ND5 XS Problems

I would say get a couple of Apple Airport extreme(s)/Express(es), unmanaged switch(es) and be done with it.

It cannot be the Naim Streamer because the OP actually confirms it in his tests.

Peter Dinh posted:

I would say get a couple of Apple Airport extreme(s)/Express(es), unmanaged switch(es) and be done with it.

It cannot be the Naim Streamer because the OP actually confirms it in his tests.

But that would be too simple, wouldn't it? 

@ Bart, @Huge, @Simon: NDX comes home tonight and I will try that in my config. If still reproduces, I will bring up each individual wifi device one by one and see if I can pinpoint. Last night I turned off the Wifi in the Asus Router and it played all night as well (same as for Unifi so further proves the actual APs aren't the problem). So wifi device or a combo of Wifi on plus sensitive or faulty ND5 XS appears to be an issue. No other devices on my network actively show a problem.

@ Peter, Adam: I have already tried swapping out the Asus and Unifi for Apple Airport Extreme based on previous suggestions. I also use an unmanaged main switch (the managed one was just an suggestion from someone). These  did not fix the issue. I am listening and appreciate all the awesome support  Now, I'm stepping through step by step to exhaust all options in hopes I don't have to give up on the gorgeous Naim.

Thanks again. For anyone interested, I'll post a follow up on NDX testing.

Darron

Darron, good luck with the NDX.

My awesome dealer lent me the NDX. Got it home tonight and fired it up.....but got a Fault 34 DSPDAC not booted error.

Man..I'm having bad luck. I searched the forum and saw one post that suggested no luck with multiple reboots to resolve the issue. Just gets hung.

I've got mail out to my dealer with hopes of some ideas.

Darron

Wow, do you have laylines or something similar passing through your house 

Darron Stepanich posted:

My awesome dealer lent me the NDX.

Man..I'm having bad luck.

I've got mail out to my dealer with hopes of some ideas.

As a non-streamer it's interesting for me to selectively follow this thread. With no practical experience in the given matter my approach would be:

1) abandon the notion of luck being involved with your problem, or likewise hope for a solution - there is a root cause,

2) rather than email the dealer I'd be emailing Naim support,

3) as a last resort, rather than emailing the awesome dealer I'd get him on the phone or even better at my house. Let's suppose the NDX had worked, where would that leave you?

Darron, have you thought of becoming Amish or Mennonite, technology just doesn't seem to like you!

I still don't believe that there's any malfunction in the streamer itself.  This looks much more like a rogue application running on one of the wireless devices (my guess would be that it's being caused by an app running on one (or more) of the iOS or Android devices).  Please continue with the test of tuning these devices on (or off, whichever approach you've chosen) one at a time.  This is still the best way to find the culprit.

When you've found the problem device(s), you'll need to close all the downloaded apps on it, and then re-enable the apps one at a time, 'til you find which app is the problem.

@ Huge and @ Simon looks like you were right. I think we have a breakthrough. 

With the NDX not booting, and that we had narrowed it down to interaction with a Wifi device I went through device by device testing.

I eventually discovered I was able to continuously get the ND5 XS to disconnect by executing a smarthome command on my Amazon Echo. It also would disconnect periodically when the echo connected or sat on the network but it appeared at random intervals. I never would have imagined.

I've now had 24hours + of playback with all my devices hardwired through main switch and wireless through Asus (minus AMazon Echos and Unifi APs). I'm going to try bringing the Unfi APs back online and assuming that is stable try a hard reset of Echo's and put them back on the network and see if they act better.

Thanks for everyone's help in this effort, you guys have been patient and awesome. It has been a real learning process for me and the first time I've seen something like this in the 20 years I've had a home network.

Darron, thanks for the update. We don't have Amazon Echo devices here in the UK yet, but I see Amazon provide the instructions and software to build on a RaspberryPi for those outside the US.. so I might have a play on a rainy day.

But trying to speculate on what you found, perhaps when you press the Smarthome button, it's doing a device discovery.. It sees the Naim player as it will appear as a UPnP device which is valid as a Smart Home network device, and the Echo interrogates the streamer to try and identify its capabilities.. and perhaps as part of this process it tells Naim to pause, or it uncovers an unhandled event in the Naim stack causing it to pause.

i guess the developers at Salisbury might want to  build the Echo dev sim on the Raspberry Pi to see what on the network is being sent to the streamer to cause the pause.

Naim probably are not reading this thread, so I certainly suggest dropping them a line, I reckon Steve Harris @ Naim would be interested.

Simon

Can I just say if the wifi devices you have are ubiquiti ones, I tired a pair of these. It was the long range AC ones. I liked the server software for them and that it was all contained within one page. But I found the devices themselves to be shit. Very very slow. AC rate was typically connecting at 140 or less, 5 times slower than I was used to and transfer rates consequently were very poor.

I asked on the forum about this and the general consensus was a shrug of the shoulders and 'yea, they are really meant for offices.'

I had constant drop outs and IOS devices in particular had a real fuss connecting to them. I got them from amazon and sent them back after a week, breathing a sigh of relief.

I got sucked in by an ars review by some muppet who obviously got paid to write the article because he said it would replace all his appl routers etc, but I cannot fathom why anyone would want to replace an ok device with a poor device.

I don't particularly rate apple routers and I know the ubiquiti stuff are just wifi access, but its not something I will ever try again. Cheap devices sold expensively on the back of good server side software (Which I did rate highly)

Darron

Happy to read you have found a culprit. Happy streaming.

Adam