Does the Naim ND5 XS have RAM type internal memory?
Posted by: Daniel H. on 14 December 2017
I have been enjoying my new Naim ND5 XS for about a month now. I play music from a hard drive on a Mac Mini, that is on the same network as the ND5 XS. I don't use wifi; all connections are by ethernet cables. The whole network is hooked up to the Internet. I also listen to Tidal and Internet radio.
I had assumed, that when playing music from the hard drive on my Mac Mini, that the ND5 was streaming or pulling the bits continually. So, if I shut off the Mac mini, the music would immediately stop. Yesterday, I stopped the playback with the Naim app, switched over to Internet radio for about 20 seconds. I then came cack to upnp play and hit the play button. The album that had been playing from my Mac mini resumed playing, even though the Mac Mini had been shut off for over a minute.
The only way this is possible, is if the ND5 loads a whole album into its internal memory (the Naim app indicates "12 songs added" if I start playing an album with 12 tracks, etc.), and then plays the album back from its own internal memory. But, I cannot find any specs on internal RAM capacity. Usually manufacturers include this information.
If the ND5 works this way by playing back music from its own internal memory, that would be a much better solution than streaming continually from the hard drive on the network. It would pretty much render the quality of the ethernet cables unimportant, but that is another topic.