Naim NDX vs Auralic Aries into Hugo

The problem with this route is consistency. How would you know if two pc's sounded the same. So two people with mac mini's may sound completely different.

It will still be either an ndx or an Aries for me depending on what streaming options are available on the ndx when I'm ready to upgrade

Dayjay have a look at the Aurender N100 it looks like a good unit. No idea on SQ though

I will, cheers

My uderstanding is that a key design goal was the ability to stream hi-res audio wirelessly and this is what drove the shape and choice of materials. I heard it last year at Munich with a Vega and it sounded superb.

Foxman50, which Audio Physic model? I have NDX front end with AP speakers as well and I could not describe the NDX as "dark", rather "thin" versus a good CD player of the 5k range, hence the XPS5 I added to it (for lack of funds for an XPSDR). Still have not managed to try adding a Hugo to it though..

DrPo i'm not 100% sure but looking at the models i would guess they were Audio Physic Tempo 25's. My conclusion that the NDX is dark is drawn from the fact i have tried a few sources into Hugo and none have sounded as full bodied as the NDX does. I suppose the opposite conclusion could be made that the other sources are light, 

Graeme

Is that a serious question!

I have tried many pc ,mac and Linux computers ,through the same  async USBdac they all sound identical, which is what you would expect.

H.

A case of serious expectation bias.

What the brain can't comprehend, it won't hear ...

I'm astonished by that.  I've only tried two, one was a server with fans and hard drives primarily used as a server and the other was a fanless PC running nothing but the software to supply music and they sounded very different indeed.  I'd be amazed if a PC specifically designed to play music didn't sound different.  

Hi Graeme, I've had the Tempo25s for a while and they are wonderful speakers, excellent texture and good timing in an amazing form factor. I am now upgrading them to their bigger sibling the Virgos 25+ (same drivers but different cabinet and crossover) as I wanted a more solid sound (by that I mean "volume" in the spatial dimensional sence, not dBs, English not being my native language betrays me here...).  So I am not surprised if the sound came in a bit "thin". The Tempos like all AP speakers are 4 Ohm ones and despite their small size and  average sensitivity I have the impression they need strong amps to drive them (to be frank I don't think NAIM amps drive them optimally, I have checked the 282/250 combo against other -mostly German- designs...)

Greg 

Hi Nick,

I think it depends on how much experience you have building PCs ....but we all have to start somewhere. I have been handling PCs and servers for many years. Generally the components are built to standards and there is a plethora of on-line help.

The issue with the CAPS servers is that the components are not available at the moment ....although other similar ones are, and are discussed in the attached threads.

I completely disagree with the comment that any PC or MAC will be give a similar result to a dedicated and specialist piece of audio hardware / computer. A number of years ago I did use the CMP (2) software on a DELL laptop which did produce some bloody good results, but that turned off most of the OS services, including networking. An ex-contributer on this forum and I met up and he had built a server based upon a specialist audio version of Linux and MPD, this was streaming across his LAN and sounded as good as my laptop. Nether was as good as his CD555 with 2x555PS ....but it was very close, such that I thought that I would not notice the difference apart from in a back to back demo.

For me this is why I admire the work Naim has done on the NS01, and by extension on the HDX, as these are Windoze based servers with networking that do sound good.

At the moment I find myself with some time on my hands, hence my LP ripping is proceeding at a pace, and may well use this time to play with building a CAPS server. If I move in this direction I'll report back.

M

Bit perfect data is bit perfect data, compare two transports and compare them unsightthat wilt will remove any bias!

H.

That just because you can't think any further than bit-perfectness.

You miss the most import issues that are not about the delivery of bits. Bit perfectness is a no-brainer given fact nowadays, but many other aspects of digital playback determine sound quality in the end.

You have read too many audio mags and believed them!

Try it for yourself, unsighted.

H

I'll save a fewcquid then on a streamer and just feedcmy Hugo with my iphone

Sorry to disappoint you, but I have built, tested and adapted more dedicated audio PC's than you probably have.

I'm also a tester of (all bitperfect) playback software which can give greater gains than you would imagine possible, all into asynch USB.

there is so much more than you know, but keep dreaming in your simple bits-are-bits world.

Presumably you have a commercial involvement in thededicated PC / audio software business?

Aleg / DHT

:-)  I love these bits-r-bits debates.  The reason being, I don't know in which camp I sit.  I both fear and love the world of computer based audio.  It seems to me that when the bits-r-bits people really go for it, they can provide quite clear evidence that there is no difference between the same 'perfect' bits produced by one device, or piece of software, and another.  And to me such cases usually make complete sense and I am sold on their conclusion....briefly.  Then Simon will come along with a highly plausible sounding counter argument, making references to RFI, crosstalk and other sources of non-clock related jitter, and many other things I don't really understand, and prove nothing, but leave me in no position to argue.  The fuse polishing lunatic in me just won't take the chance in the end.  I have 'hifi' USB cables, RFI and vibration treated chassis for the Music PC, and light-weight music player software of my own creation (the user interface is sh!te), just to make sure those bits really as perfect as they can be.  And you know what?  My obsessively optimised PC sounds 'kin fantastic, which may have nothing to do with some of the optimisations, but who cares.  It's better to be safe.

SongStream, very good. But surely you have proved that in audio systems by taking care and reducing timing errors and extraneous electrical noise when sending those bits it results in a better end result... After all as you say your music server sounds 'kin fantastic...  

@DHT

No, I don't have any involvement in commercial business. For your information I work for nearly 30 years in IT for financial institutions and have a masters degree in computer science.

The software development I'm involved with is done by people in their spare time who are working in relatively unknown territories of Windows PC's to extract the maximum SQ of PC playback.

@Songstream

The reason why the bits-are-bits peoples arguments seem so plausible, is because they simplify this world of digital audio to the most extreme, as a binary world which is abstracted so much that it is far removed from real world situations. It is OK for thought models and describing algorithms and logical operations and processing where other effects beyond the binary outcome are not relevant. But this limited view doesn't suit the world of digital audio, as experience shows.

Funnily it is among the software part of the IT-community (those who build programs) that this limited world view prevails (I always compare it to the saying "if all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"). The fora of PFM and HydrogenAudio are full of them.

It is in the world of hardware builders people with an electrotechnical background, that there is a more realistic view of the world of digital audio, but then they know that binary representation is just a simplification/abstraction of real world analogue 'electricity' with a lot more side effects than transport of binary information.

Luckily in my training as an IT-engineer (I was educated at a Polytechnic University) there was attention to both of thes sides of computer technology. Nowadays they are limited to the 'programming school' and believe that is all that thereis to it.

but I have stopped trying to convert those people, they are 'lost' to me but I try to counter there faulty believes that misguide others.

I was wondering if this thread would get around to the "bits are bits" argument. In my nieve view i would have thought that all my NDX is doing is pulling a track from my NAS and passing it, without any processing, into Hugo.

This clearly is not the case as i have tried a few source devices into Hugo and they all sound very different and by some margin. The Audiobarn also loaned me a Chord C-stream ethernet cable and i have to say i was absolutely flabbergasted by the difference it made. Not going to say if it was better or worse, but the difference was not subtle and has made me want to investigate more cables.

I use a decent screened cat6 cable, not an audiophile product, so how can this Chord unit alter the sound to such a degree. We are talking 1m of cable here not 100m. 

All i can say to DHT is you need to try some of these options for yourself and try them with an open mind as well as ears.

Simon as SongStream says above you will mention RFI, Jitter, etc but i honestly believe there is more to it than this, i have no idea what but maybe one day the answer will be found.

Graeme

Aleg, good summary.. I remember at University there was quite a difference between the Computer Engineers and the Computer Scientists although we had many shared modules.. [gross stereotype alert ] The latter were puritanical and loved to revel in the world of abstraction, logic and impenetrable maths... The engineers were more pragmatic, less idealistic, dealt in a world of relative uncertainty, and tended to appreciate that physics in the real world was not always straightforward and reality was often  awkward. Our maths was largely calculus based and far more comfortable to work with 

Simon

There are 11 types of folks, those who don't know anything about digital electronics, those who think they do, and those who do it for a living......