary in the first place. Are Naim going to get people back for a second audition? In many cases, I suspect not.

ATB from George

quote:

I hardly would count a Macbook/DAC solution as one more box as it will replace a desk-top PC!

Dear George. I meant not having another box on the rack (ie the HDX) was an advantage. Naim need a DAC in their lineup quicksmart and it needs to be priced at our about the Lavry level and does not want to need a seperate PS (OMG I'm beginning to sound like PCS )

Toodle pip, J

Dear Julian,

I expect that we are not really disagreeing about the box count, as it would in any case [DAC or HDX] be a replacement for the CD player in many cases, regardless of the other considerations!

Plus think of the shelves taken up with CDs, freed up for books! That is real progress!

TTFN, G

The question is.

Would anybody seriously consider connecting a PC to a dedicated spur used to power a Naim system.

I think perhaps Naim are being cautious and exhibiting good business sense in pitching the HDX where they have. Hard disc is still a niche product in the domestic market, one that, as things stand, majors on convenience rather than absolute quality. I suspect that for many people, including myself, it is interesting but pretty irrelevant. CD's, and LP's for that matter, will I believe be with us for a long time to come. My thought is that hard disc will exist in parallel to these established formats rather than being their successor. That, I believe, has yet to appear. Of course this is all pure guesswork on my part, but given the rapid, almost exponential advances in computer based technology, I would be surprised if hard disc survived as a serious hi-fi medium for more than a very few years. So the term "white elephant" is perhaps very apt indeed.

Regards,

Peter

quote:

Plus think of the shelves taken up with CDs, freed up for books! That is real progress!

Hmm,...personally I don't consider the last part of this sentence as progress.
I've never liked reading (or looking at) books. Until recently the only book I had for years whas a telephone book and the Yellow pages (whoops, that makes even 2!) Threw them away. No need for 'em anymore.

Peter

It would appear that Linn have taken a totally different line then? I have not heard the Linn's or the HDX so I can't comment from personal experience.

J

quote:

Originally posted by pjl:
Of course this is all pure guesswork on my part, but given the rapid, almost exponential advances in computer based technology, I would be surprised if hard disc survived as a serious hi-fi medium for more than a very few years.

Rotating magnetic hard discs will be around for your lifetime at least. Solid state ram is terribly sexy, but nothing beats the price per gig of a hard disc.

Latest prices from www.scan.co.uk:

1.5TB Seagate ST31500341AS Barracuda 7200.11, SATA, 7200 rpm, 32MB Cache

for 110 pounds plus vat - £130 inc

And this is being typed on a macbook air with an SSD disc. 60Gb for 389 pounds.

Price per mb of spinning disc: £0.08/Mb
Price per mb of ssd: £6.48/Mb

Yes, SSD prices will fall. But they have a loooooooooooooooong way to fall to match even todays prices of spinning disc.

(Apologies to Adam for loading up the forum with mere facts, I know how unfashionable it is

Jon

Has anyone done any experiments as to which sounds better, HD or SSD?

I prefer my MacBook Air SSD to my MacBook with HD when driving my external DACs

Whether thats spinny disc versus SSD is very hard to say.

I should have checked when I had the HD MacBook Air here too, sorry.

So, getting really anal about this, if it is better, we could have a product with hard drive and a modest size SSD. Then, once an album is selected it could be flashed onto the SSD for optimum quality playback?

quote:

Originally posted by jon honeyball:

(Apologies to Adam for loading up the forum with mere facts, I know how unfashionable it is

Jon

Facts are useless in possession of people who lack the ability to interpret them correctly.

Or a device which uses SSD for caching of large hidef audio files, which have been brought in over the network cable from some remote network attached disc pack.

Actually, you could probably cache most things in some fast ram, although it would be easier and simpler to implement an N-tiered disc cache using the local SSD as a FIFO disc image caching engine...

Can you tell I'm still working and have got my head inside a rack mounted 8 processor server which is giving me grief?

Who says that solid state memory is the successor to hard disc? That is an assumption based on todays technology. Tomorrow may bring something very different.

Peter