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.
Darke Bear posted:Yes - it has to or it won't work!
Naim could have you buy them separately. Just making sure there are no hidden costs !
musicfan51 posted:Darke Bear posted:Yes - it has to or it won't work!
Naim could have you buy them separately. Just making sure there are no hidden costs !
If I decide to trade-in my CD555 (still a decision ahead) then I'll probably retain the old burned-in leads as I'm using these now and they sound great and donate the new ND555 ones onward with the CD555. Unless of course I try them and they are better!
Yes you get all needed leads to make the ND555 or CD555 work.
DB.
Darke Bear posted:musicfan51 posted:Darke Bear posted:Yes - it has to or it won't work!
Naim could have you buy them separately. Just making sure there are no hidden costs !
If I decide to trade-in my CD555 (still a decision ahead) then I'll probably retain the old burned-in leads as I'm using these now and they sound great and donate the new ND555 ones onward with the CD555. Unless of course I try them and they are better!
Yes you get all needed leads to make the ND555 or CD555 work.
DB.
What are you using for interconnects between ND555 to your Preamp ?
Darke Bear posted:I'm here - just been demoing the top Melco (SSD) vs the next one down (Normal Drives).
Got Minim Server going and did Twonky vs Minim too.
In short - differences and preferences rather than the 'all better or worse' that many may want as definitive answers. This is all personal subjective anyway.
In my system it is going down to what dives the most open dynamic rendering with best bass quality - that appears to be middle Melco and Twonky Server for me.
The SSD Melso does do some things a lot better and if I get it to equal the next one down in Bass quality then I'd like a lot of what it does - more refined in HF and aspects of mid-band. But for raw unrestrained energy and bass resolution I'm presently preferring the middle Melco model - and since it is a lot less expensive that also helps, as I want the top one to do all the middle one does and then add its extra qualities. To be fair in many systems you may not really hear it the same.
Same with the Minim Server - I like how it handles mid-band but it sounds a bit flat compared to Twonky and the latter has obviously better deep bass that is hard to give-up.
So I'm continuing along my path and slowing getting to a focus that works for me - I think.
The Melco solution does work very well - once you use a rubbish cheap Ethernet with it!
DB.
These things are so system dependent. Much as I didn't want to find the more expensive, SSD Melco better than the HDD model, this definitely wasn't the case in my system. Admittedly, my model, the N1ZA, and the HDD version, have now been superceded. The differences between the two models isn't just down to the HDs - casework, power supply, connections are all improvements in the N1Z in terms of materials and construction.
Interesting what you're finding with Minimerver Vs. the Melco's Twonky Gary. I used the latter for a while before Minimserver became available, then switched because Minimeserver was marginally better. However, since then Melco have issued an update to their PnP, so maybe I should give that a try (it's not a good idea to have both types running at the same time) - if I can be bothered!
As I read of the difficulties and complications folk seem to have with their ethernet-based streaming systems, I'm rather pleased I stuck with the direct, async. USB connection.