NDS - The Answer?

Is technology advancing that fast?  Not really.  And if it sounds great today, it will sound great tomorrow, regardless of new enhancements, which to any individual could be a backward step anyway.  If you like the music it makes, who cares?

I haven't heard all the potential contenders although I do try to keep my ear in. This is pretty moot really because the musical presentation of the NDS sounds so natural and somehow right to me that I have lost interest in pushing on. Although I have made some updates to the system since installing the NDS which have allowed it so sing more beautifully still.

Shortly after the NDS was launched, Hook coined the expression "The NDS Retirement Village", the notion being that it sounded so musically "right" that he was content to stay there, even if surrounded by perpetually advancing streaming technology. I count myself among the residents.

But as SS points out above, is streaming technology actually advancing? Sure, everyone and their dog is now on the bandwagon, and it is a relatively "new" thing in HiFi. But pushing files over networks is hardly new per se; it predates CD and not by a small margin.

My sentiments are similar. I always go for the best performance I can get today for the budget available. Something different and potentially better is always round the corner. Naim are working on a Statement level streamer. The question is what do you expect from streaming today and of all the candidates you have heard, which sounds best to you? In my case, some years on, the NDS is still a head and shoulders over the rest. I prefer it to a CD555 and to any other DAC and/or streamer I have heard to date. For me it is a kind of spiritual successor to the CDS3 in it's musical poise and communication only better - greater than CD555 better.

Your ears may vary. That's fine.

Just pull the trigger. Yes products will be upgraded and replaced by new products. However a good sounding solution will also sound good tomorrow and will potentially also evolve with software or hardware upgrades.

so just enjoy the now....

Fair points all, and helpful. Thanks!

Me, I'd wait.

DAC technology has advanced  (with FPGA - if I'm to believe what I read on here) since the NDS.

Naim have DR'd everything except their cables so I fancy the next big announcement will be with streamers.

It's inconceivable (to me) that Naim will keep demoing the Statement with an NDS.

My 2c worth.

SJB

I have just upgraded from NDX to NDS and am so absorbed with the wonderful, explicit, communicative, (sorry I have run out of descriptors) sound coming from my music boxes (that may be a little over the top and I have a stiff cognac) that I am probably a bit biased.

Seriously the NDS has probably been the biggest upgrade in my system for... well....ever. I really don't care if the next new steamer comes out tomorrow, I am a very happy bunny.

Will the NDS be superseded... yes of course it will. Will it be soon. Don't know. But I suspect that the next big streamer (/preamp) upgrade will be a NAC N272 with knobs on... call it a NAC N252 (or NAC N555). I could be entirely wrong. Anyway I remember the old Arcam DACs and DVDs. When they upgraded their DACs they made them retrofittable. Even if Naim don't make their DACs and streamers upgradable with new DAC technology, as others have said here, if it sounds great today it will sound great tomorrow.

BUT, as I never get tired of saying, TRY BEFORE YOU BUY (with a HOME demo - a dealer demo will only tell you so much). If you are tempted by other brands then try those also.

Whatever you do don't waste time by waiting for the next new advancement in DAC technology that may (probably will) arrive. Go see your dealer, get some advice in the context of the rest of your system and test some kit at home. Life is too short.

If it don't sound posh, don't part with your dosh!

Reading this back, it sounds terribly pushy, not like me at all. Must be the cognac talking.

Night night.

I cannot offer any first hand experience but, if you think that a LAN streaming solution is well suited to your needs, I guess that NDS+555PS would be a very fine proposition indeed.

On the other hand, you should be aware that LAN streaming solutions are not less "computer-based" than solutions based on USB or S/PDIF streaming: you still need a computer running a UPnP server - typically the one controlling a NAS device or better a dedicated Raspberry Pi - to serve your music collection to the NDS. I personally consider LAN streaming to be neither simpler nor more elegant than solutions based on dedicated, headless music servers directly connected to a DAC but this is, up to a certain extent, a matter of taste.

If your main musical interest lies in classical music, you should also consider that you might find out that the way UPnP servers and the Naim App support you in interacting (browsing, searching, organizing) with your music collection is less than satisfactory. I find solutions based on MPD and MPD clients in this respect far from ideal but still better than solutions based on UPnP servers and Naim App.

Best, nbpf

Hi Mostly Drummer

The NDS with two power supplies will set you back more than £20,000 and the Statement level streamer is likely to cost more than £30,000.


Chord DAVE is being released next month for less than £9,000. My advice would be to wait and see how many NDS owners make the transition towards DAVE

ATB Minh

Not many, I'd have thought. If you prefer the "flavour" of the Chord sound, the Hugo is already around and has been for some time. If you don't favour it over the Naim take on things, then the swap isn't likely to have much to recommend it. Yes, the Dave is cheaper, but if you've already got the NDS, it's still going to cost you to make the move.

True. On the other hand, in absence of any understandable roadmap w.r.t. products and programs, I can imagine that some actual or potential Naim users might be tempted to move to other brands or just wait and see what comes next. If 20000 pounds is not exactly peanuts in one's budget, one might want to have some sort of perspective before taking the dive, I suppose. Best, nbpf

Hi nbpf, what is MPD? There are far too many TLAs on this forum!

MPD stands for Music Player Daemon, you can check http://www.musicpd.org for detailed information. In a nutshell, it is a server which can be run on a headless computer and is typically controlled by clients running on portables or laptops. There are clients for OS X, Windows, iOS (running on iPads and iPhones), Android, different Unix flavours and more. You can find an overview of MPD clients here: http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients. I tend to use ncmpcpp (console) or cantata (graphical) MPD clients to control MPD from a laptop running Linux. My wife uses MPoD (see https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/mpod/id285063020?mt=8) on her iPad and iPhone. As UPnP servers, MPD does not support user-specific tags. But, with suitable clients, it allows searching a music collection according to "Artist", "Title", "Album", "Composer", "Performer", "Genre", "Year" tags or a combination thereof. This is far from ideal but still better than searching with the Naim App, in my opinion. Best, nbpf

Really? I am complete luddite when it comes to server technology but I find using a Unitiserve and the Naim App a breeze and allows me all the search capability I need. I have played with my iMac running Minimserver in order to play DSD files and, although reliable, gives far less search info./capability. I guess I need to tidy up the metadata or do some tagging or whatever it is you have to do to optimise this server solution. See, for a luddite like me, it is an issue. If you do not have the skills/experience with server technology, far better to go with a ready made solution, even if it is not the ultimate user experience.

Many thanks Wat and nbpf for your enlightenment.

ATB David

Mostly Drummer,

The NDS is the best streamer I've heard so far. However, it's only half the solution. In your original note you said:

"Most importantly, if I'm going to give up physical product (i.e. CDs), I only want to digitize once, so I want the rip to be as good as it will ever be and I want the best-sounding solution I can find."

Well, that's not the NDS since the NDS is not a ripper. Ripping can vary in terms of results. However, you also said: 

"I don't want a computer-based solution, and I want an elegant, relatively simple solution that doesn't require me to tinker and which will last a relatively long time. Most importantly, if I'm going to give up physical product (i.e. CDs), I only want to digitize once, so I want the rip to be as good as it will ever be and I want the best-sounding solution I can find."

Well, you can't get away from computers since you need one to rip, organise, store and serve your music to the clients (your NDS for example) in your network. What you can do is obfuscate the computing element by putting the hardware in a non-computer-looking box and developing software which acts as your music collection interface. There are several solutions of this type including, but not limited to, Olive, RipCaster RipNAS, Naim UnitiServe, Naim HDX and Meridian Sooloos. 

I have most experience with the Naim rippers. They are excellent at both ripping and serving, giving better results than homegrown optimised solutions I have played with and also beating the (cheaper) Olive and RipNAS solutions. The best solution in my view, is the solid state Naim ripper networked to a multi-bay NAS drive.

A multi-bay NAS drive gives you some resilience if you should have a drive failure. They come in 2-bay, 4-bay and larger options. A 2-bay version simply runs RAID1 which mirrors the two discs. A 4-bay model gives you more options. The most well known models come from brands like Netgear, QNAP and Sinology, but there are others. Naim used to demo using Netgear, but lately seem to favour QNAP.

Most NAS drives can run a server to serve out music to clients, but these are generally more limited than the Naim servers I've played with.

So, from a Naim perspective, the minimum I would recommend (especially as you're looking at an NDS as source to the system) is a Naim UnitiServe-SSD with a 2-bay NAS drive, both physically wired to your router or switch which is also wired to your NDS. The beauty of the NAS drive is that you can store all your downloads there too; the Naim server will find them and play them.

Again, wired is always better than wireless, especially if you intend to buy and play high resolution audio. Wireless is limited when it comes to high res.

Sorry to have addressed your question from a seemingly completely different direction, but this is the fact of the situation. It's a bit like trying to listen to the radio. The NDS is the equivalent of a Naim NAT01. If you then try to listen to just Radio Luxembourg or Capital FM (olive/RipNAS), the compression won't make it sound very good, but if you listen to Radio 3 (Naim/Meridian) then you're in business. The difference here is that you're in control of the 'broadcast'.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

I'd wait. The NDS is very accomplished in many areas and well above the NDX, with or without nDac and 555PS.  It is very involving.  But ultimately, I found it too coloured.  I couldn't easily recognise singers and instrumentalists from their personal timbres.  The Hugo (via my Mac/Audirvana) is much better in that respect but I find it unmusical, as if a computer is playing.  I've settled for a Linn Klimax KDS.  The reference for me is vinyl and I find the KDS the closest. I have to admit that I haven't tried the NAC272 and from some accounts, it may have proved better for me than the NDS for my particular requirements.  I miss the Naim build and functionality that is missing from the Linn.

The Linn is worth a play, and if you don't mind a new pre-amp, maybe the NAC272 with a power-supply.

HDX + Hugo gets all your CD's ripped and perfectly tagged as WAV effortlessly and replays them to a standard equal (or better!) than the NDS.

You have lots of money left too.

G

nigelb, if you are fine with the way the US and the Naim App give you access to your music collection, than there is no need to look further. Just enjoy. As I mentioned, MPD and MPD clients are far from being perfect but, for my needs, a bit better than the Naim App as it was about one year ago. It is possible that things have improved in the last months but I would be surprised if this was the case. Best, nbpf

I recently moved from HDX to NDS and i have to say that the way Naim rips is not that good that it is said Even "perfect rips" are not all recognised so by accuraterip. Also, when you decide to change the tags in the app or throught the Naim material, it add a file in the folder of your album but do not modify the original tags. So when i moved, i had to retag all the albums where i made changes.

To rip with XLD on Mac or DBPoweramp are more "opened" solutions and will be recognised equally by any material for now and for the future.

Also, invest for a Naim server is not probably the solution (even if amazingly simple, stable,..etc), our favorite brand didn't invest and developped as much for server than what has been done for streamers. Just look or listen to the last update 4.3 which shows the new route with DSD and so on.

You're affraid NDS will be obsolete, don't you know that from ever Naim allow you to upgrade your material ? I don not doubt that solution will be possible to upgrade your existant material for the "newer" model.

After that, Naim / Linn / Chord, even if it can be a new technology, the most important is your ears. Secondly, as you do not seems to be a "geek", choose the easiest solution for your knowledge and/or find a nice teacher It is not that complicated.

Don't buy anything yet. Get some home demos sorted.

By the way you don't have to spend £20k on an NDS and 2 X 555 power supplies. There are a few second hand (sorry pre loved) or ex demo NDS examples out there if you care to search t'internet. Add one of these to a pre loved XPS2 DR and you are sorted for less than £7k AND they will be nicely run in for you AND Naim owners tend to cherish their stuff so will likely be mint. Also if you buy second hand from a dealer you will get some dealer backing for this kind of gear.

Some on here have managed with just a good NAS (QNAP, Synology for example) and some decent server software (Minimserver for example) to perform backup and serving duties, saving the need for the Unitiserve and also saving a slug of cash as well. This however sacrifices some convenience and ripping would need to be done on an attached computer.

What's not to like and where is the risk if you try before you buy.

The US is probably fine for ripping a large number of CDs and if the OP is fine with the way it organises music collections. In my view, the task of ripping CDs has little to do with music replay. I prefer not to have a ripping station integrated in my music replay system. The US can also be used as a UPnP server. But for this task a Raspberry Pi would probably be a better alternative. I am not sure that deploying the NDS as a source for an external DAC is a meaningful proposition: I think the DAC section of  the NDS is exceptionally good and justifies a big chunk of its price. Best, nbpf 

This is fantastic, as there seems to be 100% lack of consensus on this issue! For those who commented, I do understand that the NDS requires a server (I had commented elsewhere that I would plan for a UnitiServe as part of the NDS, 555PS, NAS drive, etc. package but was probably working too much in shorthand in this particular thread). That said, I am just not interested in anything that involves a true standalone "computer" (acknowledging that the UnitiServe is technically a computer, etc.) and my having to manage software on top of it for ripping, playback, etc. The relative simplicity and elegance of the NDS, 555PS, US, NAS, etc. setup is the appeal, in addition to, of course, and primarily, the sound quality, as well as the generally-perceived utility of the Naim app.

I have heard the NDS, albeit not in my home but on a similar system (282, 250, Hi Cap, etc.) at a dealer. I liked it plenty, but before I dropped this much cash wanted to make sure this is the best solution for me today. In many ways, including those noted above, it seems to be, but there is still great debate on the sound quality. Many seem to believe it (by "it" I mean with US, etc.) is simply the best solution available, whereas other describe it as relatively colored, less analog, etc. I don't know that I would have the opportunity to try a Hugo or Dave or Linn before buying, especially in my system, so NDS and friends may be the answer for now.

Thanks to all for the continuing input.

That's the solution you should go for. The NAS will just do "sharing folder" and your entire library will be served and managed by the Userve,

The Userve and app in addition is a marvel and really avoid you from "computer problems" That's how i started wich non material music and it is very convenient. Just be aware that if you tag some of your rips, it will work 100% with Naim product but the tag could be less efficient with material from other brands.