ND555 Impressions
Posted by: Bert Schurink on 26 July 2018
The Beast will arrive and will be installed tomorrow morning in my system. So I thought it was a good moment to open up a thread with the fist experiences, also giving others the possibility to share their first impressions with the beast.
I feeel a bit like a little child who has his birthday tomorrow. I assume that even while it will be nice weather during the weekend that I will be a spending a lot of hours with my system.
And as expected my car will not arrive before the ND555.
To other owners how bright is your Naim logo on the ND555? Mine is very very dim barely visible in daylight and much dimmer than the rest of my Naim kit.
Yes that only controls the lights on the four buttons.
As I have already said the brightness button on the remote only toggles the brightness of the four buttons on my unit, the Naim logo is constant. However, I have now discovered that if I set the buttons to full brightness on the remote and then press the top power button, when I press power again the logo is restored to full brightness. Now we have it..... this is what the quick start guide should say......
Pressing the brightness button on the remote toggles the brightness of the buttons through three levels of brightness. Whichever setting you have on the buttons when you press the power button to put the unit into sleep mode and then press it again to wake it up the Naim logo will illuminate to the level last set by the remote, dim, medium or full brightness.
Maybe not so quick to be accurately explained in the quick start guide!! Anyhow it works for me!
Yes, I noticed the dim logo feature a couple of days ago, but a power cycle restored it to full brightness. Changing the logo brightness would only be useful to me if I could do the same on all my boxes which is clearly impossible without reengineering.
Yeah I think the instruction manual type of support could be better. It's a bit hit and miss to find out what it possible and what's not.
Far from it Alba your helpful suggestion pointed me in the right direction and got me experimenting to find out if a solution to the problem was possible so please don’t feel you have to hold back and I apologise if I caused you to think this way it was not intended. Yes the quick start guide leaves a lot to be desired. Do we presume that a full PDF user manual will at some point appear on the Naim support page?
It’s all part of a gradual move back to Olive styling. My olive preamp had a much dimmer green light than the power amp.
Generally ......... I have always found Naim manuals extremely 'light' (this is a criticism)- I think their idea is to rely on the dealer network (shoot me down if i am wrong)
I think Naim are just following a general trend away from printed manuals, which started with the likes of Apple. It's not an issue for me providing that the online help available is complete and fully searchable. Naim's support section is okay, but not brilliant, so hopefully will improve over time as people's questions drive better answers. Also, with 'agile' software development methodologies, it's common for particular feature to be dropped from a release candidate if it's not quite ready and this can get missed by the support documentation. No excuse, but fairly common nonetheless.
You are probably right, not for getting our collective knowledge on the forum of course!
I am getting very close to pressing the ok button ...... more financial pain - but musical gain. I have been offered a pretty good trade in on my NDS........ doh.
Michael posted:You are probably right, not for getting our collective knowledge on the forum of course!
Hmmm... An "Users ND555 User Manual" … could be an interesting idea...
enjoy
/ken
It's great to hear of people enjoying the ND555 so much, but in this thread I hear of people 'still hanging onto their CD555 as it's not worth much traded in' and 'got a NAC552 but still have a NAC52'. Why can't you sell these on and let people like me who could never afford an ND555 (or a used CD555 actually) at least a chance to buy better used stuff! Please don't let decent gear gather dust in your cupboards; even if you don't get a great price for it think of others who could be enjoying it. Pass it down the line!
tonybabawalla posted:It's great to hear of people enjoying the ND555 so much, but in this thread I hear of people 'still hanging onto their CD555 as it's not worth much traded in' and 'got a NAC552 but still have a NAC52'. Why can't you sell these on and let people like me who could never afford an ND555 (or a used CD555 actually) at least a chance to buy better used stuff! Please don't let decent gear gather dust in your cupboards; even if you don't get a great price for it think of others who could be enjoying it. Pass it down the line!
I assure you that I will be doing that with my NDS, despite the disappointingly low trade in values that they're attracting.
Richieroo posted:I am getting very close to pressing the ok button ...... more financial pain - but musical gain. I have been offered a pretty good trade in on my NDS........ doh.
Just press regrets are for the afterlife....
If it's going to give you endless hours of enjoyment, relaxation etc,. then surely for you it's money well spent.
My mates and work colleagues think I am totally mad with my spending habits and to a degree I can see their point of view.
Do I care? Nope
Will I stop? Nope
Life is too short and none of us know what's around the corner.
Life is for living.
As Nike would say "Just Do It".
Very interesting thread !
Thanks Bert for all your comments and impressions.
I'll probably order a ND555 
I'm still waiting for the new set of cables to arrive. I ordered the Super Lumina DIN-DIN, DIN-XLR and speaker cables. But the DIN-XLR isn't yet arrived at my dealer's (more then 2 month waiting for them..). I'm planning to change all the cables at once 
I'll order the ND555 after the burn in period of the Super Lumina set.
- Bert Schurink posted:
Also a change with the NDS is the remote control. I never used it with the NDS. But with the ND555 I already use it intensively for normal actions. It’s solid works everywhere. So my use scenario will become selecting an album through my iPad Mini, everything else through the remote.
I want a ND555 pretty badly after reading your posts Bert. I have to figure what I can get for my NDS and see if I can swing it . I bought it new Naim NDS in 2015 and I Am hoping I get something decent for it in reselling it. The ND555 is $20K here and that is not chump change! The wife will have to be convinced. But it sounds like it is worth it . Music is a big part of my life so hopefully I can get one . Congratulations on your purchase Bert.
Bert Schurink posted:
Just press regrets are for the afterlife....
Perfectly summarised.......
I bought a s/h NDS about a year and half ago - will be trading it for what I paid for it.........I am reasonably happy.
tonybabawalla posted:It's great to hear of people enjoying the ND555 so much, but in this thread I hear of people 'still hanging onto their CD555 as it's not worth much traded in' and 'got a NAC552 but still have a NAC52'. Why can't you sell these on and let people like me who could never afford an ND555 (or a used CD555 actually) at least a chance to buy better used stuff! Please don't let decent gear gather dust in your cupboards; even if you don't get a great price for it think of others who could be enjoying it. Pass it down the line!
My dealer is aware that I am more than willing to let my CD555 head unit go to new home where it will be loved.
That is going to give allot of pleasure ......... to one lucky person........
Very helpful to read this post, and special thanks to Bert for sharing so generously!
I have pulled the trigger for a ND555 and cannot wait to sneak it into the rack w/o family noticing.
the best is still ahead
Lars
You will enjoy it Lars, but remember the big colour screen... disable the album art view or your family will spot the difference!
Very good advice Dave :-)