NDX on order

judging by threads on the forum i think you will love the sound quality but get frustrated by the user experience - be an interesting comparison.

Great stuff, congratulations James!

Looking forward to your review. Maybe you can also report on the FM SQ once run in? Not many have commented on this here so far...

Thanks

tp

James, let me tell you that the NDX is a lot of fun.

I've had mine for a week and am "feeling my way" around its capabilities.  I also bought the tuner version and will add an aerial at some point in the future.  

The internet radio is a real mixed bag.  Some of the stations are best left alone from a sound quality viewpoint but there are some real gems out there. Jazz with a Russian vocalist ?  I started listening and was pleasantly suprised.  It's going to take months to work my way through the stations.

I have a windows based laptop and windows media player automatically "linked" to the NDX.  I have been ripping cds as WAV lossless.  I also bought an inexpensive NAS and have copied some of the rips to the NAS.  To be honest, I cannot hear any difference between music from the laptop and music from the NAS.  The n-stream app works well enough.  I'm using a stone-age ipod touch which is a bit slow but does all that I need it to do.  You cannot use the app to store iradio stations.

I gave up a CDX2 and NAT05 (using wet string as an aerial which was ok for the BBC stations) to get the NDX.  I'm not missing  either of those 2 boxes and love the solid-state build of the NDX. No lasers to replace and not much that can fall apart.

My first impressions are that the sound quality is slightly below the CDX2 but having been to the Dartford summer sounds it's obvious that the addition of a NDAC or power supply will make a great improvement.  The added bonus is that with a "one box" front end.  Any upgrades benefit all of the input sources.

Like a lot of people I'm a great believer in the source-first principle (flat-earth rules !).  I'm sticking to a small pre-power until the NDX is maxed-out.  Currently a 112/140 but might change for a 202/200 max and hoping for the ovator 200 which can be used close to a wall.

Miss TMWNN downloaded the n-strean app to her iphone last night.  She was very impressed and now I'm worried that we are going to have app wars.  The other miss TMWNN has yet to discover the app but I know it's a ticking time bomb.....  Though you should be aware of this if other members of the household have their own iphones / ipods / ipads.

Hope you get as much enjoyment from your NDX as I'm getting from mine.

Regards

TMWNN

hi james,

congrats on your purchase.since my very recent post stating i would keep my sb touch i am being swayed toward the ndx.as i already have a ndac i will also dem the nd5xs.

focalist,

can you elaberate on the user frustration/problems.

this is my concern that my sb touch albeit probably not as good sq as ndx has no issues.since purchase i have plugged and played with no problems.as someone who is not computer/network savvy the last thing i would want is constant headaches.thanks regards scott

James - well done on the purhase. I am sure you will enjoy it big time. Let us know how you get on with the FM module. I a must admit I am thinking of retro fitting the unit into my NDX

Simon

hi simon,

by the words retro fit.do you mean wether you do it diy or get naim to fit the fm module it can be fitted at a later date if required.regards scott

I was hoping it was a dealer fit or ideally informed user fit. If it needs to go back to Naim I might not bother.

cheers simon.

Thanks chaps. Looking forward to it. The loan unit was rather good.

It'll be interesting to see what the FM / DAB module is like. The module in the n-Vi does a reasonable job (i'm more of a casual radio listener) but on FM the backgorund noise performance is poor compared to the NAT02 i ran for a while (decent signal from a roof mounted 5 ele pointed at Wrotham) so i tend to use it more for DAB than FM.

It'll be fine for Saturday morning Radio 2 and LBC

James

James, which version of the Acurate did you have? In what way did you personally prefer the NDX over the Akurate?

Just seemed to be threads on NDX crashing due to album art size, waiting for radio upgrade, upgrade boards etc. I liken it to say the difference between a Lexus and a Jaguar, the Lexus will be easy to use and ruthlessly reliable, the Jag perhaps not but you will have more fun getting there! 

James -

Congratulations!    Am sure you will love the NDX!

Have had mine for four months now, and am feeding it FLAC files from an old NAS box via a PC server running Asset (and transcoding to WAV on-the-fly).

I can criticize N-Stream for lack of playlists, and lack of a "time remaining" counter.  The navigation can get a little tedious as well - having to hit "back" a few times to get all the way up to the "All Artists" list.   But I can not criticize it for speed or reliability -- it is very easy to find the music I want and hit play.  I think it helps that, other than my iPad 2, everything other component I have is hard wired into an ethernet switch.

So far, I have not had one single moment of unexpected behavior.   Four months of perfect uptime, and flawless playback.   Not one skip, drop, or hang.  The only interruptions of service I've had were two power downs for passing thunderstorms, and afterwards, I was impressed how quickly and automatically the NDX reconnected and became available for service.   

IME, the NDX and N-Stream have been 100% rock solid.   And when I've put in a long day at work, and I have only an hour or so before bedtime to listen to music, being able to count on the NDX to just "be there" has become very important to me.

Since I already owned the DAC/555PS, I chose to use the NDX as a digital transport.   Not sure that would be the case if I had bought the NDX first -- it sounds fantastic all by itself!

Good luck!

Hook