New UnitiServe Fresh Out of the Box and...
Posted by: Obsessed1 on 17 September 2010
a bit of a surprise.
First off, digital connection is only by means of BNC connection (for which I have no suitable cable) or the inferior optical. No opportunity to use an RCA digital coax, like 99.99% (all?) of the competition.
Second, no cheapo ethernet cable thrown in to help me connect either.
Really? For three grand? You can't throw in one crappy $.05 connecting ethernet cable?
So, no joy tonight. Tomorrow I'm off to buy an ethernet cable so I can fire it up and give it a try.
As for the BNC, I refuse to succumb to the obvious marketing ploy to purchase a Naim BNC cable. For the time being, I will use the cheapo optical cable that came free (together with a decent RCA coax cable) with the Beresford DAC I bought for $200 a few years ago.
Very disappointed with the packaging. Let's hope the Serve acquits itself once finally connected up to my Uniti and the network.
Posted on: 17 September 2010 by nap-ster
I can see where your member name comes from.
Posted on: 17 September 2010 by John R.
When it comes to S/PDIF the BNC connection is without any doubts the best since it is true 75 Ohm and RCA is hardly true 75 Ohm (a very few exceptions like WBT from Germany offer true 75 Ohm with RCA). Naim chose BNC over RCA for good reasons (early HDX had RCA as far as I remember, but they changed that to BNC). Get a BNC to RCA adapter and the problem is solved. By the way: The DC 1 is an excellent cable and although it is not cheap, it is worth the money. I tried several digital cables and for me the DC 1 is the best I heard.
Posted on: 17 September 2010 by connon price
Obsessed, got mine at the shop today. So clean and lovely. No, no Ethernet wire. Either they feel that there are already 7 billion cables floating around the world and a few more cheap ones are not going to be purchased and distributed in their name, or they are working on their own Siamese Cat7, not sure.
Regardless, I'm sorry you weren't informed ahead of time what was and what was not to be found in the tin. Because if you hear what I heard today, you will want tombstone going ASAP. Played it into my new Qute against my RCA output HDX into same and found it to be big improvement over my previous reference (HDX S/PDIF). Must be a combination of the new PCI card, larger RAM and the BNC socket, maybe?
I think the ploy involved in trying to get us to buy a BNC terminated DC1 is probably the same that drives the ploy to get us to buy their other products. It sounds better and makes better music. The pro world uses BNC all day long (night time, too). Go buy the cheapest BNC>BNC ( are you using DAC?) and give it a whirl. Then borrow a DC1 and compare the two.
Just don't use a BNC to RCA adapter. Naim offer one in the package with their Qute but my experience using one in the context of a HDX/DAC/555PS/252/300/Ovator system was very bad.
Good luck. Look forward to your findings.
Posted on: 17 September 2010 by aht
Really, this rant is a bit sad. "[An] obvious marketing ploy to purchase a Naim BNC cable." BNC has been widely used for decades, and is known to be superior for digital audio. Do you also rant about the DIN connections on Naim amplifiers? The emphasis is on performance, not mediocre consumer standards that are still in place due to simple inertia.
Posted on: 18 September 2010 by MartinCA
Anyway - more importantly - how does it sound??
Posted on: 18 September 2010 by JonR
quote:
Originally posted by connon price:
Regardless, I'm sorry you weren't informed ahead of time what was and what was not to be found in the tin. Because if you hear what I heard today, you will want tombstone going ASAP.
"Tombstone"....eh??! Expand please, connon
Also, are you talking about the -SSD version or the one with an internal hard disk drive?
Posted on: 18 September 2010 by David Dever
I think it was a UnitiServe 1TB hard-disk drive unit vs an original 2008 HDX 2 x 400GB model
Posted on: 18 September 2010 by David Dever
quote:
Originally posted by Obsessed1:
a bit of a surprise.
First off, digital connection is only by means of BNC connection (for which I have no suitable cable) or the inferior optical. No opportunity to use an RCA digital coax, like 99.99% (all?) of the competition.
Second, no cheapo ethernet cable thrown in to help me connect either.
Really? For three grand? You can't throw in one crappy $.05 connecting ethernet cable?
So, no joy tonight. Tomorrow I'm off to buy an ethernet cable so I can fire it up and give it a try.
As for the BNC, I refuse to succumb to the obvious marketing ploy to purchase a Naim BNC cable. For the time being, I will use the cheapo optical cable that came free (together with a decent RCA coax cable) with the Beresford DAC I bought for $200 a few years ago.
Very disappointed with the packaging. Let's hope the Serve acquits itself once finally connected up to my Uniti and the network.
This is why dealer demonstrations are extremely useful.
Same with the manufacturer's website:
UnitiServewhere you'll find a picture of the rear panel. A little bit of research might have saved you some angst as you could have ordered a BNC-RCA digital interconnect to ship with your unit. On the other hand - you have a NaimUniti, so this is really not the way one would typically connect the two anyway (use network streaming instead)....
I recommend shielded Cat-7 Ethernet cables to keep radiated noise at bay.
Posted on: 18 September 2010 by Obsessed1
It would be nice to have a dealer close at hand, but alas that is not possible for some of us.
Thanks for the tip on connecting to the Uniti. I will try to track downa Cat-7 cable to connect to the network.
Does this mean that playing the Serve through the Uniti would be via the UPNP input on the Uniti?
Posted on: 18 September 2010 by Obsessed1
As an update, I have managed to connect the Serve to my network, and presently it is playing via toslink into my Uniti.
I must say that it sounds fantastic so far. And the user interface via the n-Serve app is fantastic. Ripping is as easy as I had hoped.
The only other glitch was that the instruction manual is wrong in terms of setting up the web browser interface. Thank goodness for the "find" function on the forum!!
The last great mystery is to find out how I can get my Sonos ZP-90s to "find" the music ripped to the Serve. If anyone has any advice in this regard, it would be hugely appreciated.
Posted on: 18 September 2010 by garyi
It must be nice to have a cat7 network at home.
Posted on: 18 September 2010 by Obsessed1
I think it's only Cat5. I take it that Cat7 cable on a Cat5 network offers no advantage?
Posted on: 18 September 2010 by garyi
None what so ever, especially on a 1 metre run.
Posted on: 18 September 2010 by David Dever
It's shielded with spaced conductors, and seems to make a minor difference to sound....
Posted on: 18 September 2010 by David Dever
quote:
Originally posted by David Dever:
It's shielded with spaced conductors, and seems to make a minor difference to sound...cheap, too.
Posted on: 19 September 2010 by Paul Stephenson
will look into supplying the data cable,no ploy with the bnc just sounds best.Surprised your retailer did not discuss coonections before you left with the box.I am sure you will enjoy the product.
Posted on: 19 September 2010 by connon price
quote:
Originally posted by David Dever:
I think it was a UnitiServe 1TB hard-disk drive unit vs an original 2008 HDX 2 x 400GB model
Correct, Dave.
Sorry, "tombstone" is iPhone autocorrection for "to get one". Sounds like a software of some sort.
Posted on: 20 September 2010 by David Dever
quote:
Originally posted by David Dever:
It's shielded with spaced conductors, and seems to make a minor difference to sound....cheap, too.
(QUALIFICATION - Make sure, however, that you use shielded cables point-to-point with good-quality switches possessing shielded sockets. Do NOT combine unshielded cables with shielded cables on the same run, as this will be worse!
Posted on: 21 September 2010 by Simon-in-Suffolk
quote:
Originally posted by Obsessed1:
I think it's only Cat5. I take it that Cat7 cable on a Cat5 network offers no advantage?
Correct for our Naim equipment. Cat 7 has been designed for 1Gig Ethernet and for other non Ethernet applications. It takes the regular 6 twisted pair construct that we see with Cat 5 cables and higher, uses better conductors and specifically shields each twisted copper pair from each other in the cable to prevent cross talk. This means you are reducing the chance of an erroneous frame being created when the cable is in 1Gig E mode or 100 / 10 m bit mode in full duplex, ie data is being sent by the sender and receiver.
Of course like all Cat cable it uses twisted pair and has a very high common mode interference rejection, to and from the cable. The shielding between the pairs is introduced because of the very close proximity of the pairs to each other in the cable construct.
Simon
Posted on: 21 September 2010 by AMA
Obsessed1, forgive me my ignorance -- why do you need a Serve once you have a Unity which is a network streamer on it's own?
Posted on: 21 September 2010 by Richard Dane
AMA, possibly because one is a ripper/server (UnitiServe) and the other is a streamer.
Posted on: 21 September 2010 by AMA
Richard, I guess both can pull data from NAS through ethernet connection: Serve outputs audio bitstream and Unity outputs amplified analogue to the speakers. So -- setting a rip-feature apart -- what is the extra functionality of Serve?
Posted on: 21 September 2010 by Occean
quote:
Originally posted by AMA:
Richard, I guess both can pull data from NAS through ethernet connection: Serve outputs audio bitstream and Unity outputs amplified analogue to the speakers. So -- setting a rip-feature apart -- what is the extra functionality of Serve?
It can play gapless (the Uniti can, only when fed by a serve/HDX)
It can play 192khz FLAC/Wav
It also creates a upnp network other devices can access
Posted on: 21 September 2010 by AMA
quote:
It can play gapless (the Uniti can, only when fed by a serve/HDX)
It can play 192khz FLAC/Wav
It also creates a upnp network other devices can access
What is the purpose of UPNP support -- multiroom?
"It can play gapless" -- not good for Unity. Foobar plays tracks gapless -- no problem
"Serve can play 192 kHz" -- it's a marketable statement but I'm not sure it's audible feature
Seriously, when you go down to such a high bitrate as 192 kHz you can't really consider it apart form the quality of the output jitter -- it should be super-low (like several ps), otherwise you will hardly hear any difference.
Posted on: 21 September 2010 by Occean
quote:
Originally posted by AMA:
quote:
It can play gapless (the Uniti can, only when fed by a serve/HDX)
It can play 192khz FLAC/Wav
It also creates a upnp network other devices can access
What is the purpose of UPNP support -- multiroom?
"It can play gapless" -- not good for Unity. Foobar plays tracks gapless -- no problem
"Serve can play 192 kHz" -- it's a marketable statement but I'm not sure it's audible feature
Seriously, when you go down to such a high bitrate as 192 kHz you can't really consider it apart form the quality of the output jitter -- it should be super-low (like several ps), otherwise you will hardly hear any difference.
Yes the Serve, HDX and NS's can act a multiroom server to the NDX/uniti/qute inturn providign them with gapless audio.
