Hi Mitch,
Great question, so a couple of thoughts by way of reply.
If you find yourself enjoying vinyl records so much that you keep buying new ones, then you are in a very good place. Many people have a system that sounds nearly or almost right, so keep feeling the need to upgrade. If you have a vinyl replay system that delivers wonderful music, then don’t change it at all, just use it and buy more vinyl as and when funds permit.
With a turntable as talented as yours, it will take a very good music streamer to bring an equivalent (N.B. equivalent, not same) quality of replay. If you want a streamer to try out new music before you buy, then a modest streamer plus a Qobuz, Tidal or other lossless music subscription would be a great idea. An ND5 XS2 would be more than capable of fulfilling this role.
If your thoughts for streaming are more ambitious than simply to be an auditioning tool, then a basic streamer may not deliver for you. A couple of years ago, we wanted to free up space in our living room, having never particularly liked the appearance of CDs. We ripped all our CDs and stored them in large crates out of the way under the stairs. We sold the CD player and bought a streamer + music server and are very pleased with the end result. We agreed that vinyl had to stay.
If you want an “equivalent” streamer to your turntable (whatever that means, cue heated debate!), you may be looking at something in the range of an NDX2 + XPS. Alternatively, an ND5 XS2 with an external dac could work very well too.
Either way, an ND5 XS2 makes a lot of sense. Just don’t change anything in your vinyl replay chain while it is bringing you such joy.
We’ve been doing a lot of live shows from October to December last year. I often look after the merch stall, with people paying £10 or sometimes more for a CD. I stuff the money in my back pocket and then give it to the band once everyone has gone home and we are packing up. Sometimes it’s not much, sometimes it’s a good sum. We will either buy food in for the band, or give them a bit of cash to get something for themselves, say £10 each. It’s not a glamorous lifestyle by any means. These bands, in general, really benefit from the money. Obviously it’s different for big bands doing big shows, but for the thousands of artists playing to smaller capacity venues, sales make a big difference.
Bandcamp is a great way to buy music. Online streaming is interesting, while it saves on plastic CDs or vinyl records, the environmental impact of the server farms is absolutely massive.
And it may assist the private seller buy another component, whether or not Naim, and thereby indirectly benefit a dealer and manufacturer. If your reasoning for the third below is because of where the money goes it is a flawed consideration, and you limit yourself unnecessarily.(though of course eBay is not the only source of private sales)
Personally out of preference I buy secondhand to make my money go further, other than things that have significant wear considerations (CD players) or things that have been progressing fast (eg DACs - though had Dave come out earlier to have secondhand ones available when I bought mine, I would have got it that way). Most people I have bought from have been going on to buy other hifi, my money facilitating that.
I only stream online to audition music new to me, buying if I like enough to want to play again. I buy music files online, and occasionally CDs at gigs by small artists. I don’t preferentially favour new artists, but music I like (and new artists I find I like are few and far between).
Hi Mitch
Lots of good advice here. I don’t know enough about the streaming services that are available to you to advise on that front - this will of course be a consistent, although modest, on-going cost. What I will say is that access to High Res streaming would be a must for me and with Naim that means avoid MQA or be prepared for a ‘work around’.
Experience tells me that streaming (I use the ND5 XS2) will come to dominate your source as it has for me and for many other posters here. I am looking at our unused RP3 / phono stage and thinking of a trade in and if you can afford to buy a streamer, I suspect you will look at your LP12 in six months and start thinking the same. For me, I hate to see the waste of a good piece of kit, just getting old.
i was in the same position on CD’s in early 2014 - weather to move to digital or stay with CDX2/XPS - my move then was to NDX which is still very happy and playing great music in my system
also that year I need to decide on my future preffered source - and for me that was going to be LP12 - and pleased to say in 2022 it still is
My deck is at Kilmax level - need to get the new rad 2 fitted in 2022 which I plan in the spring
I posted in Lounge my choice of recordings in 2021 - I can only see the avialabilty and quality of vinyl getting better - yes there are some dud’s out there - Oasis being one of them - but I have to say I am not going to move away from vinyl - it is a age thing - maybe but I am happy with the music
I’d express this a little different as it applies to me. If you don’t already have a large vinyl collection then there are advantages to relying on high quality streaming for much of your listening pleasure, and limiting your vinyl purchases. Those advantages are (A) cost (a Qobuz subscription is much more cost-effective) and (B) space (vinyl takes up a lot of room, quickly).
Storage is certainly the biggest issue with me. I have about 500 vinyl albums but last year only bought 2. I have about 1500 main system cds housed in 10 towers but last year only bought 20.
I suspect the trend for less purchases will continue.
This is because apart from storage problems I have become very satisfied with streaming and also because I am now able to resist buying the same album over and over again.
I ripped all my cds about 10 years ago and have been totally happy with that decision. Once you’re committed to streaming, IMHO ripping your cds to an easy-to-maintain home server such as a Roon Nucleus is a no-brainer. That solves the cd storage problem!
I have about 150 lp’s and recently bought a nice LP rack that holds . . . . not many more. So that caps my lp purchasing. And I do get your orig. point – for us the LPs are “special” meaning mostly the ones we cherished in the 70’s and where we love looking at the art and reading the liner notes. And I have a “thing” for early Beatles’ pressings.
Yeah, at over 4000 LPs I am challenged for space, but I’ve been committed to vinyl for some 50 years, and continue to play it 80% of the time vs Qobuz/Roon on my NDX2. I do plan to be more discriminating about purchasing new vinyl going forward (especially since I’m switching to part-time work in April), and might even consider starting to sell of parts of my collection.
Yes I am still committed to my vinyl and cd collection but the addition of a decent streamer has helped me be a little more judicious when making further purchases .
I have no idea what a NAS is or how to go about it. It is best for me to keep things simple where I can rely on help from my dealer. Thank you for the suggestion. All my computers and tablets are Apple. I would not know where to start.
Thank you, HH. I will look into Bandcamp and see if there are any Australian artists on it and when I go to small gigs I will see if they have any CDs for sale.
Mitch there are some pieces of hardware that are super easy to use to get started. Plenty of help available here. Some is more intricate to use than others, so starting with the simplest solution is a great idea.
I had a NAS but abandoned it. Now I use Roon and have all my audio files on a SSD attached to the Roon server.
Part of the reason I abandoned the NAS is I want it to be just an appliance that I can run and forget about. Sadly, as NAS is like any other operating system, and you have to pay attention to all the security patches required to keep it from getting compromised for nefarious uses. I suspect – but don’t know for sure – that my NAS might have been compromised one day when I logged in to it and ran a scan. At that point I decided to shut it down permanently.
Now I use Roon ROCK an in Intel NUC computer. ROCK is based on the linux OS but designed just to run the Roon music server and nothing else. It’s an appliance, and prtty much the same thing as the Nucleus appliance sold by Roon Labs. The advantage to that (my ROCK Nuc and Nucleus) is that Roon takes care of all the security patches and pushes updates when needed. I don’t have to do anything but click a button when I open the Roon controller app on my iPad and it prompts me to accept the updates.
I’m really just giving you my personal point of view. A NAS is fine – great really – if you are willing to pay attention to keeping it updated, just like you would a home or business computer. However, if you just want a plug and play appliance I don’t recommend it as a best choice. There are plenty of forum members here that use a NAS so you can likely get decent support.
You can also use a Mac as a Roon music server. It doesn’have to be on a Nucleus or your own NUC.
NAS stands for network attached storage. It has two big hard drives inside and is visible on the network. There is a red wire from the NAS to the switch on the left, and a purple wire from that to the NDX2. (We also have a green wire but couldn’t get a yellow one to complete the full Teletubby line up).
It’s not hard to set up. When you download music it ends up on your computer - an iMac in our case. You then check the metadata and copy the files to the NAS. If you had a Naim Core you’d still need to do this process, copying to the Core instead of the NAS. The Core comes into its own if you want to rip loads and loads of CDs. If you only rip a few - I’m often given them by the bands who play at our concerts - they can easily be ripped using your computer. The iMac doesn’t have a CD drive, so we have a portable one that is powered by USB and plugs into the Mac.
If anyone says you won’t have a learning curve with computer audio, they are telling porkies. You will. Sometimes it may drive you potty. But with a bit of patience and trial and error it’s very straightforward. You can buy an album on Bandcamp, check the metadata and be listening to it five minutes later. Most of the money you pay goes direct to the artist - about 80% I think - and you get your music to keep. It’s a good way of doing things.
As I am a late 70’s and 80’s guy growing up in my teens and twenties at high school and going to clubs after finishing high school in my apprenticeship days. You have a very good point. I like my 80’s rock, Dire Straits, Bruce Springsteen, and such. Though I find myself reaching out to different genres to stretch myself and appreciate other styles. I also enjoy soul, gospel, Handel, Bach, and some modern music such as Lady Gaga and Evanescense and how can I forget to mention Diana Krall, Neil Diamond, Rock Gospel, some soundtracks and the list goes on.
I am also a bit of a sucker for new releases in colour vinyl, it might be just a gimic, though with Evanescense I purchased both the red vinyl and black vinyl double albums. Yet to be played. The red for the collection and the black for playing.
I also enjoy my amateur radio and military motorcycle club, being ex-military and riding Harley’s, not ex-military motorcycles. The motorcycle will go in a little over four years and I can see myself listening to more music and having more time on my hands. It might be time to pick up the bass guitar again and play at my new church after our recent move three years ago.
