NAS v Core v USB v Tidal as a source music?

I would say that you are pretty well sorted with Synology/Minimserver. With the old Naim streamers, getting the server to transcode FLAC to WAV was thought by many to sound a little better, so that is something that you could easily try. 

If I was going to spend some cash on upgrading a Nova, I don’t think £2k for a Nova would be the most cost effective route. For similar money, get a used NAP250 for it and see which option gives you the biggest improvement. 

Using Tidal on your Mac, remember that you only get full MQA if you use an MQA enabled DAC, which none of the Naim ones are. 

I think this topic has been talked to death in the last few weeks and months, and we all have different views. Listen and compare at your friendly dealer and then home trial against Nas, Core and any other sources you may have or can borrow. Lastly and most importantly, believe your and your partners ears. Rich 

Your own stored music has at least the potential to sound better than online streaming such as Tidal. High res has the potential to sound better than CD quality - but whether it does or not depends on the mastering, which often is different (as opposed to when the lower res is simply a downsampled copy). A lossless compression format like .flac is as good as any for storage - though with some players people claim that it can sound better transcoded to PCM before the player - as one woukd expect, there appears to be no suggestion that storing as .wav is better, though with a susceptible player that may depend on whether the store software is capable of doing the transcoding. Regarding sound quality between Core, other similar solutions such as those from Melco and Innuos, and from a NAS, there seems to be no clear definitive answer. Personally I favour the store-renderer approach, with a dedicated feed to the DAC, otherwise if I had a top quality player rather than DAC I’d go for the direct (non-networked) connection of store to player - Core, Melco and Innuos can do both ways. 

Innocent Bystander posted:

"Your own stored music has at least the potential to sound better than online streaming such as Tidal. High res has the potential to sound better than CD quality - but whether it does or not depends on the mastering, which often is different (as opposed to when the lower res is simply a downsampled copy)."

I agree with Innocent Bystander. Specific mastering is often much more important when comparing CD quality and hi-res than the resolution itself. Some of my very best recordings are CD rips on my NAS rather than hi-res files, although my experience is that on the whole most (but certainly not all) of my high resolution albums sound better than my ripped CDs. I would just add two comments. The first is not really relevant to you, but many 'Hi-res' MQA Masters on Tidal (and in particular the classical genre MQA albums) sound very good indeed when played with MQA decoding equipment. However, I wouldn't pay too much attention to this since as CHRISSU points out, you will not be able to make full use of MQA if you use a Naim DAC, nor partial use unless you were to run a full ROON setup or something similar as a front end to your Naim DAC.

However, my second point is perhaps a little more relevant. Quite a few people on this forum have stated that albums played from a home network device such as a NAS sound better than the same album streamed from Tidal. Some have even proffered their view that albums streamed from Tidal Hi-Fi sound awful. I don't agree with this. They certainly do not sound awful on either of my two systems. I suspect that Naim Audio does not subscribe to the view that albums streamed from Tidal sound awful either. I have been to several demonstrations held by Naim (involving Statement amplification in one case and the ND555 in another) where albums streamed from Tidal have constituted a large part of the demonstration. Indeed, I can only recall a single track in any of these demonstrations that was a high resolution file. I can't imagine that Naim would use material from Tidal in demonstrations of their top end equipment if it was of the opinion that Tidal (Hi-Fi) streaming was awful. 

So, you might be of the opinion that locally streamed music sounds subtly better than the equivalent music streamed from Tidal. That's fine. However, Tidal Hi-Fi is a very good indeed (albeit quite expensive) means of discovering new music (perhaps not quite as good as Spotify in this respect), and it does in my opinion (and in either of my systems) easily sound good enough. I would be very wary of comments simply dismissing the service as 'awful'.         

Hmack posted:

Innocent Bystander posted:

"Your own stored music has at least the potential to sound better than online streaming such as Tidal. High res has the potential to sound better than CD quality - but whether it does or not depends on the mastering, which often is different (as opposed to when the lower res is simply a downsampled copy)."

<snip>

So, you might be of the opinion that locally streamed music sounds subtly better than the equivalent music streamed from Tidal. That's fine. However, Tidal Hi-Fi is a very good indeed (albeit quite expensive) means of discovering new music (perhaps not quite as good as Spotify in this respect), and it does in my opinion (and in either of my systems) easily sound good enough. I would be very wary of comments simply dismissing the service as 'awful'.         

Streaming Tidal via the Naim App I found the sound quality to be very good.  Not quite as good as local but good enough for serious listening sessions often used as the only source.
Adding Bubble server on a Ras Pi has lifted Tidal up to local standards.  Well worth doing if you are on a legacy streamer.

I've tried Qobuz and didn't get one with it with either 16bit or 24bit streaming.  I persisted but every time I tried Tidal matched the local stream really well and Qobuz sounded like a different mix and PRaT seemed to be missing too. Even compared to a hires download (not from Qobuz for fairness checking) Tidal had the same characteristics and mix as the hires, Qobuz sounded wonky in comparison.
Shame as I really wanted to have 24bit streaming and the extra fiver per month is insignificant really.  I may try again in the future; probably is more likely!

Hi ND555 owners,has anyone had there screen go blank ? It is still playing music but the screen just goes blank ,l have just phoned my dealer but he is busy at the moment so left a message,thanks for your help!.

Bob, have you got the screen turned off in settings. Use the remote and screen to navigate to settings, then screen......is it set to off? In this mode it stays on at the start of an album and then goes blank. If it’s not try, switching off then back on again.