4 Days of no ’Bells and Whistles’ but a concentration of sound

Chaps,

Thank you all for your very sound, sensible and intelligent advice over the past two and a half months. In kind and to your keen ears here is a summary of my first four days in possession of my new Naim audio equipment (UServe + ND5 XS + NAC152 XS + NAP155 XS).

I picked up my new Naim equipment on Saturday from the dealer here in Oslo, when I pulled up outside I could see the dealer and his colleagues demoing a Naim system to a prospective client. I opened the door and was immediately confronted by a wall of Naim sounds emanating from a black box in the middle of the room, it looked like an NDS and then my attention turned to the Ovators 600’s standing there in a very imposing manner. To my left I saw my boxes by the reception desk but walked past to investigate the demo in more detail and to say hello to my dealer who was standing tentatively with an IPad, the client sitting on a couch with a grin on his face but no foot tapping yet. A brief discussion with my dealer informed me that the client was in the market for a NDX or NDS, I left them alone…..

I arrived home and met my wife in the front garden planting bulbs, she looked at me and smiled knowingly, “Har du lust pÅ te” I asked her, as I excitedly walked into the house. My first thoughts were “put the kettle on, read the manuals and see whats what”. The ND5, NAC and NAP were to be situated on the ground floor living room/office on a Fraim Lite with four shelves, which I managed to get at an excellent deal on.  However, at this point the Lite had not been delivered, so to the horror of the Forum no doubt, I have positioned them on top of each other as a temporary measure. The UServe was to be positioned by the modem and router on the 1st floor where we have the main living room and kitchen. Our broadband is fibre optic and delivers excellent rates into the house, our contract is currently set at 40/40 Mbit/s). The router is a 2tb Time Capsule delivering simultaneously on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, allowing all the devices on the network to use the most efficient band automatically and uses the latest 802.11n wireless technology. The UServe is connected to the router with a Cat 6, the router is connected to the modem with Cat 5e. I have one Ethernet port left and that will be for the ND5 when I decide on how to thread the cable from the ground floor up to the 1^st floor, at this point I have been using WIFI to stream.

After about  1 and half hours the whole system was set up and I turned on the power to all boxes…wow! The UServe was on the network in a click of a finger, the ND5 found the network no problem. I had already downloaded the Nstream and Nserve apps for the I Phone…..I was ready to rock and roll. Firstly, to get used to the Nstream app on the iPhone, I checked out Naim’s suggested IRadio stations….and went for radio Paradise @ 320kbs. To my delight the ND5 picked up the stream almost immediately, a little buffering but very quick none the less. The sound was underwhelming, at this point I did not know what to expect as I had never streamed radio on anything and I was still using my old Eltax 400 Xtreme speakers wired up with banana plugged NAC’s @ 6m long. But in general I was very happy with the ‘ease of use’ and ‘simple accessibility’ that the app brings. 

Next up came the ripping test. I grabbed a few cd’s and bounded up the stairs to the 1^st floor and eagerly slid in a cd (can’t remember which cd it was now). I then switched to the Nserve app and found set up and ‘ripping’ section. There was the cd in the process of ripping, connected to AMG to find the cd info and cover art, no errors, this is brilliant, but a little nerve racking. Seven minutes later the UServe ejected the cd and I peered down into the app under Albums and there it sat, cover art in place and as much info as one could wish for….at this point. I ran back down stairs and switched to NStream to play the cd…..it came streaming through my, now rather old looking speakers and filled the small room with sonic loveliness. Still I was not overwhelmed, I was just very, very relieved that everything was working as expected, straight out of the box, clean and simple, no drama and certainly no tears. 

After a few more rips, Tina pointed out that I did not need to run up and down the stairs to be near the ND5 to switch cd’s, I could sit on my arse on the couch on the first floor and play away....this is fantastic! I got to about 25 rips and then the UServe started making some unnerving noises, it was on Jef Buckleys’s Grace cd. The noises reminded me of many years ago when on old pc’s cd rom drive would often sound like it was speeding up like a fan noise trying to read the data on the cd but struggled but kept attempting. Speeding up, slowing down, speeding up slowing down, this was very unnerving. I watched intently, the cd was finally ripped but it took longer than other cd’s, approximately about 12 minutes. I checked for errors, none, I played the cd and it worked normally. I put in another cd and the same thing happened, the noise was quite audible as I could hear it from the ground floor through the stair well. Additionally, the chassis undergoes far more vibration during these types of rips but the unit does not seem to get hotter. This happened on three cd’s, the following cd went back to an almost silent rip process. I have no idea why this happened, why it happened on these particular cd’s, or if this is normal, and if normal, why is it normal??? It seems a rather inconsistent normal! In each case, however, the ripping process took longer, for Kruder and Dorfmeister´s KD Sessions, one cd took 22 minutes. This is either related to the UServe or its related to the cd, i.e. could it be that some cd´s are manufactured to a less quality than others and perhaps this is why the ripping software is taking much longer to read and rip the data on the cd? Perhaps the Forum can enlighten me on this matter? 

I continued to rip, listen and drink Chablis all evening until it was time for bed. 

So far I have ripped 79 cd´s taken at random. Last night I listened to tracks from various albums just to get a feeling on how the XS series was bedding in. Some comments that I would like to make at this point.

I noticed a big improvement in SQ, more on less produced music. For instance, when playing PJ Harvey´s Let England shake the instruments became far more pronounced or detailed in there work, clarity enveloped them and PJ Harvey's voice came out to play. But one major weird affect on the music replay is a kind of surreal ‘slowness’ or concentration of sound that seems to make the music feel deliberate. I first noticed this on The Rolling Stones Sympathy For The Devil, the percussion was more defined and the track actually felt stripped back to a raw sound as though I had been listening to the track in the past with lots of added bells and whistles, very odd. 

Then I played Chopin´s Nocturnes by Artur Rubenstien Piano, Op.9, CT. 108-110-No.1 in B flat major....my wife was literally speechless and commented that she had not heard anything quite as remarkable outside of the concert hall. It was a significant breakthrough in sound replay, and this is only after 4 days of warming in, I have much listening pleasure to look forward to.

Some notes then. Even though I am streaming over WiFi the SQ is immensely superior to my old system. I have had three drop outs in 4 days, each for about 3 seconds. My old speakers are reborn and are nothing like they used to be. Switching between Nstream and Nserve is a doddle, and so is editing information. No cd cover art is missing, no errors reported during any ripping process. The only downside on the I Phone apps is that there is no volume control???????? Not sure why that is as I swear I saw one on the IPad app????? Also, when I have changed the cover art in Nserve because AMG had retrieved the wrong cover, it does not change the cover art in Nstream but remains with the original cover art, any ideas there?. But of course I would like to get some feed back on the UServe issue mentioned above.

Anyway, I am a very happy person and am delighted with the initial results on my new audio storage and streaming solution. It is everything I imagined, seamless and simple and I don't even need to turn a pc on to listen to my cherished music, in many ways that is almost as important as the SQ for me.

And jesus, how many radio stations!

Many thanks to all.