Naim HDX HDD today

Wait until Thursday!

S.

Good shout

It is certainly worth waiting until tomorrow!

IMHO the Naim HDX et al are a bit long in the tooth and there are better/cheaper solutions. Many forum members swear by a good NAS drive and a few of us have a Melco Music Server (audiophile NAS). For any NAS drive you can rip CDs to it with dBpoweramp running on a PC (this checks the accuracy of the rip).

If you use a standard NAS drive it seems better to connect it to your player via a dedicated switch rather than via your main router itself. Don't use a Powerline because of all the RFI these devices create - even WiFi will be better. Maybe you have a dedicated switch between the player and the NAS with Ethernet connections to the devices and WiFi to the rest of your network.

If you need a dedicated CD player (and it takes less than 5 minutes to rip on dBpoweramp) then I'd get one of the Naim devices.

The substantial cost saving would enable you to replace your Uniti with the 272 streaming preamp all for less than an HDX.

Well as I understand the HDX is a fine sounding hard disk player - heard it a couple of times when it was introduced.  Comparisons aren't really meaningful but in the hierarchy broadly equivalent to CDX2/NDX and therefore yes it is most certainly still relevant.    From what I understand over and above the sound quality its virtue is its simplicity - CD in drawer ripped to the database - but it won't stream Tidal and the like so its application is more limited. But I guess like the CDX2/NDX/272 it really comes alive with a XPS.

Pre-amp to match 282/HC.

Regards,

Lindsay

Being a curious type, I looked up the Grimm speakers and they look pretty amazing. The review stated that they include all the amplification one needs and that they have digital and analogue inputs. So whether that means a Naim preamp is needed I'm not entirely sure. The speakers themselves seem to cost $30,000, so the digital source needs to be pretty good. I'm a bit out of my depth here, and the OP could perhaps help by clarifying exactly what is required. 

That's largely why I've kept my HDX as a ripper to my NAS, and as a server to my NDS.

Popular opinion would point me in the direction of using external software to do the ripping, but the fact is, as you say, the whole process is so straightforward, works every time, and, moreover, the residual value being so low these days, I no longer feel that's it's overkill to do things this way.

I did have a listen to a Melco, and whilst it sounds great in my mate's Linn setup, I didn't like what it did when installed into my Naim system.

When the HDX was released I would of sold my granny to get one, but later got a unitiserve and Ndac for a really good price. If buying new the serve and dac option will give more bang for buck. There are a lot of pre loved HDXs lurking about at good prices.

when the Ndac was released it was guessed that many HDX owners would be queuing up to upgrade - but instead migrated to streaming proper.

Hungryhalibut posted:

Being a curious type, I looked up the Grimm speakers and they look pretty amazing. The review stated that they include all the amplification one needs and that they have digital and analogue inputs. So whether that means a Naim preamp is needed I'm not entirely sure. The speakers themselves seem to cost $30,000, so the digital source needs to be pretty good. I'm a bit out of my depth here, and the OP could perhaps help by clarifying exactly what is required. 

A preamp is not mandatory, as you said they have one analogue and some more digital inputs. Using the Uniti as preamp there was no audiable difference than using the line output. Also phonopreamp via Uniti preamp to speakers was the same as phonopreamp directly to speakers.

So, for me a real better preamp is necessary to test. And until then I'm looking for a real good sounding source (all-in-one if possible).

I'm not familiar with your speakers, but it seems they have a digital input too. If this is any good, even the HDX has some redundancy - a Unitiserve would work too. Not sure how good the CD playback would be, although once you've put the CD in the drive, ripping it is so easy, I don't know why you'd need to just play it?

As for waiting until tomorrow - that may be a good plan, if only to see if you can get a better deal on an HDX/US.

I ran the HDX in various guises for about six years. I wouldn’t store my music inside the HDX, even with an internal back up because I didn’t want to have to send my music collection back to Salisbury to be recovered, or partially recovered or lost in the event of HDD failure. So a NAS was mandatory for me from day one. Given that I could not tell the difference between a track played back from NAS and the same track played back from HDD, I was happy that keeping my music on a NAS was as sonically effective as ripping to HDX internal HDD.  This gave me infinite (this week’s favourite word) backup possibilities and high safety. When the SSD version of the HDX came out I had mine converted.

Performance wise my HDX was at somewhat above CDX2 level.  This was the criterion I needed fulfilled to buy it. Sound quality was the major determinate, not the technology. I ran it alongside my CDX2 for a year before selling the CPD on. I haven’t listened to a CD for many years apart from in cars.  They can be ripped so fast that the possibility of putting a CD into a drawer never occurs to me anymore.  It also kind of defeats the object of having a ripper/server.

The big breakthrough for me came with material rendered above 16/44. Of course it’s highly variable depending on source material but the advantages on a good day were obvious. This took my thinking beyond what the HDX was originally bought for. When the DAC arrived, everything shifted up another level.  And more levels beyond, depending on how you power it. In around two years my music collection had been transformed – not reimagined – but presented to me in a realistic and believable way which was like going back and rediscovering (but not reimagining) my favourite music all over again.  The kind of step change, the breakthrough that I thought I had already reached.

So at that point it was: HDX OK but pricy.  HDX/DAC superb, HDX/DAC/PS-of-choice better and better. Then I heard the newly introduced NDX. I heard it bare, with DAC and with DAC/XPS2. I thought that both with and without the DAC it sounded identical to the HDX. So here was a unit that would suit me because I already had a NAS, I could rip CDs and DVD-As on my PC and all I’d need to join up the dots was a software server running on the NAS. So naturally, I stuck with the HDX because why change for the same result? But if I had been starting out at that time, it would have been an NDX based front end for me. Just as good and much cheaper.

Enter the NDS. This was the game changer. There’s no point in comparing it to the HDX/DAC/555PS which I was already running because it’s off the OP. The HDX ran nicely in this system, serving, ripping and throbbing away at the heart of the system. It also came in handy on occasion when the NDS went back to base and a source component was needed. It didn’t sound too brilliant compared to the NDS but it didn’t sound bad either.

The HDX had a couple of surprises still to throw into the mix.

As will eventually happen with any PC based unit, the HDX failed.  It was sent back to Naim who fixed it up for a reasonable price. It was about £160 for a dead CMOS battery, bleeding facia logo and corrupted boot sector on the SSD.  But I never saw my HDX again. As an interim measure to get some music going, I installed Minimserver on my NAS. Total transformation. After listening to this set up for an evening there was no question of the HDX returning. It just didn’t sound good enough. Yet again, and not for the last time I’m certain, just when I thought we’d got to the best system it was possible for us to have for the budget available, something simple came along and raised it to a higher level. It wasn’t just different, it was better. More natural sounding, more tonally believable, more clarity and separation, more multitracks audible. The HDX had been quite a bottle neck and it was well and truly mugged by NAS/Server.

In conclusion, my subjective view is:

Don’t run an HDX without off unit back up. The most elegant way of doing this is by NAS which can go anywhere in the house/flat. If you are running a NAS, then run a server on it and feed something like NDX. Performance will be equal to and probably superior to HDX. Use your PC/Mac for ripping – which brings me to my last point:

Naim rips aren’t like “standard” rips if you want to listen to WAV, as Naim recommend. The files don’t get tagged. This means that when I moved away from my HDX, I had to tag my whole collection from scratch. Naim use a proprietary system and this is to be discouraged and avoided. If you can’t hear a difference between WAV and FLAC then rip or convert to FLAC and this anomaly is moot.

And whatever you do, wait until Thursday!

The HDX is a nice integrated solution to digital music storage and playback.  Off-unit backup is essential but you should have a networked system anyway, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Had one for over 5 years and still have it as my main source.

Strengths: fine sound (above CDX2 level in my experience) and ease of use. 

Weaknesses: Lacks support for streaming services and BBC HLS support. Slightly buggy software. Mine has been back to the factory for repairs - defective front panel and then power supply. Naim seem to have lost interest in developing it further. 

Wait until tomorrow - likely a new HDX solution is on the horizon.