UnitiServe/DAC or UnitiServe/NDX
Posted by: King Size on 10 February 2015
When Naim first released the UnitiServe and DAC they had no streaming products so the use of the UServe as a hard disk player connected via DC-1 to the DAC appeared to be the the prescribed position.
Since the release of Naim's streamers there seems to be a shift by some on this forum as well as some naim dealers (Signals for eg.), to the UServe/Streamer configuration (connected via ethernet with the Serve taking on the true role of a uPnP Server) as being the better option.
However is recently as last year someone at Naim advised me that UServe/DAC via SPDIF was still the preferred / optimal configuration as far as sound quality goes. This is also the viewpoint shared by my dealer.
This leaves me in a bit of a quandary as I have finally decided to dive into the world of 'streaming' audio and would like to make the UServe the hub of such a system. I'm not into the endless variables that tweaking introduce so would prefer to stay within the naim ecosystem and am also effectively starting from scratch ie. only a small qty of music on my mac and 2,000 odd CD's.
Ideally i'd also like to use this as an opportunity to improve on my digital source (currently a CD5XS), which, while fun, lags behind my analogue front end in terms of refinement. With that in mind i'm looking at the DAC or NDX and will make sure that I listen to both but am keen to know what fellow forum members think. Which way would you go
Any insights would be much appreciated.