Firmware Problem - intermittent digital out signal to Chord Hugo

Posted by: Macbags on 12 January 2015

Before Christmas I posted a question / concern about an intermittent problem with my ND5's digital out to Chord Hugo. The problem appeared after the firmware upgrade when I  noticed the signal to my Hugo appeared to drop out and and while the lights on the hugo appeared to confirm a signal was being received no sound could be heard. 

 

I recived assurance from from a forum member that this was a known problem and all I had to do to restore play back was switch outputs on the nd5 and then go back to the Hugo.  It worked, continues to work but as you can imagine it's all very irritating as the problem re surfaces every hour or two

 

Having seen nothing recent on the forum about the problem I thought I'd resend my original query in the hope that some kind forum member would advise of a permanent solution.......I couldn't find my original post, it seems to have been deleted?

 

i'm keen to get the bottom of the problem, I was reassured that the issue isn't going to damage my Hugo ( which is a relief) but why no updates from Naim acknowledging the issue and why no solution.

 

Can anyone advise?

Posted on: 13 January 2015 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Phil Harris @ Naim advised the fix is being worked on. He says there are two options until then.

a) use the workaround; press stop then start on the streaming transport controls to re engage the SPDIF output.

b) downgrade to earlier firmware; we are told by Naim this downgrade is supported.

 

Simon

Posted on: 13 January 2015 by nudgerwilliams

And if you do the downgrade they advised you MUST do a factory settings reset after.  Look at Phil Harris's posts if you are going to do this.

Posted on: 13 January 2015 by Hmack

Strange!

 

I had held off upgrading to 4.1 because of this issue, but got bored at the weekend and decided to try out Spotify Premium's 3 months for £0.99 offer, and of course this involved first upgrading the firmware to the latest level.

 

I run an ND5 into Hugo, but in 2 days of playing around with Spotify, this problem doesn't appear to have occurred at all while I have been listening.

 

Do you find that the problem occurs regularly or very intermittently?

 

By the way, my view of Spotify is that it is a great vehicle for music Discovery, but with a couple of drawbacks. Firstly, the sound quality is OK (probably better than I had expected & certainly listenable) but not as good as CD rips from my NAS. Secondly, a number of very annoying coverage gaps in respect of my music tastes (especially from the 70s). However, I suspect that no other provider will be much better in these areas.

 

The jury is out at the moment, but I may decide to subscribe to Spotify after the initial 3 month period rather than investigate other options simply because of the convenience of the Naim streamer integration. I will also investigate the 'Tidal' integration into my Linn streamer.

 

Come on Naim - give us some other options, and please put some pressure on providers to charge reasonable rates in the UK market.  

 

Posted on: 13 January 2015 by Macbags

Thanks guys, a slightly simpler work around than I was using so thank you.

 

Hmack I don't know why your blessed but then again while I used spotify's 5 day free trial over Christmas I don't think I ever used it through the Hugo, I simply ran it through the nd5 dac as I dindt think the Hugo would add much to low quality streams. Perhaps the drivers for spotify are immune to the problem.

 

 

Posted on: 13 January 2015 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Happens  when streaming UPnP. Let the UPnP exhaust its play/cue list and finish - then try and play new track on UPnP at the same sample rate and bit depth - and the SPDIF output disengages.

 

I think it happens everytime for me.

 

Simon