Woke up n thought, I know my 272’s old in the tooth, but should I really have had all that aggro over the years for SQ and was it worth it? If I wanted a hands on hobby, I’d have bought an LP12 and changed the springs n grommets, like the good old days.
Any ideas what I should do with the proceeds of: NAC272/XPS2/NAP300 to feed The Kef reference 5s, I’m keeping?
Criteria: Happy to forgo some SQ for something that just works, fewer boxes, Tidal not skipping when I’m uploading (even though I can stream a 4K movie from Google drive at the same time) something, etc. etc.
Not taken lightly, started with 32/hicap/250 in the early 80s, so it’s with a heavy heart.
Maybe it’ll all just work for a while and I’ll forget about it, inshallah
Presumably you have music on a server somewhere. If you have no need of this cool. But I personally would factor in roon into the equation, for me at least its now an essential part of my hifi experience. Leaving aside sound quality (streamers all sound broadly similar to these ears, with at best tiny differences between them) the fact roon brings all your music together including tidal and has so many options for endpoints and controls it just great.
Beyond that I would always suggest keep the server away from the player. So you want a streamer and a decent dac. Sadly naim seem to have jumped off the dac wagon, I have heard a chord dave which was amazing, but a lot of money, perhaps a cutest.
To be fair I cannot comment on hegels software either. My personal opinion is steer clear of hifi companies streaming softwares, but then I like to tinker. I personally I use essentially an optimised PC for the main hifi streamer. For less ‘important’ stuff pi’s running ropieee.
I presume you have the latest firmware for the 272, Tidal isn’t perfect on the legacy streamers but was improved with the last version of the firmware?
I fear a wholescale change could be ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ you seem to be a long term Naim user and could well regret any move.
I know you don’t like to tinker but a solution worth considering is to make your 272 Roon compatible.
This would require either a software bridge, a pre-made one is the Sonore UPNP bridge and you would need a Roon server, either a ready made one like the Nucleus or if you can stand one more session of tinkering you could put together a Roon Rock server using an Intel NUC.
Once this has been done your Tidal issues will be gone and with a Nucleus or Rock you will have an ‘applicance’ that just works. It would also open up QoBuz to you if you so wish.
I have done this with my legacy NDS and have no issues an couldn’t be more delighted.
Just an alternative solution.
This preserves what you have already invested in, those speakers really do need an amp of the quality of a NAP300.
I would second the advice here re ensuring you’re on the latest firmware (4.7) - however, it would be remiss of me not to mention that a further update (Firmware 4.8) is due within weeks. This does include TIDAL-specific updates, among some other improvements and fixes.
I sincerely hope that will smooth your user experience until a future generation of Naim streaming pre-amps is announced…
Hegel sounds a bit dull compared to Naim. I’d suggest you try an Aurender A10. It has decent SQ and has XLR outputs which is good for your NAP300.
Aurender will have good software, and you can save a lot of things on the internal ssd+hdd.
I’ll hold fire till the new firware and looking forward to: taking it out the rack, finding a bit of cable, a PC, a new driver, the cap (so I don’t need the XPS as well) and keeping my fingers crossed on the third attempt.
