There’s always a step up isn’t there? 
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I tried an N100 at home for a couple of weeks with my ND555 (using an Audioquest Cinnamon Ethernet cable). I found it to be no better than a WD hard drive connected via USB. This was despite the N100 having the benefit of a Fraim shelf all to itself whilst the WD hard drive was just sat on the carpet.
Another member of the Forum - Meni - did the same comparison a while back and came to the same conclusion, preferring his WD hard drive to the N100. He ended up buying an N10.
As the WD hard drive was at least on a par with the N100, I decided to try out a Melco E100 hard drive and found it to be significantly better than the N100. I could have gone on to try an N1ZS or an N10 but I decided to stick with the E100, saving quite a bit of money in the process.
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My dealer said also that the N100 is no worth buying. The n1h60 mk2 is clearly better for not a lot of money more.
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I seem to remember Geoff of Pete telling me that it depended on your system whether 10 or 100 better, with no way of predicting it. Anyway I will have to listen for myself to see what works in my system
Dont rule out the N1 range
Is that the really pricy one?
A few in the range, different size case and bigger storage options
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The narrowest option would suit me if that works - could squeeze a half width quadrapsire stack on the left of the left fraim stack. It would hide the router
Thats the N100 or N10 then, but the N10 is a 2 box design so its actually bigger, unless you can stack one on top off each other or hide the power supply
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ND555 together with Melco N10 as a server sound to me the most analog sound I ever heard…sometimes I forget if it`s vinyl or streaming
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JP45, quite intrigued by this idea. If I understand correctly, the E100 is connected to the ND555 via USB and ‘serves’ music to the Naim network player. May I ask - how was the music ripped to the E100?
…E300 as usb drive direct attached to ND555?
The E100 is connected to the rear USB port of the ND555 via an Audioquest Cinnamon USB 2.0 A to B cable but for the the home demo I just used the stock cable that came with the E100. To my ears, it was significantly better than either a USB connected WD hard drive or an ethernet connected N100. The music files stored on the E100 are mostly Wav rips of my CDs, which I did on a PC using dBpoweramp, plus a growing number of CD-quality and high-res downloads.
thanks - that really sounds interesting!
Thanks, JP45. Interesting stuff. Melco state that the SQ of the E100’s storage system matches the SQ of storage system in the Z series; however, it is also used in the N100. Maybe the 555 benefits from the simplicity of a single USB HDD.
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