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.
Bert Schurink posted:I just had THE first problem with my ND555 - i had THE music from 2l in 384hz which according to the specs should work however every so many seconds the music stops to resume to the next section. So perhaps forced to downsample to 192, kind of a dissapointment ....
I'm having a similar/same problem with my nDAC.
According to specs, both ND555 and nDAC should be able to read up to 768kHz.
I opened a thread related to that :
https://forums.naimaudio.com/t...n-t-read-hirez-flacs
I was planning to order a ND555 but finally won't until this problem is sorted out... 
Still in run-in mode here with mine for week 3. Periods of excellence then some murky-dullness of sheer-sharpness as it continues on the run-in - it is what I expected and got before with other equipment and no worse than expected. I'm somewhat sensitive to all that and in my system, so I won't say a lot more on performance for another week or two when I expect the worst to be cleared. The Dealer demo ND555 that had a couple more months run-in on it sounded sublime with an ethereal spacious quality on a lot of music that mine has not got into yet, although I'm enjoying music on the runs of good performance it has for a few hours before it goes off.
Yes I kept my old Burndy leads as there is no difference apart from the old ones are run-in and sounded ridiculously better than the comparatively brash and brazen new ones - but I'm certain they would have run in over time but I could see no point in doing it. I did ask my Dealer if there was any difference at all between old and new leads and they said none at all as I suspected. The point mentioned about another pin in a previous post was not correct. In fact my Dealer never even tried them with the new leads for weeks and used them with old existing leads and I though the ND555 sounded great.
The App - well I'm now officially on Beta-test team - but told there is no new Beta App for me to test yet, so was advised to keep using the released version until Naim are ready with a new App to test. My first test will see it they have removed the 'Wi-Fi block' screen which makes me re-register the App via a tedious process every day to use it via wired-LAN as I prefer for optimal performance on my system with quietest background noise-floor.
Apart from that niggle the device works well musically and the App once connected stays on rock-solid all day with no 'searching for rooms' and is easy to use and navigate with. I have some Artwork not-showing issues on the App folders, but that is a minor thing for me.
As to Hi-Def formats - I still get best real 'high definition' music in terms of dynamic range, timing and sense of life from older CD-ripped material usually mastered before year 2000. I've tried many Hi-Def 24 bit 96k versions of things like Pink Floyd and prefer the CD-rip versions as being clearer and more dynamic and interesting engaging on my system - the Hi-def ones sound over-re-worked to make them better, which is what I fear afflicts most remasters. The raw simple straight un-buggered translation onto a format sounds best - if that were done onto the 24 bit high-sample formats they may sound better, but unfortunately they are all tinkered with and sound 'nice' and fuzzy-cloudy and lacking dynamics to me. If I wanted the drummer in Pink Floyd to use a kipper instead of a wooden stick then perhaps I'd prefer the remaster. 
DB.
Darke Bear posted:Still in run-in mode here with mine for week 3. Periods of excellence then some murky-dullness of sheer-sharpness as it continues on the run-in - it is what I expected and got before with other equipment and no worse than expected. I'm somewhat sensitive to all that and in my system, so I won't say a lot more on performance for another week or two when I expect the worst to be cleared. The Dealer demo ND555 that had a couple more months run-in on it sounded sublime with an ethereal spacious quality on a lot of music that mine has not got into yet, although I'm enjoying music on the runs of good performance it has for a few hours before it goes off.
Yes I kept my old Burndy leads as there is no difference apart from the old ones are run-in and sounded ridiculously better than the comparatively brash and brazen new ones - but I'm certain they would have run in over time but I could see no point in doing it. I did ask my Dealer if there was any difference at all between old and new leads and they said none at all as I suspected. The point mentioned about another pin in a previous post was not correct. In fact my Dealer never even tried them with the new leads for weeks and used them with old existing leads and I though the ND555 sounded great.
The App - well I'm now officially on Beta-test team - but told there is no new Beta App for me to test yet, so was advised to keep using the released version until Naim are ready with a new App to test. My first test will see it they have removed the 'Wi-Fi block' screen which makes me re-register the App via a tedious process every day to use it via wired-LAN as I prefer for optimal performance on my system with quietest background noise-floor.
Apart from that niggle the device works well musically and the App once connected stays on rock-solid all day with no 'searching for rooms' and is easy to use and navigate with. I have some Artwork not-showing issues on the App folders, but that is a minor thing for me.
As to Hi-Def formats - I still get best real 'high definition' music in terms of dynamic range, timing and sense of life from older CD-ripped material usually mastered before year 2000. I've tried many Hi-Def 24 bit 96k versions of things like Pink Floyd and prefer the CD-rip versions as being clearer and more dynamic and interesting engaging on my system - the Hi-def ones sound over-re-worked to make them better, which is what I fear afflicts most remasters. The raw simple straight un-buggered translation onto a format sounds best - if that were done onto the 24 bit high-sample formats they may sound better, but unfortunately they are all tinkered with and sound 'nice' and fuzzy-cloudy and lacking dynamics to me. If I wanted the drummer in Pink Floyd to use a kipper instead of a wooden stick then perhaps I'd prefer the remaster.
DB.
Hey Dark Bear,
i heard the nd555 again today, at a demo, and it sounded marvelous, even with only one week burn in.
Someone tried to explain me that the digital volume of the nd555 must be settled at max, and only after adjust the volume of the pre. In the demo, at high volume, the pre ( 252), was around at 7 . Can it be the best way to use the nd555?
For high rez format, I downloaded the 2017 album of Roger Waters, on 24 bit, qobuz. The sound is sublime.