NDX Tips and Tweaks

Posted by: Simon-in-Suffolk on 10 June 2011

I am settling down to a loan NDX until my new one arrives from my dealer. Its a great machine, however it does have a few gotchas that does seem to affect it sonically. Unless addressed the NDX can sound rather mediocre in my opinion (compared to a CDS3). My comments have been collected predominately by using it with a 555PS and using the internal NDX DAC. I have graded the tweaks based on affect to the sound

 

1)  HIGH:  Disable the digital out.

2)  HIGH:  Use Wave instead of FLAC files

3)  HIGH:  Deactivate the internal NDX display on playback.

4)  HIGH:  Use an external PS and keep the Burndy hanging free and pre-flexed.

 

5)  MEDIUM: Disable unused digital inputs

6)  MEDIUM: Use wired Ethernet instead of WiFi

7)  MEDIUM: Use DIN analogue out and disable other analogue outputs 

 

8)  LOW: Put a ferrite clamp around the Ethernet calbe as it enters the NDX

9) LOW: Ensure Ethernet cable is seperate and not touching the Powerline or other power cable

 

Finally ensure the grounding switch is correctly set - not really a tweak - but make sure it is correct for your setup.

 

I find if I follow the above with my 555PS the NDX sounds very good in all aspects - other than voice naturalness where the nod still goes to the CDS3..

 

Simon

 

Posted on: 21 June 2012 by MangoMonkey

How easy is it to generate wav files from dbpoweramp so that non-asset upnp servers can make sense of them? Maybe the squeezebox server, or the one on synology?

 

There was information on that somewhere....

Posted on: 21 June 2012 by Simon-in-Suffolk

MangoMonkey, there should be no issue about dbpoweramp making WAV files for playback for any software. The question is whether the playback software or DLNA servers can interpret either standardised list INFO metadata or the unofficial ID3 tags. Good software should read the former, but understandable if not the latter. dbPoweramp writes info into both parts of the WAV file for interoperability.

So I would ask the vendor you are looking to use whether they support WAV INFO chunks.

 

Please note however INFO chunks are based on the EXIF constructs (as used in digital photographs etc) and is a subset of the ID3 tags and also excludes encapsualted album art.

Posted on: 21 June 2012 by fatcat
Originally Posted by MangoMonkey:

How easy is it to generate wav files from dbpoweramp so that non-asset upnp servers can make sense of them? Maybe the squeezebox server, or the one on synology?

 

There was information on that somewhere....

If you're talking about ripping CD's. It creates the files in a folder. Squezebox server is able to find the folder and play the tracks plus display the album artwork.

 

SQT can locate the album from artist or album name.

Posted on: 21 June 2012 by MangoMonkey

Well, I've had dbpoweramp generate flac files for me. If I convert it to wav files, the tags sort of go missing, in the sense that iTunes, for example can't display them anymore.

 

The tags are still present in the wav file: I've had dbpoweramp go from wav back to file for me, and the tags were still present.

 

The synology server doesn't do very well with the tags within a wav file, unfortunately.

Looks like there's no hack for me to do. dbPoweramp is doing the best it can, and the onus really is on the reading software.

Posted on: 21 June 2012 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Hi - yes iTunes only seems to understand a very old format of wav from the early 1990s, they clearly to me are not embracing it. If you use MediaMonkey or Windows Media Player version 12 as a DLNA server then no probs - although the latter only support offical info tags and not the unoffical ID3 ones.

 

Certainly Twonky can't read wav metadata of any description like iTunes.

 

An alternate is to use Flac, AIF or whatever your poison is - and use your DLNA server to transcode to WAV. That way your DLNA server extracts the metadata and uses Web 2.0 to send to the client(s) - and then sends the WAV file for the media playback

 

 

Posted on: 22 June 2012 by Peter_RN

If it’s of interest to anyone considering a NAS the Netgear ReadyNas boxes can now stream WAV files created with Dbpoweramp without any problems. I should say that I could only confirm that this is on boxes running the x86 firmware so am unable to speak for the Duo. Foobar and J River servers also work extremely well with these files.

 

I find that un-compressed flac files are usually slightly larger than the equivalent WAV files of the same track, so there seems no reason not to rip to WAV now.

 

Regards

Peter

Posted on: 22 June 2012 by Thorsten_L

How do I do this?


1)  HIGH:  Disable the digital out.

Posted on: 22 June 2012 by Thorsten_L

Found it.

 

Thx.

Posted on: 24 June 2012 by Dustysox
Originally Posted by Simon-in-Suffolk:

Hi Dustsox, just got back and listening to some tunes. Heard the NDS with 2x  full fat 555PS's. If am honest I will need to listen in my home environment to compare. At this level unless it's your room and speakers it's hard to compare things and make a clear judgement one way or another.

 

One thing I will say, we listened to a Pre production NDS and there were 8 of us in the room and we stll clearly heard differences between FLAC and WAV on identical tracks from a variety of genres. Comments like 'WAV has more air', and 'where has the music gone?'  with FLAC and over dinner the comment 'the difference was night and day' was made.

 

Thanks to Signals and Naim for an enjoyable and interesting evening, and it was good to meet  some of the characters on this forum.

 

Simon

Hi Simon,

 

Many thanks. I and others will be reading every NDS home dem report when they start hitting the streets (Christmas ).

 

I think i'm going mad. I was listening to Spotify last night via me ol trusty Transporter and there was a problem where it kept throwing an error message. I rebooted my router. Problem solved. Now...get this my system sounds better.

 

Told you I was losing it!!

Posted on: 19 July 2012 by roo
Originally Posted by Simon-in-Suffolk:

One thing I will say, we listened to a Pre production NDS and there were 8 of us in the room and we stll clearly heard differences between FLAC and WAV on identical tracks from a variety of genres. Comments like 'WAV has more air', and 'where has the music gone?'  with FLAC and over dinner the comment 'the difference was night and day' was made.

It would be good to know if the FLAC files that were used were compressed. I've been writing some Python mutagen scripts to scan my music library on a NAS and found I'd encoded some of the albums at compression level 5. There is a huge difference in replay quality on my NDX when I use dBpoweramp to re-encode the FLAC files with no file compression. So much so that it's not even funny. If you have a FLAC encoded music library it's worth checking the compression level and doing a comparison of compressed v uncompressed. I'll have to try comparing uncompressed FLAC v WAV tonight.
Posted on: 19 July 2012 by Foxman50

Hi roo

amazed you can tell a difference between compresion levels on flac. Will have to try this out and see. Be interested in your comparison of flac/wav

Posted on: 19 July 2012 by roo
Originally Posted by Foxman50:

Hi roo

amazed you can tell a difference between compresion levels on flac. Will have to try this out and see. Be interested in your comparison of flac/wav

I was shocked at how much difference I heard on my setup. It was like having a power supply upgrade or a move from 16/44.1 to 24/96. It's surprising the decompression has such an effect on the sound. It will be interesting to hear if there is a playback difference between uncompressed FLAC and WAV. If there is a difference then it must be down to the processing required to extract the frame data from the FLAC file. From a quick glance at the specs it looks like there is slightly more work to do for FLAC even if you are extracting SUBFRAME_VERBATIM data.

Posted on: 19 July 2012 by unclegaz

Hi,

 

I use DB Poweramp also and rip into FLAC uncompressed. I was advised to use FLAC by Naim and by a number of sources who have worked with Naim for many years. I have to say I'm delighted with the sound quality of the NDX.

Posted on: 23 July 2012 by AD Spicer

Having done a comprehensive listening session with my Naim dealer in Chicago on an all 500 series system with an NDX/XPS2 - for me the difference was striking between WAV and FLAC! WAV was clearly more analog sounding, detailed, better soundstage, and dynamic. This was all using the exact same recordings, only in different formats.  I was quite surprised honestly how significant the difference was. I proceeded to go home and do the test on my system, and while it was still better, it was definitely less obvious. Still enough of a difference to change all my HD Tracks downloads to WAV the next day!  See my profile for my system details.

 

So bottom line, if you have at least a medium level Naim system, and most definely if it's at the level of 500 series pieces, using WAV files is a MUST in my experience.  For whatever it's worth......

 

Posted on: 23 July 2012 by Peter W

Through my system (NDX/555PS/252/Supercap/300) I can clearly hear differences between uncompressed FLAC and WAV. To my ears WAV files are without a doubt much better. Even if I could not hear the differences, I think I would still go for WAV format because, in theory at least, it should give better results because the NAS/PC does not have to do extra compression/decompression work. OK, WAV will need more HDD space, but HDDs are not that expensive considering how much I paid for the Naim system!

Posted on: 24 July 2012 by james n
Originally Posted by Peter W:

Even if I could not hear the differences, I think I would still go for WAV format because, in theory at least, it should give better results because the NAS/PC does not have to do extra compression/decompression work.


Why would that make a difference ? I could understand decompression at the streamer end having an affect but not at the PC end over a network.

Posted on: 25 July 2012 by Peter W

In a CAS hi-fi system, NAS/PC is part of the chain. Some may say NAS/PC handles 0s and 1s so they will not affect sound quality. I am not an electronic engineer so cannot comment on this, but my ears tell me that not all LAN cables sound the same. I was quite amazed by this.

Posted on: 25 July 2012 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Peter, what you are hearing ate the effects of varying RF interferencI provided by different Ethernet patch leads.

RF pollution by its nature effects many parts in an audio chain andonce it is present it is hard to get rid of.

Simon

 

Posted on: 25 July 2012 by unclegaz

It would be interesting to hear Phil's view on the Wav/Flac discussion?

Posted on: 26 July 2012 by james n
Originally Posted by unclegaz:

It would be interesting to hear Phil's view on the Wav/Flac discussion?

From the NDX White Paper  -

 

Naim’s UPnP™ servers deliver the uncompressed audio data ripped from CD using the Naim ripping engine to ensure the best quality reproduction. Uncompressed audio data will always give better results than compressed. Even lossless compression may not reproduce audio with equivalent quality to the uncompressed original as the processing required to uncompress the data increases the computational load. This raises the power supply noise floor, which detracts from the sound quality.

Posted on: 29 July 2012 by Lebowski
Originally Posted by Simon-in-Suffolk:

Certainly Twonky can't read wav metadata of any description like iTunes.

 

SImon

 

Having just become a new NDX owner (in fact AllenB's old unit) I have just spent the weekend doing some work on dbPoweramp and Twonky (v6.0.39 which is on my QNAP NAS) and have cracked the WAV metadata problem for this combination after some trial and error.

 

This avoids the need for any FLAC>WAV transcoding, which may or may not make a difference.

 

For anyone interested - go into db Configuration, Select the 'Codecs' Tab and then the 'Advanced Options' button. Scroll Down to WAV ID Tagging and select 'Tag Creation' to 'LIST' and 'LIST TRACK Tag' to 'itrk'.  Don't touch anything else, just click on 'OK' and exit.  If ripping a CD then go into CD Ripper and hit the 'Options' button and then 'Meta Data & ID Tag' options then scroll down and make sure the 'Pad track number to 2 digits (ie 02)' box is ticked. Again click on OK and exit.  These configurations will be retained going forward and do not need to be reset each time.

 

This works fine on the NDX and N-Stream App (3.0).  The artwork is in folder.jpg and I am using 1000x1000 which is nice and crisp on the iPad N-Stream. I have set the media receiver in Twonky to a 'Linn Kinsky Control Point' (no Naim option yet!) as this streams full resolution artwork, whereas the 'Generic Media Receiver' which Twonky will autoselect for the NDX seems to scale it down to a dreadful-looking 150x150 (presumably for better compatibility)

 

AIFF is certainly a no go for Twonky but native WAV is just fine.

Posted on: 29 July 2012 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Hi thanks for the update, it's good twonky can now read standard WAV metadata .

Simon

Posted on: 16 September 2012 by unclegaz

Simon,

 

I'm trying to order some Ferrite Chokes for the Network and Dac cables.

What size do I need?

 

 

Gary

Posted on: 16 September 2012 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Hi Gary,  just measure the diameter of your cable and get some to fit that. If its slightly loose you can use a little blob of BluTak inside or use a wire wrap to hold the in place, but best get them fitting reasonably snug so they work the most effectively. Use them multiple times until you hear no discernible change. Best put then at the ends of the cable  next to the connectors. Start first at the audio equipment end.

Simon