ND555 Impressions

kmoldskred posted:

....

Edit: After several attempts I finally managed to add a photo. This is in Berlin btw. 

Looks like Using a Berlin based artist to conduct the demo????! The best track on the album (“Curse”) probably describes well our predicament (searching for the ever elusive best SQ?)

Bart posted:

[2]  This point is REALLY interesting - -the psycho-acoustic effect of "knowing" vs. "not-knowing" what is going on.  And I say that with no derision.  Why did I upgrade to the ND555?  Because knowing that there is a better Naim source out there bothered me.  It did start to impair my enjoyment of the music in my home.  So not wanting to be "thinking about" what's going on whilst the music is playing is understandable.  So if "not knowing" what is going on with this crazy streaming stuff is bothering you and impairing your ability to enjoy the music . . . absolutely, listen to cd's!

Interesting prospective indeed. Would you know why it may not have led you to acquire the 552? 

Chag -

Richard Dane posted:

Dustysox posted:

Hi all,

I may of missed this, is the ND555 using the  same firmware as the NDS?

I very much doubt it - it's on a different platform. 

Thank you Richard.

1st September 2018,from this day forth shall be known as ND555 day for Dusty at least....my Referenece Naim streamer will be landing today @ Dusty Towers!!! 

At my age i should know better but I’m so excited....and don’t care!!!!!!!!

Reports to follow after a period, maybe a long period of Dusty inactivity on the forum 

Dustysox posted:

Richard Dane posted:

Dustysox posted:

Hi all,

I may of missed this, is the ND555 using the  same firmware as the NDS?

I very much doubt it - it's on a different platform. 

Thank you Richard.

1st September 2018,from this day forth shall be known as ND555 day for Dusty at least....my Referenece Naim streamer will be landing today @ Dusty Towers!!! 

At my age i should know better but I’m so excited....and don’t care!!!!!!!!

Reports to follow after a period, maybe a long period of Dusty inactivity on the forum 

I am very excited for you Dusty  . Congratulations!

my Naim dealer is going to bring a ND555 over to my house for an in-house demo on Saturday. So I am looking forward to that .  Hope it blows me away with better Sound quality. 

Dusty...

”At my age i should know better but I’m so excited....and don’t care!!!!!!!!”

I hope you will still be able to hear the differences the ND555 will bring into your home, otherwise there are I guess a lot of other members who gladly exchange it to treat their younger ears.......

But seriously, congratulations- your excitement is not for nothing. You get the best source....

Chag... posted:

Bart posted:

[2]  This point is REALLY interesting - -the psycho-acoustic effect of "knowing" vs. "not-knowing" what is going on.  And I say that with no derision.  Why did I upgrade to the ND555?  Because knowing that there is a better Naim source out there bothered me.  It did start to impair my enjoyment of the music in my home.  So not wanting to be "thinking about" what's going on whilst the music is playing is understandable.  So if "not knowing" what is going on with this crazy streaming stuff is bothering you and impairing your ability to enjoy the music . . . absolutely, listen to cd's!

Interesting prospective indeed. Would you know why it may not have led you to acquire the 552? 

Chag -

I have long since happily reconciled myself to the fact that the 500 series sounds better than my 252/300 setup, so it doesn’t bother me that they exist. In funny way, the Statement actually helps because it removes any possibility of getting to the top of the Naim tree. I did feel bothered by the DR upgrades but they were more affordable and good value. Likewise, my LP12 is approximates to Akurate level which is perfectly fine. Basically, my system has evolved to the point where the problems have been cured and further upgrades would hopefully improve rather than fix things.

The problem is there are three Classic pre-amps but only one streamer so I don’t feel like I “know” where the natural stopping point is in the hierarchy. Also, I have a (non-DR) 555PS powering my NDS which further complicates my view of the natural point at which to stop.

It will be interesting to see how the NDX2 fits into the picture, but in the meantime, I admit that it does “bother” me a bit that my NDS has been replaced by a much better but much more expensive product, so I want one but can’t justify the cost. Bugger!

Keith

Bart posted:

Polarbear posted:

[1] For me, there is a simplicity of picking up a CD case, taking the CD out of the case, putting it in the draw and pressing play.

[2]I know exactly what the CD player is doing and there are no unknowns that are going to affect the sound quality of the CDP, what I don't want to be doing is sitting there wondering if WAV is better than Flak or whatever else there is, I don't want to be thinking about what NAS drive sounds better and what ethernet cable I should be using.

I took the liberty of numbering these two points.  Both certainly are valid as they come from your perspective.  My perspective:

[1] I find nothing simple these days about finding the cd I want on a rack of hundreds of cd's, in a dimly lit room.  Nor about putting it away after listening, in precisely the right spot so that I have hopes of finding it another evening, in said dimly lit room.  Or not putting it away, and having a stack, or clutter, etc etc.  Or having to try to read very small text to find the track number of the specific track I want to play.  So, one man's simplicity is another man's nightmare!  Vive la difference.

[2]  This point is REALLY interesting - -the psycho-acoustic effect of "knowing" vs. "not-knowing" what is going on.  And I say that with no derision.  Why did I upgrade to the ND555?  Because knowing that there is a better Naim source out there bothered me.  It did start to impair my enjoyment of the music in my home.  So not wanting to be "thinking about" what's going on whilst the music is playing is understandable.  So if "not knowing" what is going on with this crazy streaming stuff is bothering you and impairing your ability to enjoy the music . . . absolutely, listen to cd's!

Point one is easy   I have la light by my CD collection, I have a three different storage area's, two in the listening room, one by the CDP for currently played CD's. A small unit of about 200 recently played CDs and a rack of long term CD's  that I have played, enjoyed and archived.

Point 2, I am very happy with what I have, it ain't broke and I don't have an itch to scratch re upgrading.

Music for me, is getting back from work pressing play, enjoying and thinking about nothing else.  I took the time ten years ago to get everything right for me and my kit does that perfectly for me, why start changing anything and risk upsetting everything?

Dustysox posted:

Richard Dane posted:

Dustysox posted:

Hi all,

I may of missed this, is the ND555 using the  same firmware as the NDS?

I very much doubt it - it's on a different platform. 

Thank you Richard.

1st September 2018,from this day forth shall be known as ND555 day for Dusty at least....my Referenece Naim streamer will be landing today @ Dusty Towers!!! 

At my age i should know better but I’m so excited....and don’t care!!!!!!!!

Reports to follow after a period, maybe a long period of Dusty inactivity on the forum 

Dusty, your excitement at the imminent arrival of your ND555 makes me smile.  And I'm sure it would make everyone working at the Naim factory smile too. What it's all about.

Polarbear posted: 

Point 2, I am very happy with what I have, it ain't broke and I don't have an itch to scratch re upgrading.

That point so resonates with me.. in the decades I have been pursuing  this hobby of recorded audio replay systems (Hi-Fi) ... I have realised that the urge to upgrade has usually been fuelled by an underlying feeling of dissatisfaction of the end product or when I have moved house and listening environment... no matter how much you convinced yourself otherwise... However there then gets a point in your journey where for you in your  listening environment it all clicks into place... you get that intense feeling of satisfaction from the results produced based on the audio experience in your  envinment.. it’s  not simply based on the sound being produced by the ‘best’ equipment you can get ...  The latter motivation leads to inevitable dissatisfaction and the urge to try and I improve your audio experience as new product appears ... until you get, assuming  you ever do, to the former... 

I do wonder with all these apparent NDS sales... were the owners truly satisfied with it... or was it more it was the best streamer Naim had at the time? For me I was never a fan of the NDS sound, but that is entirely subjective.. it’s a very capable machine... and search back on this forum I wrote a lot about it when the NDS was new... I wonder how many of these new ND555 customers will become truly satisfied with the end results ... or we will see at some point in the future a flood of sales if and  when the ND555-2. To my ears clearly there is a refinement with the ND555 but it’s not so far away from the NDS... I am certainly curious of it .. more  perhaps as an engineer.. but no urge to change my current system to accommodate it.

musicfan51 posted:

Dustysox posted:

Richard Dane posted:

Dustysox posted:

Hi all,

I may of missed this, is the ND555 using the  same firmware as the NDS?

I very much doubt it - it's on a different platform. 

Thank you Richard.

1st September 2018,from this day forth shall be known as ND555 day for Dusty at least....my Referenece Naim streamer will be landing today @ Dusty Towers!!! 

At my age i should know better but I’m so excited....and don’t care!!!!!!!!

Reports to follow after a period, maybe a long period of Dusty inactivity on the forum 

I am very excited for you Dusty  . Congratulations!

my Naim dealer is going to bring a ND555 over to my house for an in-house demo on Saturday. So I am looking forward to that .  Hope it blows me away with better Sound quality. 

As for inactivity on the forum....If you remember the sketch from the Monty Python film “life of Brian”...Dusty Towers could have a crowd of Naim forumites calling out “Can Dusty come out to play again”

Hope you really enjoy your ND555 and music all over again????

Polarbear posted:

...

For me, there is a simplicity of picking up a CD case, taking the CD out of the case, putting it in the draw and pressing play.

...

If you connect a SSD with your music collection to the USB port of an ND555, you should be able to do almost the same: picking up an album takes then place through the Naim app instead of physically browsing the CDs on the shelves. In this setup, the ND555 effectively acts as a SSD player. You do not even need a wired connection to your LAN to use it, a wireless connection is enough.

Network players with bays or inputs for local drives seem to me a very natural evolution of CD players: they give one the possibility of replaying local high resolution files but also files that are stored on LAN devices or on servers of providers of internet streaming services. In many cases, they can also serve local files to other networked devices.

If one is not interested in these networking functionalities, one does not need to care about them in much the same way as a user of a CD player does not need to care about the possibility of senting the digital outputs of the player to external DACs or to other devices: just plug in a SSD, select an album and press play.

Thanks Bert. I'm going to treat myself to a read through the user manual today. I'd like the remote to stay lit for longer if possible.

Compared to the ritual of obtaining vinyl, trying to find the least noisy batch, storing it, handling it, playing it and keeping the TT in trim, CD was a huge convenience gain. Streaming is for me, a comparable jump in user friendliness because of all the added convenience factors. Sound quality comes first, of course.

I have restarted the entire network and also disabled the network standby function. But if a sleeping iPod is woken up, the app takes around six seconds to jump to the current playing position. You would think this a network issue. But the NDS did not do this. Well, maybe a second tops. Curious.

Harry posted:

Thanks Bert. I'm going to treat myself to a read through the user manual today. I'd like the remote to stay lit for longer if possible.

Compared to the ritual of obtaining vinyl, trying to find the least noisy batch, storing it, handling it, playing it and keeping the TT in trim, CD was a huge convenience gain. Streaming is for me, a comparable jump in user friendliness because of all the added convenience factors. Sound quality comes first, of course.

Harry,

Is it supplied with a hard copy manual or is it something which is only available on line?

BTW I was pleased to see that yours beat the forecast delivery date. Maybe I'll get mine at the same time as my NAP500 is returned - the NAP200 is all very well, but it does lack the control of its bigger brother.

Thanks, CB

The Strat (Fender) posted:

Richard Dane posted:

Harry posted:

The Strat (Fender) posted:

 

But I spent quite a bit of time discussing the benefits of the Uniticore vs DbPoweramp.    I have to say I’m impressed with the simplicity of the Core. It performed a perfect rip of one of my classical CDs metadata and all, but equally I recognise the editing capabilities of Db.  

This is interesting. dBpoweramp also does perfect rips and embeds the metadata (which you have full control of pre and post ripping) in the WAV file, not in a separate file which cannot be read by anything except a Naim server. So what is the dealer trying to imply? That a Naim ripper can do something that an application like dBpoweramp cannot? Bullshit alert!

We are each free to use whatever ripping and tagging solution we want. No justification needed. No argument. But when a dealer (or was it Naim&gt tries to justify something by using bullshit, you have to wonder what they are hiding.

Harry, I think you may be jumping to the wrong conclusion here.  I'm not sure I read Strats post the way you did. I'm sure both dbpoweramp and the Core can do "perfect" rips.  I use both myself, but I would guess the discussion was more about the wider issue of an all-in-one no fuss ripper and server solution like the Uniticore vs. the alternative approach using computer, Dbpoweramp, and maybe a NAS with server software onboard.  I may be wrong of course, but then I guess Strat can say for sure...

Exactly that - thanks Richard.   I just didn’t want the integrity of the dealer in question brought into doubt because he was nothing but impartial.  

Regards,

Lindsay

Thank you Lindsay and Richard too. Our clients know how we try our hardest to find the best/most appropriate solutions.

Kind regards,

Peter

Chag... posted:

Bart posted:

[2]  This point is REALLY interesting - -the psycho-acoustic effect of "knowing" vs. "not-knowing" what is going on.  And I say that with no derision.  Why did I upgrade to the ND555?  Because knowing that there is a better Naim source out there bothered me.  It did start to impair my enjoyment of the music in my home.  So not wanting to be "thinking about" what's going on whilst the music is playing is understandable.  So if "not knowing" what is going on with this crazy streaming stuff is bothering you and impairing your ability to enjoy the music . . . absolutely, listen to cd's!

Interesting prospective indeed. Would you know why it may not have led you to acquire the 552? 

Chag -

Sure.  Because there are other variables besides 'what is the best?'  Including not ending up with a living room that "looks like a hi fi show room."  I've got 5 levels of Fraim, and don't want 10. But will a move to 252/300 vs 250DR gnaw at me over time? Sure.  But that means one more level, and ideally splitting the Fraim into 2...which is not my preferred room decor.

Cymbiosis posted:

The Strat (Fender) posted:

Richard Dane posted:

Harry posted:

The Strat (Fender) posted:

 

But I spent quite a bit of time discussing the benefits of the Uniticore vs DbPoweramp.    I have to say I’m impressed with the simplicity of the Core. It performed a perfect rip of one of my classical CDs metadata and all, but equally I recognise the editing capabilities of Db.  

This is interesting. dBpoweramp also does perfect rips and embeds the metadata (which you have full control of pre and post ripping) in the WAV file, not in a separate file which cannot be read by anything except a Naim server. So what is the dealer trying to imply? That a Naim ripper can do something that an application like dBpoweramp cannot? Bullshit alert!

We are each free to use whatever ripping and tagging solution we want. No justification needed. No argument. But when a dealer (or was it Naim&gt tries to justify something by using bullshit, you have to wonder what they are hiding.

Harry, I think you may be jumping to the wrong conclusion here.  I'm not sure I read Strats post the way you did. I'm sure both dbpoweramp and the Core can do "perfect" rips.  I use both myself, but I would guess the discussion was more about the wider issue of an all-in-one no fuss ripper and server solution like the Uniticore vs. the alternative approach using computer, Dbpoweramp, and maybe a NAS with server software onboard.  I may be wrong of course, but then I guess Strat can say for sure...

Exactly that - thanks Richard.   I just didn’t want the integrity of the dealer in question brought into doubt because he was nothing but impartial.  

Regards,

Lindsay

Thank you Lindsay and Richard too. Our clients know how we try our hardest to find the best/most appropriate solutions.

Kind regards,

 

Peter

Peter

Good to see you back on the forum and I hope comments by others taken out of context won’t discourage your continued presence.

i’ve noticed less frequent postings from yourself and other dealers over recent times, which for me is a shame, as you guys live with Naim (and other) equipment every day which places you in a great position to express professional opinion to those of us who have much less time available to form a balanced opinion.

So please do keep on posting!,

Peter

Harry posted:

I have restarted the entire network and also disabled the network standby function. But if a sleeping iPod is woken up, the app takes around six seconds to jump to the current playing position. You would think this a network issue. But the NDS did not do this. Well, maybe a second tops. Curious.

I have similar issues the connectivity is not working well. Especially after you lay down your iPad. Haven’t found out why yet. Annoying while not a huge problem.

1st September 201814:22 switch on....I’m gone....solid gone!!

I’ve waited a long time for a Naim Reference Streamer....that time is now.

I’ll be back 

Come on Dusty, throw us a freakin' bone.

Well done Darren. Have fun.

As well as the wake up lag, the remote is now not lighting up when picked up. Perhaps a battery change?

New batteries worked. So it doesn't look like the movement sensor is on the blink. Now we'll see how long today's fresh batteries last.

DrPo posted:

kmoldskred posted:

....

Edit: After several attempts I finally managed to add a photo. This is in Berlin btw. 

Looks like Using a Berlin based artist to conduct the demo????! The best track on the album (“Curse”) probably describes well our predicament (searching for the ever elusive best SQ?)

2x ND555 or what are those streamers?

From left to right top shelf: ND5XS2 (not demoed) ND555 and NDX2

Thanks- NDX2 w/ PSU? Would love to hear this set-up...