NDX, nDAC and 555PS - Some Interesting Tests

Jonn,

I "dipped" my toe into Naim audio Feb 2010. At the time I decided to hold fire on source, using my trusty tranporter. No Naim streamer until NDX came along appealed. I'm guessing ten/twelve months later. I have been enjoying NDX for last eight weeks or so, and I'm very much in the here and now with streaming technology, i do hope that Naim R n D are busy beavering on new products for the future,and that time frame has a massive question mark next to it. So at this stage maxing NDX seems a sure path for me, especially when I heard at a Naim dem the advantages for adding NDAC and power supplies to NDX.

Took a bit of searching, but finally found the original post.   The setup was in the Naim room at the Manchester show last October:

https://forums.naimaudio.com/di...878604229918/page/10

Here is jon_jh's reply to my confusion over connecting the PS to the NDX, and not to the DAC:

"...

quote:

Did you ask anyone why this was so? Seems like a major oversight to me.

Using the HDX as an example, and given it is only being used to stream digital output to the DAC, my understanding is that the PS upgrade would do nothing for the NDX.

Thanks for the welcome Hook.

I did ask about the XPS placement and the answer given was that using it to power the NDX removed power supply noise from upstream of the DAC. They found it to be more beneficial on the NDX than the DAC in that particular room. As you say, I don't understand why this goes against experience with the HDX, DAC and PS

..."

Upon re-reading this part of the thread, it is not clear to me if the XPS placement was Naim's decision, or a Naim dealer's decision.  Does anyone who attended this show recall the details?

Hook

Hi there, FWIW I have a XPS2 powering a NDX, into a nDac powered by a 555PS.

Based upon my experience:

- the XPS on the NDX does bring sonic value, but not as much as on the nDac.

- the 555PS brings more on the nDac than not on the NDX

All the best.

Stefano

Hi Allen,

I can't precisely answer your question as I never had a PL on the NDX, but an Oyaide Tunami GPX.

However, as I recall it and using the same Oyaide powercord, the XPS2 added extra clarity but was not "a lot better"; far more important was the PS on the nDac, XPS2 or 555PS be it.

I can also say that I lived two weeks without the 555PS (humming just a bit too much...) and put the XPS2 on the nDac: I remember thinking that it was not that bad... as I was expecting a greater (negative) impact. But of course when the original configuration was restored I had a great big grin on my face .

I now (since less than a week) have a Powerigel Plus powering my system and everything seems more cohesive, engaging and slightly more detailed, even if my system was already powered with aftermarket powercords.

Stefano

The 555ps transforms the nDac. I used an XPS2 originally  but the 555 took it into a different league. It has a much bigger impact over the XPS2 on the nDac than it did on my old CDS3.

Gerry

All this discussion what about renew ds ? at so much less

KR

The NDX (with DC1) and Ovator 400's arrived last evening while I was at a customer dinner meeting.  Got home around 8pm, leaving just enough time to unpack, set up, and make sure everything worked.  These are all brand new from Sound Org, and are here for a home audition.  If all goes well, they are the units I will purchase.

Also, figured it made more sense to keep this thread going rather than start a new one.

Was impressed with the 400's packaging.  I thought Naim made it pretty easy to extract the bodies from the coffins, and move them into position. This was important to me as I have had a couple of recent lumbar surgeries, and have no interest in another!

The 400's were set up in our guest room, well away from my Naim setup.  They are face-to-face, 1" apart, and being driven by an old 40w Pioneer amp.   My Macbook Air is feeding the amp a rip of a burn-in cd of white/pink/brown noise and glide tones.   One of the speakers is wired out of phase to try and cancel as much of the noise as possible (but the room still sounds like Dr. Evil's laboratory).  Am planning to let them cook for a week or more before giving them a proper listen.  Still, I'll likely set them up and short listen this weekend, and then put them back in the oven.

My initial impression of the 400's build quality was positive.  I have the garden-variety cherry veneer, but it was nice to see that Naim at least made an attempt to line up the veneer patterns from sides to top.  Anyway, more on the 400's in a week, more or less.

The NDX install was very straight forward.  In order to get just a quick listen last night, my install was no where near optimal.   Placed the NDX on the top (empty) shelf of my brawn rack, and only connected it via the DC1 to the DAC/555PS.  The NDX is hard wired to a little Cisco switch, so it had no problems getting on my home network.   First stop was the Radio Paradise 320kbps feed and....wow, what a nice improvement that is over the 192kbps stream!   Played around with the front display and the remote for a while, and then tried UPnP.

Out of convenience, I am using my PC server running J River Media Center 14, which features a built-in UPnP server.   The NDX found my music library just fine, and my FLAC files started streaming.   Nice and easy!   The last thing I tried before going to sleep was setting the UPnP server to transcode FLAC to WAV.   I checked the "always encode" option and encoder="uncompressed wave" (why the extra "e"?).   Unfortunately, the NDX did not like this, and reported "Unsupported File Format".   A quick search of the our forum archive showed that a UnitiQute had reported this as well, but the context was FLAC files with large embedded album art.   Oh well, not a big deal -- there are lots of other transcoding UPnP servers to try.  Will start by downloading the new JRMC 16 stable release today and see how that works.  Otherwise, it will be on to Asset or Vortexbox or something else...perhaps a new Qnap or Synology NAS.  We'll see...

One thing I did last week that I think has helped was to modernize my home network gear.  Replaced my flaky old D-Link's with shiny new ones from Cisco/Linksys (E4200 router and 16-port switch).   The NDX and my PC server are both still in my listening room with only one ethernet jack, so I also added a 5-port Cisco switch there as well.   Everything felt pretty snappy last night.   The NDX remote and front display seem perfectly adequate for testing, but obviously not a good long-term solution for searching through a large library of music.   I was getting a couple of seconds of "please wait" between each UPnP menu choice, but I am thinking that this may be due to having two "hops" (NAS -> PC Server -> NDX).

Am planning to spend a fair amount of time today with the NDX, more on setup and config stuff than on critical listening.  Left it running overnight with digital output only, and planning to alternate the overnight burn-in between analog and digital outputs.  Since it is for burn-in only, I am going to make the DIN connection as well.  My thought was that when I get around to critical listening, I would only have one cable (DIN or DC1) connected at any one time.  But given that the NDX's digital output can be enabled/disabled, does anyone think this this really necessary?  Would be nice to hook up both digital and analog cables and forget about them.

Am open to any/all suggestions for setup and testing, so thanks in advance for that advice, as well as for answers to my questions.   It feels like both the NDX and the speakers are off to a good start, with no serious issues, and only very positive first impressions.   Am looking forward to hearing, for the first time, what an all-Naim setup can sound like in my home (well, sans Fraim that is). 

Hook

Great stuff Hook, congratulations on your new toys! Looking forward to your findings over the next few weeks, particularly on how you like the NDX compared to your PC based system into your nDAC/555. It would be great to get your thoughts on how the NDX/555 performs vs. an NDX/nDAC/555 set up and whether you feel it's an upgrade you can't live without

Enjoy!

tp

+1

I, too, am very interested in if you think streaming to and rendering on the NDX improves on just using your PC to do this. It is encouraging to hear most things you tried work without hassle.

I like Ovators too, but never tried them at home and would need to put them quite near a wall, which they may not like. So be interested in how you get on with these. 

Many thanks for the write up, Guy  

TP, Guy, Allen and Simon -

Thanks a lot for the feedback and advice -- it is much appreciated!   Am keeping notes, and am planning to try all of your suggestions and report back.  I did get a few hours with the NDX yesterday afternoon, and have a couple of initial observations to share.

To begin with, I download Asset on to my PC server to replace JRMC 14's UPnP.   It installed easily, and took a while to scan in my music library.  But it worked much better than JRMC in a fewways:  faster response time, more/better info delivered to the NDX's front panel, and the FLAC-to-WAV transcoding actually worked.  Nice!  But I did see an annoying glitch, and hopefully it's a one-off.  After this initial success, I went away and did a couple of hours of work, leaving the NDX playing iRadio.   Upon return, I selected UPnP and my entire library was gone.  I kicked Asset's reset button, and it started rescanning again.  If this is a regular occurance, I'm going to have to move on to the next UPnP option.  But Asset is good enough for testing, which next I did, and despite the NDX not being burned in.

I have struggled since the introduction of the Naim DAC (since my first reading of the white paper) with the idea of sources for the DAC sounding different.  Many will recall the many months of debating with Andy S.  I was 100% in the prove-it-to-me camp, as I could not reliably distinguish between the three sources I used with my DAC:

- Oppo BDP83->RCA digital coaxial
- Laptop->USB->M-Audio Transit->Toslink
- PC Server (RME 9632) -> DB9-to-BNC

So now I have a 4th:  NDX with Naim DC1 BNC.   I set up an A/B between it and my beloved PC Server (you know, the one I rave about given even the slightest opportunity on this forum).   It was easy to get the same song playing at the same time:  Asset delivering FLAC (no transcoding at this point) via ethernet to the NDX, and JRMC 14 using the S/PDIF connection.   Was also easy to flip back and forth using 7/8 on the remote. I double-checked volume with my Radio Shack SPL meter, and as expected given the DAC in the middle, no level matching was necessary.

My expectation bias was that both would sound the same, and...

I was wrong.  

They just plain didn't.  It seemed obvious to my ears on even a quick A/B that the NDX sounded cleaner and crisper, with imaging.   The longer I stayed on the B (NDX) versus A, the more the music came into sharper focus.   Then I started wondering if human psychology had taken over.  Was I being honest?   Perhaps my subconscious really wanted the NDX to win?   After all, it is so very exciting getting a new toy to play with and, after all, the NDX is pretty darn cool!   So, having successfully confused myself, I asked Mrs. Hook to sit in the listening chair and give me her opinion.  

All of the gear was behind large, folded, cardboard boxes, so she had no clue what she was listening  to.   This was where being able to A/B with the remote without her seeing was very useful.

I played A (PC) for about 30 seconds, then B.  At about the 15 second mark, she stood up and said "Oh, this one is easy, B is a lot better", and got up to leave.    I said "Hold on girl!", and got her to sit down again.  One or two of you may recall that my last mad scientist experiments were with needle drops, asking Mrs. Hook to distinguish between vinyl, 5.6mHz DSD and both 24/96 and 24/192 FLAC files.   She was able to very reliably hear those differences in test after test after test, so I now trust her ears 100%.

So, anyway, I pushed her back down in the chair (well, not physically, but it did take some convincing as her initial impression was one of obvious differences).   The more she listened, the more clear it was to her (and me) that the NDX was delivering superior sound through the DAC/555PS.  She hates when I ask her to describe what she is hearing (she's a photographer, does a lot of image processing with Photoshop, and so is very visually-oriented).   Her comment was "If the sounds were pictures, it's as if B is drawing them using a fine pen tool, whereas with A, they all have blurred edges."  Pressing her for more comments was counter-productive, and the best I got was "B just sounds more real."   She left with "If you can't hear that B is better, then we need to get your hearing checked."

I could hear the differences, but I was just trying to play the role of Mr. Objectivity in a  white lab coat.  In fact, I tried to inject the opposite bias in Mrs. Hook by asking her on the way out: "But we could easily live with A (PC), right?".  Her answer was "Not after hearing B".

So I removed all of the boxes and sat down for an hour or so of listening.   I don't know about you good folks, but one of the reasons I hate A/B testing is that I think it takes longer than that for my ear/brain combo to really focus and start to process what I am  hearing.  Days is probably more accurate than hours.  So I changed my own A/B interval to about 15 minutes, and was only then really able to start to understand what a significant improvement I was hearing with the NDX.   This was also a classic case of not knowing what you've got until you hear something better.  Don't get me wrong -- the RME 9632 really is a high-quality source -- and amazing VFM IME.  And the Mrs. was spot-on. I could have easily lived happily forever with it....had I not heard the NDX.   Am sure the same thing applies to many other upgrades as well (e.g., the 552 versus my 252, and so on).

So, that's all for now.   It would have been a lot of fun, and good for my ego to say "Aha!  Just as I've always suspected!  The NDX is no better than a $600 pro sound card when used as a source for the DAC!", but that would be a lie.  This truly was a revelation for me, and the first time I've heard what others have reported for a long time:  the source for the DAC makes a difference.  And sometimes, that difference is significant.

The only other thing I did was to turn transcoding of FLAC-to-WAV back on.  I need more time with this, but my initial impression was of a small, but distinct improvement in imaging, especially depth.  But imaging was already crazy good, so perhaps not a huge change.   Will get Mrs. Golden Ears back in the chair this weekend and see what she thinks....

A full day of work ahead, but looking forward to the July 4th 3-day weekend.   So many other combos to try!   NDX on its own with the 555PS; native WAV versus UPnP transcoded WAV; 24/192 needle drops down-sampled to 24/96, and so on...

UPnP support for 24/192 remains my biggest concern.   Before I buy this demo unit, I need to have a clear understanding of what it will take to get the NDX to support this, since I am too far down this path with my needle drops.   If Naim is listening (Richard?  DD?), I would sincerely appreciate some clarification on how (or if) the NDX will get there.

Otherwise, it is full-steam ahead with this wonderful network player!

Hook

Mr and Mrs Hook - good stuff - sounded fun

As far as the glitch with Asset - the only time I see the database library clear is when you force it to do a rebuild. How many discs were in your library?

I have about 4000 tracks - and 400 CDs and about 25% through ripping my collection - it takes soooo long - but haven't had a glitch yet.

BTW if you have any Pure media players that only really like MP3 you can do a selective transcode on specific renferers on your network with Asset - pretty neat. So stream Hires FLACs transcoded to WAVS for the Naim and streaming WAVs and FLACs to MP3s to the media player in the kitchen all at the same time from the same library.

Simon

Funny huh?  It makes sense...  I was/am in a third group that hadn't heard differences between sources (including USB), but understood why sources could and even should sound different.

I think the "quality" of the digital output must be important.  Whether it is jitter, or noise, or ground loops, or RFI, vibrations, etc...

In a UPNP environment the lack of SPDIF conversion seems like it could be beneficial.  It would only exist between the renderer and DAC if you didnt use NDX solo.  This would allow Naim to be completely responsible for the precision any SPDIFing.

Of course there are probably dozens of meaningful factors that play into it.  But on the face of it I think I would have to be naive to assume my Juli@ card on my electrically "noisy" PC can perform as well as an NDX for digital output.

Move PC from shared mains, get rid of SPDIF cable tethered to PC, supply nDAC with NDX output with a BNC'd DC1....  how could that not be better?

I only wonder, and im sure it has been commented on somewhere in here, if used solely as a source for the nDAC, does the Qute equal the NDX?

-patrick

Allen had commented in detail on this thread.

Hi Simon -

It was very strange seeing my library disappear that one time, but since the last rescan (1385 albums, 17,673 tracks), it has been very stable.   I should have timed it, but didn't.   Instead, I noticed that Asset would allow me to start playing music immediately, and not force me to wait for the entire rescan.  So I did, thus losing track of the process.

Selective transcoding for multiple renderers is a very cool feature of Asset!   There is, however, one thing I wish Mr. Spoon would improve, and that is Asset's downsampling capabilities.  Right now, the only option is to limit the entire stream to 48kHz.  If he provided a 96kHz option, it would be a better solution for my 24/192 needle drops.

I feel kind of silly complaining about 24/192 support for the NDX!  But I did appreciate Allen's reminder that it was a UPnP limitation, and that the NDX was simply following the standard.  Hopefully once the standard supports higher resolutions, Naim will follow suit with a firmware update. 

It would also have been nice for the NDX to provide downsampling.  Instead, it simply rejects 24/192 files as an unsupported format.  But I suspect that, once again, this gets back to how UPnP works.  I am guessing the standard says it is up to the server, and not the renderer, to perform all downsampling.

Hook

Hi Allen -

Thanks for all of the great suggestions!   As I said before, your earlier threads were an invaluable guide to this new technology, and I will refer back to them often as I start to run my tests.

I have now converted a dozen albums to WAV, and that's what I'll use going forward for testing (thus hopefully following your single source advice).  Eventually, I'll come back to comparing their sound to transcoded FLAC-to-WAV, but that can wait until later.  Then there is this new dbpoweramp option for FLAC with no compression!   Logic tells me they should sound the same, but then again, logic told me that sources for the DAC should all sound the same, and look where that got me! 

One thing I did this afternoon was a tear-down and rebuild.  I tried to simplify my layout a bit, so I put my Oppo BDP83SE in storage (can't remember the last disc I played), along with its HDMI/Toslink splitter.   I also removed my PC server from my rack, and placed it with my NAS in my data center (a.k.a., the small closet in our guest room).   Everything looks more tidy, and I was able to a bit of rearranging:

Turntable          (empty)

------------          ------------

Superline          300

------------          ------------

252          (empty)

------------          ------------

NDX          Supercap

------------          ------------

(empty)          555PS

------------          ------------

DAC          300PS

------------          ------------

Everything has PL's except for the DAC.  The other major change I made was to remove the Humbuster III and, interestingly enough, I am now getting next to no transformer hum in my setup!  No clue if any of these recent changes had an effect, or if it is simply a quiet night with respect to DC on the mains.  But it is a huge difference compared to what I experienced before.   Quite frankly, the quietness was a bit of a shock, as I was fully expecting the hum to return in full force!   Oh well, as many surprises as I have had recently, what's one more! 

As I said to Simon above, thanks for the clarification on 24/192 support with respect to the UPnP standard.  It has made me rethink my position on this, and I am no longer concerned about it.  Besides, one of the reasons why I chose to record my vinyl in 5.6mHz DSD was to give myself flexibility when it came to conversions.   There is no reason why I cannot batch convert my .dff files to 24/96 FLAC or WAV for now, and reconvert to 24/192 later when the standard supports it.   It simply is not that big of a deal.

As far my test plan goes, I had no intention of being as comprehensive as you were.  The big question I am trying to answer (for my ears, and in my room) is NDX->DAC/555PS versus NDX/555PS->DAC verus NDX/555PS, and that is pretty much the order I was going to follow.   I listened for a couple of hours to the NDX->DAC/555PS this evening.  Tomorrow I will move the power supply to the network player, and then, finally, I'll remove the DAC, and install the NDX's DIN cable.

But I do also have those 400's waiting in the wings.   I figured it made more sense to do the NDX testing with my fully burned-in C7's.  Using a moving target like the not-fully-burned-in 400's made no sense.  And yet, once I install the 400's, it would still probably make sense to cycle through the three configurations once again.   I would not want to assume that the player/dac/ps configuration choice is independent of the speaker choice!

So many variables, but such good fun!   Am feeling very fortunate, if somewhat overwhelmed, by having this wonderful luxury of choice!

Hook

Hook, uPnP is not limited to 96 kHz and Linn streamers happily stream 24/192 through wired local network with no single problem. 

Allen, again and again -- all Linn DS stream 24/192 through the ethernet from the REGULAR UPNP servers, for example Asset or Twonky. You may check this up with a Linn dealer or with a Linn directly or on the Linn forum. Or -- just buy KDS/1 and it will shine with 24/192 through your 552/500

During the last NDX chat event it was specified that the NDX is optimized for 16/44 playback, but will play 24/96. It was also said that 24/192 will probably come in the (near?) future via sw upgrade, so it doesn't seem to be a UPNP issue.

Guys -

I think I will start a separate thread on for one issue, just to see if I can provoke a reply from Richard of Dave Dever or someone from Naim (since my request or comment here has been ignored by them).

It would be helpful....very helpful....to understand Naim's roadmap for this.  As I said earlier, for my purposes, converting a batch of my DSD needle drops to 24/96 in order to be able to stream them now is no big deal.   But I do want to get some reassurance that the NDX will only require a simple firmware update later, and not new hardware, or even worse, a whole new platform.   Naim's track record for timely delivery of future features has not exactly been perfect.

I'll even use the Linn example to see if that helps prompts a response.   IMO, Naim needs to support this, as otherwise it is yet another reason for people to believe that the NDX is merely a catch-up product...or not even.

Hook

PS - My local Linn dealer (the one who knows nothing about LP12's) does have one of the new Akurate DS's that I could try.  At $6990 USD, it is more expensive than the NDX ($5250 USD).  Also, I really don't have an interest in moving away from the Naim "house sound", so the only scenario that would interest me would be using an ADS as a streamer for the DAC/555PS.  Anyway, may be worth a demo....we'll see what, if anything, Naim says about 24/192 via UPnP.  Off to start the new thread now....

Hi Sbilotta -

Thanks for that update!   I am still going to start a new thread, and hopefully get Naim to give us an update on when this will happen.

Hook

Hi Allen -

I agree with you 100% on the priorities.  I'm just looking for some reassurance that 24/192 over UPnP is actually on Naim's roadmap, and that it will not require new hardware.  If it is coming soon, then all the better!

Hook

Again I agree 100%.

Given today was my first exposure to N-Stream and NDX-based system automation, I am still in total newbie mode, and simply enjoying this new found functionality.  Still, I can completely empathize with you and others who have been waiting for some time on new N-Stream features, and who have been met by radio silence from Naim.

All I can think to do is to bump my little 24/192 thread daily, until such time as Naim provides some guidance, or until Richard warns me off and/or locks the thread.   Hopefully it will not come to that, so fingers crossed!

Besides, I do not see any forum rule against asking for information.  I know it is up to Naim whether or not they provide any info.  But it is to me whether or not I purchase the NDX.  So, it is a two-way street...sort of.

By the way, I think N-stream makes a great first impression!   I hooked up the two RC cables from the NDX to the 252 and the DAC, downloaded N-Stream, and within seconds had full iRadio and UPnP functionality.   And I must concur with Tog and others:  I am finding the response time to be perfectly acceptable on library searches, and really quite impressive on volume control tapping.

Am sure my initial excitement will wear off soon, but so far, so good...

Hook

Agreed.  As one of the first on the hires train (via DVD-A rips, SACD transfers and needledrops) I have never felt an improvement going between 24-96 and 24-192. 

16 to 24 bit - HUGE difference

24/48 to 24/96 - Mild/Subtle difference.

96 to 192 - Cant hear it. 

Albeit, all tests were done bbefore Naim DAC.

I will not pay more for 192.  That is for sure.  And I wont encode to it, waste of time and space.

It really doesn't have a place in my world..... just like 3D TVs.