ND555 Impressions

Gazza posted:

musicfan51 posted:

Gazza posted:

I know it’s a real ask.....I lived in the states many moons ago. My neighbour was blown away by my Naim CDS/282/Hucsp, active NAP250 into SBL,s, until he heard the cost. He preferred his parcel of land up northern Michigan, snowmobiles, boat, jet ski etc etc. Different land with perhaps more options on how to spend the hard earned cash than we have in the U.K.

You have a nice system Gazza ! 

That was my old system......now on Nova, nap 300, PMC 25.26.....thinking of moving to nd555 and 252.

Hi Gazza, I’m interested in your Nova/NAP 300 set up. What does the 300 add to the Nova? With the 300 rated at 90W and the Nova at 80W, is there a big lift in power and sound quality?

nbpf posted:

It seems to be common wisdom that the new ND555 compares very favourably to the NDS and that the NDS roughly compares to tha Naim DAC. I am actually quite happy with a Naim DAC and I am not very obsessed with sound quality. Thus, to me, the interesting question is how the NDX2 will compare to the Naim DAC. The NDX2 has of course ethernet inputs. The old nDAC has plenty of S/PDIF inputs but no usable USB inputs and no ethernet inputs. We will see ...   

Clearly what we need is an NDAC2 - I believe that there's a fair number of us who are looking for a meaningful upgrade without having to gain a BTEC in home networking - Come on Naim! (and if you happen to be listening could we have a version with / without an internal PS!).

I did ask Steve Sells about a new dac based on the ND555 when the forum visited in April, he politely declined to comment on future products. That did not stop HH asking about a new 272, he fared a little better with  Trevor Wilson acknowledging that not everyone wants lots of boxes......but nothing more.

analogmusic posted:

I would been keen to know what network equipment Naim used to develop the ND555

thats the one I would use for myself.

 

Hi,

We use all sorts of network kit here whilst we are developing products - nothing that you guys would consider "audiophile" though as we need to make sure that the kit works well on consumer grade / domestic network hardware so we typically use routers and switches from NetGear / LinkSys / TPLink etc.

Best

Phil

Phil Harris posted:

We use all sorts of network kit here whilst we are developing products - nothing that you guys would consider "audiophile"

Phil - you've shattered the illusion. There we were thinking you were using some fancy networking kit with the internal PS ripped out and modified to run off dual 555PS supplies (all mounted on a Fraim of course).

You'll be telling us you use bog standard Ethernet cables next

Well certainly without the screen, they were at pains to tell us how much extra effort went into recovering sound quality once the screen was added. I would be surprised if another new product with the “old” and much loved B.B. 1704k dac chipset is ever launched, and someone at Naim has said that. More likely one of the newer chips they use in NDX2 or Nova? 

Gazza posted:

Well certainly without the screen, they were at pains to tell us how much extra effort went into recovering sound quality once the screen was added.

I thought the new display was easier to 'deal' with than the old screen, Lower power consumption and electrically quiet being the main benefits.

Well that was the gist of what I heard, they even said that screen manufacturers were moving the technology so fast, they were on their third screen type before they had even launched.

james n posted:

Phil Harris posted:

We use all sorts of network kit here whilst we are developing products - nothing that you guys would consider "audiophile"

Phil - you've shattered the illusion. There we were thinking you were using some fancy networking kit .....

There is when debugging... ...  I’d like to see a consumer device offering a span port for WIreshark 

Some of the traces I saw were rather enlightening..

Have just pressed the go button........... will be taking delivery end of September.........excited 

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

james n posted:

Phil Harris posted:

We use all sorts of network kit here whilst we are developing products - nothing that you guys would consider "audiophile"

Phil - you've shattered the illusion. There we were thinking you were using some fancy networking kit .....

There is when debugging... ...  I’d like to see a consumer device offering a span port for WIreshark 

Some of the traces I saw were rather enlightening..

Hi Simon,

Yes, of course we had other kit that we can use when debugging but day to day we run very much consumer grade local networks when developing kit and even some pretty old consumer grade kit has the ability to port mirror - even the NetGear GS724T that I have on my test stack here will do it and I've often used old network hubs to do the same on occasions.

Of course we have a corporate LAN that most of those personal networks uplink to so we tend to run various cable routers whose WAN ports are then connected to the corporate LAN to get access to the outside world via our "big fat pipe" (tm) but we also have ADSL and VDSL links that are used as various levels of failover and are also available to us for testing when we need to use them.

When we are doing shows and events we tend to use Linksys EA series routers or similar (I have an EA7500 on my own test setup here and the dem room is still running on the EA6300 that I set up in there a few years ago) as they are solid and reliable but we have kit from pretty much across the spectrum of manufacturers.

We often hear people saying that you need to spend a fortune on a router for it to "work" properly with our kit (or that we need some kind of special functionality to be supported for our kit to work on a router) but that simply isn't the case - it just needs to work correctly - so there have been occasions when I've had to get "flaky" installs stable and I've simply dropped in a £25 TPLink cable router from Argos into the system and run everything off that and things have suddenly all just pulled together and worked as you would expect.

Obviously we have played about with various network devices from a sound quality perspective but generally you can so very easily undo any perceived gains that you might get from - say - dropping in some supposedly great sounding switch that we don't have such "tweaked" systems running on our desks.

Cheers

Phil  

Richieroo posted:

Have just pressed the go button........... will be taking delivery end of September.........excited 

congratulations! … and 'excited' is not unexpected...! wont be long...

enjoy

/ken

Phil - i think everyone has ran off to buy a linksys ea7500 

Phil, indeed, and with the new streamers there is nice decoupling from boutique home network equipment.... just let your music play and disconnect the Ethernet lead... what do you notice 

I had a ND555 on demo last weekend I would'nt even try to  put into words the qualities of the ND555 suffice to say that any long term resistance would be futile.

I have done the number crunching excercise with my dealer regarding part exchange of my NDX and XPSdr power supply, will visit on Tuesday to confirm the order for a ND555 and a 555PS Power Supply, like RICHIEROO I am excited.

Richieroo posted:

Have just pressed the go button........... will be taking delivery end of September.........excited 

Congratulations, you will not be disappointed. 

Obsydian posted:

Phil - i think everyone has ran off to buy a linksys ea7500 

When I first picked one up they were £150-ish but I recently picked up a few for £39 (I try to keep a few different routers at home for when I'm setting up networks for friends or if I need to set up a temporary 4G "hotspot" network when we go away somewhere) ... the last EA8500 I got I bought for £49.

Myself, at home, I use a Ubiquiti USG, a Unifi Cloudkey and a few Unifi UAP access points (which I'll admit can be pretty scary to set up if you come to them from an ISP supplied router where you don't have to set up anything) but that's because I just don't want to have the hassle of others in the house complaining to me that "the internet's rubbish" when they're getting 600mS pings on Fortnite (grrrrr!).

Phil

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Phil, indeed, and with the new streamers there is nice decoupling from boutique home network equipment.... just let your music play and disconnect the Ethernet lead... what do you notice 

I’ve certainly been a network tweaker in the past, so was really pleased to see the new streamers take great care to isolate the network and streaming section from the DAC stage. I’ll try the unplug and listen test, but based on my experience so far with the ND555 I’ll be astounded if it makes any difference.

Phil Harris posted:

Obsydian posted:

Phil - i think everyone has ran off to buy a linksys ea7500 

When I first picked one up they were £150-ish but I recently picked up a few for £39 (I try to keep a few different routers at home for when I'm setting up networks for friends or if I need to set up a temporary 4G "hotspot" network when we go away somewhere) ... the last EA8500 I got I bought for £49.

Myself, at home, I use a Ubiquiti USG, a Unifi Cloudkey and a few Unifi UAP access points (which I'll admit can be pretty scary to set up if you come to them from an ISP supplied router where you don't have to set up anything) but that's because I just don't want to have the hassle of others in the house complaining to me that "the internet's rubbish" when they're getting 600mS pings on Fortnite (grrrrr!).

Phil

Aha don't deny people their Fortnite ????

Phil Harris posted:

Myself, at home, I use a Ubiquiti USG, a Unifi Cloudkey and a few Unifi UAP access points (which I'll admit can be pretty scary to set up if you come to them from an ISP supplied router where you don't have to set up anything) but that's because I just don't want to have the hassle of others in the house complaining to me that "the internet's rubbish" when they're getting 600mS pings on Fortnite (grrrrr!).

Pretty similar here... well they are not too scary, the guide is pretty straightforward, and basic fully capable functionality is pretty easy to setup albeit a little more involved than a basic locked down ISP or off the shelf broadband router... but boy those Unifi APs do allow a truly effective home Wifi network that can be quite happy to support hidef  streaming... and with multiple APs cooperating, you really have a top class Wifi setup and you then really understand the true benefit, flexibility and power of Wifi .. and will make you wonder how you previously coped with a little broadband router Wifi in a corner of a room somewhere.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Phil, indeed, and with the new streamers there is nice decoupling from boutique home network equipment.... just let your music play and disconnect the Ethernet lead... what do you notice 

As I'm sure you can understand - when get home at night the last thing I want to do is start "tweaking" my audio system setup so I just make sure that it's good and solid and I always said to myself that if my NDX didn't sound good enough then I wouldn't get into changing cables or network hardware, I'd just get an NDS. Have an NDX2 at home at the moment.

 Anyway, she who must be obeyed won't stand for some inanimate object getting more attention than her.

Phil

Phil, Have you got a power supply on the NDX2 or just bare?

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Phil Harris posted:

Myself, at home, I use a Ubiquiti USG, a Unifi Cloudkey and a few Unifi UAP access points (which I'll admit can be pretty scary to set up if you come to them from an ISP supplied router where you don't have to set up anything) but that's because I just don't want to have the hassle of others in the house complaining to me that "the internet's rubbish" when they're getting 600mS pings on Fortnite (grrrrr!).

Pretty similar here... well they are not too scary, the guide is pretty straightforward, and basic fully capable functionality is pretty easy to setup albeit a little more involved than a basic locked down ISP or off the shelf broadband router... but boy those Unifi APs do allow a truly effective home Wifi network that can be quite happy to support hidef  streaming... and with multiple APs cooperating, you really have a top class Wifi setup and you then really understand the true benefit, flexibility and power of Wifi .. and will make you wonder how you previously coped with a little broadband router Wifi in a corner of a room somewhere.

Just remember Simon that we're used to playing with them ... but yes, they aren't "difficult" if you spend a couple of hours just working through the many setup guides (there are some good ones on YouTube from a guy who posts under the name of "Crossover Networks" IIRC).

Agreed completely though that once you have used a "decent" WiFi network you don't ever want to go back - it just becomes an "appliance" - and you can also see whether someone is caning your network or being a bandwidth hog and if you wish to do so then limit them. In my setup I have a separate WiFi network for the kids (their devices are blacklisted from the main WiFi network just in case they manage to get the main network passphrase) on their own segregated VLAN so that they can't do anything nefarious with the "grown ups" machines (more accurately if they download any malware then it can't get to our machines) and that WiFi network is also on a timed schedule so no (yeah right!) arguments about bedtimes!

Cheers

Phil

andrew jameson posted:

nbpf posted:

It seems to be common wisdom that the new ND555 compares very favourably to the NDS and that the NDS roughly compares to tha Naim DAC. I am actually quite happy with a Naim DAC and I am not very obsessed with sound quality. Thus, to me, the interesting question is how the NDX2 will compare to the Naim DAC. The NDX2 has of course ethernet inputs. The old nDAC has plenty of S/PDIF inputs but no usable USB inputs and no ethernet inputs. We will see ...   

Clearly what we need is an NDAC2 - I believe that there's a fair number of us who are looking for a meaningful upgrade without having to gain a BTEC in home networking - Come on Naim! (and if you happen to be listening could we have a version with / without an internal PS!).

They could probably make a version of the ND555 without streaming card and without screen quite easily, that should bring a perceivable improvement over the old DAC.

I do not think that one needs to be a network expert to use the streaming capabilities of the new devices. But these obviously add to the price and I do not see the point of buying a ND555 (or even an NDX2) and then use only their S/PDIF inputs. Thus, a nDAC2 would make sense from a user perspective. Whether it makes sense for Naim, I do not know.

I can also see the advantage of all-in-one devices that support streaming from local drives (via USB), attached players (via S/PDIF) and remote servers (via ethernet). The ND555 and the upcoming NDX2 appear to have these capabilities. Their hardware is probably excellent but I am still skeptical about the software package. From what I have understood so far, it is still in a preliminary stage: the UPnP server and the software documentation are lacking, the support for gapless replay of Qobuz streams seems to be a bit shaky and fixing bugs takes quite some time, which is not a good sign. 

Thus, no matter what Naim comes up with, I will likely wait and see how things evolve. My current system sounds fine enough for me, I am not really looking after ultimate sound quality and I do not want to make steps backwards in terms of support for metadata and maintenance of my music collection. 

Gazza posted:

Phil, Have you got a power supply on the NDX2 or just bare?

At the moment I have it running on the internal PSU ... I haven't popped my XPS-2 onto it yet just because I couldn't face disturbing the jungle of cables behind the rack.

Phil