Okay 24 hours down, left the NDX2 playing radio overnight. Ripped 50 CDs without a glitch, but the expertise of Phil @Cymbiosis has been a godsend, the rest I will do progressively.
Sonic observations, really can’t say that there is any massive discernable difference, the CDS3 might have a marginally broader soundstage and deeper bass, the NDX2 might marginally have better expression in voices and notation and textures, treble slightly smoother but a few more hours run in yet. The sound is a delight, compulsive, it’s obvious why Naim could allow the NDX2 to be the de facto replacement for the NDS. But one significant difference even the best CDPs with a Phillips laser would have a slight rattle and background noise, not now, true silence.
Finally, streaming from the NAS (FLAC>WAV) is very considerably an improvement over Tidal.
I think the NDS has a DAC built around the same chip as the nDAC and ND555. The NDX2 sound very good but it sounds more like a delta-sigma DAC-chip (brighter, more details).
Our French humorist Coluche was laughing about detergent liquids . He said that they wash more white than white, so grey.
A bit like more analog than analog, it’s digital
So 3 1/2 weeks in, a couple of glitches with dBPoweramp but all overcome. Occasionally I have a nag should I have gone Core? And might have been persuaded if it had had a CD replay facility. NDX2 continues to sound even more sublime, but still I’m still amazed over the improvement in the Qb with a local file as opposed to Tidal, and that’s hardwired across the mains no fibre.
When I started ripping CDs I bought a Unitiserve. Expensive, and a bit of a copout compared to DBPA perhaps, but 10 years later it still works well, and it certainly took the pain out of the initial task of ripping hundreds of CDs.
The downside is that the US lacks key features in the way it handles metadata in both ripping and serving, such as being incapable of handling some CD box sets, and totally incapable of providing basic metadata fields required to catalogue classical music.
The Core software was essentially ported straight from the US WindowsXP to its Linux based OS, with all of its quirks. Staggeringly, half a dozen or so key functions available in the US were removed, making the Core by far the most primitive ripper/server you will ever come across.
How much of a problem that is for you will depend largely on your own preferences. If you have a classical collection, it’s rubbish. If you’re particular about curating you collection so that you can search by artist, genre, composer etc it’s really rubbish. If you’re a bit more laid back about the whole metadata thing, it’s not so bad.
I borrowed one from my dealer for a couple of weeks and was glad to see the back of it.
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