ND555 Impressions

If you want another one which nicely displays the qualities of the machine have a listen to this album, and especially this song...

We should all keep sharing and get this to 2000 replies :-)

I posted a while back that my ND555 sounded too strident and unfocused with two PS and reverted to one which I preferred. However, I tried two again yesterday and there were big gains over the single supply  with no stridency this time and much better organised soundstage.

So my earlier experience must have been a run-in effect as it sounds amazing now after a few ups and downs along the way.

I never got round to trying the single power supply, but folks reporting performance up and downs have probably been overlooking the fact there may well be some of the process going on with the new supplied Burndy cables.

I was tempted to keep my existing ones, but thought "nah, they'll sort themselves out over the first few weeks". 

Jonn posted:

I posted a while back that my ND555 sounded too strident and unfocused with two PS and reverted to one which I preferred. However, I tried two again yesterday and there were big gains over the single supply  with no stridency this time and much better organised soundstage.

So my earlier experience must have been a run-in effect as it sounds amazing now after a few ups and downs along the way.

This often happens in my experience. Also the run-in can be worse with some systems than others. Mine is going through the ups and downs of run-in now: very dull, then over-sharp screeching, then back...like a wave of distortion with a period of several hours.

Other than the run-in things are going well and there are glimpses of the experience I had with the well run-in demo ND555 so I await mine to get further there in a couple of weeks.

DB.

dave marshall posted:

I never got round to trying the single power supply, but folks reporting performance up and downs have probably been overlooking the fact there may well be some of the process going on with the new supplied Burndy cables.

I was tempted to keep my existing ones, but thought "nah, they'll sort themselves out over the first few weeks". 

My thoughts exactly Dave and as I traded my CD555 against the ND555, I thought it only right that the new owner should have the original run-in CD burndies and the new player should have its new cables. 

Whilst on the subject obviously the old CD555 burndies work fine with the ND555, but I wonder if there is any difference in the pin configuration? Andy from Signals thought there might be one pin different when I asked him but he wasn’t absolutely sure.

I am on week 10 now with the ND555 and I would say run in has stabilised now and it is sounding truly amazing day after day. Remember I did already have two very well run in power supplies.

Michael posted:

dave marshall posted:

I never got round to trying the single power supply, but folks reporting performance up and downs have probably been overlooking the fact there may well be some of the process going on with the new supplied Burndy cables.

I was tempted to keep my existing ones, but thought "nah, they'll sort themselves out over the first few weeks". 

My thoughts exactly Dave and as I traded my CD555 against the ND555, I thought it only right that the new owner should have the original run-in CD burndies and the new player should have its new cables. 

Whilst on the subject obviously the old CD555 burndies work fine with the ND555, but I wonder if there is any difference in the pin configuration? Andy from Signals thought there might be one pin different when I asked him but he wasn’t absolutely sure.

I am on week 10 now with the ND555 and I would say run in has stabilised now and it is sounding truly amazing day after day. Remember I did already have two very well run in power supplies.

So you think it may take longer than 4 weeks to run in or burn in the ND555? That it may be closer to two months ? Is that correct ? Like a 1000 hours or more ? 

I keep hearing from people that Roon sounds better than streaming from any NAS or UnitiCore. Does anyone know why ?  I have not tried Roon,  I am tempted to . 

Find out how Roon actually works in the specific implementation you will use.
If it is done in some implementations it pulls the data all over the place and is not what I'd what to have - in another mode - on the target data Server - it works far better and keeps the music data more direct.

Roon does look good and has a wonderful user interface.

I've found the implementation of the interface between Database Server to ND555 is rather important to get right and at least audition the implementation fist.

In my case I can't run Roon application on the Melco where my Music is and it will have to control the Melco from Roon hosted on another box - and my Dealer showed me Roon and said that the data can end-up going all over the network and sounding worse - the UI is great still, but if I have an ND555 I want to keep the quality of replay so make sure you get it implemented correct.

DB.

musicfan51 posted:

Michael posted:

dave marshall posted:

I never got round to trying the single power supply, but folks reporting performance up and downs have probably been overlooking the fact there may well be some of the process going on with the new supplied Burndy cables.

I was tempted to keep my existing ones, but thought "nah, they'll sort themselves out over the first few weeks". 

I am on week 10 now with the ND555 and I would say run in has stabilised now and it is sounding truly amazing day after day. Remember I did already have two very well run in power supplies.

So you think it may take longer than 4 weeks to run in or burn in the ND555? That it may be closer to two months ? Is that correct ? Like a 1000 hours or more ? 

I would say that after four weeks you are pretty much there and will get consistently excellent performance. The new player does seem much less variable during the first few weeks of use than other pieces of kit I have purchased,  notably Pre/Power Amps and Super Lumina cables. 

We have of course discussed run-in of various bits of kit ad nauseum over the years here in various threads... so let’s not divert from the main core of this thread ND555 impressions.

is it all in the mind? .... who knows!!! I certainly don’t.

musicfan51 posted:

I keep hearing from people that Roon sounds better than streaming from any NAS or UnitiCore. Does anyone know why ?  I have not tried Roon,  I am tempted to . 

Roon certainly doesn’t sound any better than regular UPnP streaming from a NAS to me, and I don’t recall hearing of anyone claiming that it did. There may be small differences in sound quality depending on how you run Roon on your network. I found it to sound a little worse on a MacBook Pro over WiFi compared to a wired Ethernet connection. 

Do the free trial, though. You might like it, and there’s nothing to lose by trying. 

Does the equipment need to be passing a signal (i.e.playing music) in order to run-in, or does it just need to be switched on? If the former then wouldn’t it make more sense to quote run-in time in hours of operation rather than weeks? Or are you guys suggesting that running in means leaving it on repeat play with the amplifier muted overnight and just leaving it like that for several weeks? 

Clive B posted:

Does the equipment need to be passing a signal (i.e.playing music) in order to run-in, or does it just need to be switched on? If the former then wouldn’t it make more sense to quote run-in time in hours of operation rather than weeks? Or are you guys suggesting that running in means leaving it on repeat play with the amplifier muted overnight and just leaving it like that for several weeks? 

Clive, when mine was installed the dealer said leave it on repeat when not listening and this should speed up the burn in hope this helps.

Mine has been like this for a month and is sounding rather nice at the moment but I did also have a new 555PS at the same time how much this has influenced the burn in is hard to judge.

Sucking amps will do it. I have mine playing 24/7 too. Can't hurt. I'll do this until the end the month.

Clive B posted:

Does the equipment need to be passing a signal (i.e.playing music) in order to run-in, or does it just need to be switched on? If the former then wouldn’t it make more sense to quote run-in time in hours of operation rather than weeks? Or are you guys suggesting that running in means leaving it on repeat play with the amplifier muted overnight and just leaving it like that for several weeks? 

I've found it is a combination of both playing music of different kinds and elapsed time. In general I find the most difficult items can take several weeks to get them sounding right and other items seem to run-in with fewer nasty effects.

I found the SL interconnect cables were a long haul to run-in before they ceased to annoy me more than reveal music. Another bad item was the old NAP500 which took a goof 5 or 6 weeks to get the raw edge off it and open-out, whilst the DR 500 did not run-in the same and was more dull at first. Some of it is personal as I really don't like bright harsh effects - and with an Active system if you have them introduced they hit you more.

...as to the ND555 - it is running-in nicely and gone through some big ups (into harsh) and downs (into dull) and is now somewhere in-between with occasional bright and some occasional over-full-blown bass - but things I've heard Naim run-in do before.

My ND555 did a firmware update today of its own volition too.

DB.

It was: 3.0.0.3944

DB.

Darke Bear posted:

It was: 3.0.0.3944

DB.

Thanks . It  will not update ! Failed both times ! 

Hi has anyone found a way of switching the display off??? I was wondering if there were any beta testers ... who could ask / request it...

Richieroo posted:

Hi has anyone found a way of switching the display off??? I was wondering if there were any beta testers ... who could ask / request it...

Go into the home screen and using the remote select settings you will see display option open that setting and you will have the option screen on\off  select off you can also change the colour setting of the icons if required.

Richieroo posted:

Hi has anyone found a way of switching the display off??? I was wondering if there were any beta testers ... who could ask / request it...

If you access the front screen menus, using the remote, then under "settings" > "display", the first option is to turn the screen off during playback.

Beat me to it, PCD!

Yes and it works very well, and stays off. Not sure about the SQ benefit as mine with new burndies had a bit of an off day yesterday...now bounced back.

This album again nicely enables the ND555 to play all it strengths. Just listen how the bass and drums sound on this album. And especially the drums and the decay of the lower toms show something which the NDS wouldn’t be capable of. So incredible natural, so musically warm...

On the burn in time, I tend to favour allowing it to happen in real listening time. That way I can savour the sound improving through all its moods. I would not want to rush our getting to know each other.

Further to Bert's ECM recommendation of the Brio, Bill Frisell's Small Town, also with Thomas Morgan, is an entertaining listen, with exceptional sound for a live recording.

Sorry I meant Bro not Brio, I must have been thinking Con Brio, music with great energy, indeed ....