HDX on a home demo!
Posted by: Claus-Thoegersen on 18 September 2008
My dealer has offered me the HDX for a home demo, over the next week, a nice and dangerous offer!
The HDX is up against my cd s3 with spx, and the idea is of course at some point over the week to put the spx on the HDX.
As the system is installed now I have taken the spx out from the shelf it usually has second from the floor, and put the HDX at that shelf instead. The SPX is instead on the top shelf under the cd s3. I would have put the SPX on the floor but I did not have the space and did not want to move speakers and rack too much about just for a test.
The HDX use the standard Naim cable supplied in the box, and my s 3 is using Chord Indigo, of course I will very soon see what the Indigo will sound like on the HDX!
Because I am blind the most important thing with the >HDX is not really sound quality but to find a way to operate the player.
My first listen to a digital stream player was the Linn DS Climax, wich I do not find to be an improvement over a Naim Cd, however this is not really important since the pc application that Linn is using is not currently accessable at all if you are using a screen reader. Linn is aware of that and they are hopefully changing it over time.
There are 2 ways of controlling the HDX from a pc.
The first is to use a web browser find the ip address for the HDX and when you open the ip address you will find a Adobe Flash interface.
Flash can work with our screen readers but only if the Flash application is coded in a special way. Well the current flash interface on the Naim HDX is not. All I get on the screens are buttons assigned a number, and with over 20 buttons this does not work. There are ways to make this usable (Adobe has some documentation on how it is done) either by chaning the code in a later upgrade to the HDX, or it can also be made usable if I find a person and label the different buttons with more descriptiv text than 1 2 3 and so on.
The second way to operate the HDX the Naim desktop application on the other hand just works! Install the application have the HDX hooked up and as far as I can see after a few hours everything works! I can see the player, and more importantly I can see the Albums on the HDX. And with a combination of using the desktop client and the HDX remote I would be able to operate the HDX.
Since I can operate it what about the sound? It is good very good! Even with a bare HDX compared to my cd S3, the HDX in my system plays in a way hard to describe, maybe more musically, than the s3, even though the base is more controlled on the s3. This is not at all
My final verdict on the HDX, it will take more listening, but I am already now sure that this box is a serious contender in a Naim system!
The HDX is up against my cd s3 with spx, and the idea is of course at some point over the week to put the spx on the HDX.
As the system is installed now I have taken the spx out from the shelf it usually has second from the floor, and put the HDX at that shelf instead. The SPX is instead on the top shelf under the cd s3. I would have put the SPX on the floor but I did not have the space and did not want to move speakers and rack too much about just for a test.
The HDX use the standard Naim cable supplied in the box, and my s 3 is using Chord Indigo, of course I will very soon see what the Indigo will sound like on the HDX!
Because I am blind the most important thing with the >HDX is not really sound quality but to find a way to operate the player.
My first listen to a digital stream player was the Linn DS Climax, wich I do not find to be an improvement over a Naim Cd, however this is not really important since the pc application that Linn is using is not currently accessable at all if you are using a screen reader. Linn is aware of that and they are hopefully changing it over time.
There are 2 ways of controlling the HDX from a pc.
The first is to use a web browser find the ip address for the HDX and when you open the ip address you will find a Adobe Flash interface.
Flash can work with our screen readers but only if the Flash application is coded in a special way. Well the current flash interface on the Naim HDX is not. All I get on the screens are buttons assigned a number, and with over 20 buttons this does not work. There are ways to make this usable (Adobe has some documentation on how it is done) either by chaning the code in a later upgrade to the HDX, or it can also be made usable if I find a person and label the different buttons with more descriptiv text than 1 2 3 and so on.
The second way to operate the HDX the Naim desktop application on the other hand just works! Install the application have the HDX hooked up and as far as I can see after a few hours everything works! I can see the player, and more importantly I can see the Albums on the HDX. And with a combination of using the desktop client and the HDX remote I would be able to operate the HDX.
Since I can operate it what about the sound? It is good very good! Even with a bare HDX compared to my cd S3, the HDX in my system plays in a way hard to describe, maybe more musically, than the s3, even though the base is more controlled on the s3. This is not at all
My final verdict on the HDX, it will take more listening, but I am already now sure that this box is a serious contender in a Naim system!