Melco n10 or additional 555dr

I don’t know how will other speakers behave in my room,my room is about 5x3:5 .and yes Melco as my first impression only for 2 hours and did sound better.even good

Yes Nds

the problem is that normally your nd555 should not sound bright. The melco will add some softness and refinement. But it should not be a medicine for a problematic nd555.
Some had to change their nd555 for a second one because of this brightness.
I wonder also if an Sl2 is appropriate for a 16m2 room?

Your description of variable performance really leads me to wonder if your ND555 is fully run in yet. If you’ve had four months of regular use I reckon things ought to be settling in, but if you’ve had irregular use it is still possible that this may be the issue.

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Yes. They can cope with that fine with a 500. My own room was the same width and slightly longer with an irregular L-shape.

It’s not a problem about brightness,I said before,the sound is unstable .it can sound good for a week and bad in the next week

ok, i wasn’t sure. My room is around 19m2, and my speakers have 2X 17cm HP. I had to sell my nap 300dr because of to overwhelming bass.

I’m assuming your dealer has checked your setup thoroughly (and installed everything for you). So in a sense you are providing your won answer - if the Melco takes your system to where you would like it to be you know that is the route to go down - or at least that need to think of replacing the Raspberry Pi with something that is going to give you better sonic performance. Adding a second 555PS will give you deeper and more detailed bass and greater detail and microdynamics across the board but won’t substantially change the “voice” of the system. That said, it sounds as if you have well-damped room, so it could be that this treble harshness indicates a problem with your gear as frenchrooster suggests, although the fact that it is not constant somewhat undermines that analysis.

ok, i understand better. But your nd555 is fully run in now. So i feel there is a problem with it. With a very expensive streamer like yours you should be on heaven every day! This instability is normal the first 200/ 300 hours, not after 4 months. It’s my feeling but i am not a specialist. Ask Bertbird, Darkbear, Gazza ( he changed twice his nd555), Stephan ( he changed recently his nd555 too)…
Sorry to bother you but i project personally to go eventually to the nd555 too, but i am not totally sure for now.

Melco improves the stability and consistency of the sound - and as I found recently when used with a Powerline improved on all these effects and adds rock-solid clean bass and removes vestigial HF noise. Without the PL and standard lead it was excellent but a bit tending to lean at times which the PL removed.

The Second 555 PS on ND555 really gives you more of what the ND555 does - big seamless sound but better stability in bass and soundstage - things open-out and stay open and don’t drift in and out of focus with the prevailing music. I greatly value this integrity and stability factor so the second supply was a no-brainer.

Theoretically people correctly argue that the ND555 input buffer should isolate you from the need for any special Ethernet or Data-store/server - but the obvious truth is that it does not when you audition it and have the comparison. My Dealer suggested that the ND555 was a lot better than the NDS at rejecting what he called Ethernet ‘wibble’ which I liked as a descriptor of what the Melco removes.

So:
Second 555PS = bigger more authoritative revealing sound with better resolution of musical timing between instruments being played - and a deeper more powerful bass.

Melco = cleaner crisper resolution and sense that the system sounds more like the CD555 did - a sense of greater isolation from the connected digital network. I preferred the mid-level Melco N1 with 6TB HDD over the others, as although it is a bit more ‘raunchy’ sounding and not as clean I felt it more honest in my system.

Which to choose in your case - get a good Ethernet cable and one of the Melco versions - perhaps you don’t need the most expensive one - save some money toward a later second 555PS a bit earlier that you may have otherwise afforded.

But don’t blow all your funds on the HiFi. :bear:

DB.

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DB, the OP ( Meni) has an instability in the sound. One week the nd555 sounds good and the other week a bit bad. After 4 months is it normal for you?

This is probably right, I think this is more in common with my problem, thx Darkebear…you did understand me.

My ND555 had a run-in journey of a few months of up and down and really seemed to settle after 6 months and at 9 months was sublime sounding. Now this is in context of my system, which shows up and down performance a lot more - and me who is quite fussy about it being right.

But at 4 months you should be into good performance and most of the bad run-in was the first few weeks and done with after a month.

I had to experiment to then optimize performance and found cable-dressing and position on Fraim important - trial and error quickly found what did what and allowed optimizing.

I began with the Melco as I’d previously experienced problems with Streaming solutions I’d heard that put me off adopting a streaming approach to music from the CD Replay I was getting better results with - until I heard my Dealer demo different systems, Naim and non-Naim that included the common-denominator of the Melco. We also did plenty of A-B comparisons taking the Melco out of circuit and with it immediately feeding the Streamer - at that time it was NDS - it sounded like all the musicians woke-up and were interested and involved in what they were playing rather than trying to get their job done and get paid and go. And that was just using the Melco as a pass-trough device and not hosting the Database - when it did that the effect redoubled, so I had marked this as part of a solution ahead.

There are several devices that offer to do what Melco does and I can’t comment on them as I’ve settled on mine and happy with it.

The other thing that made a huge impact on ‘brightness’ and general edginess removal was finding a good Ethernet cable to connect to the ND555. Commercial CAT7 was harsh-hash-harsh, Commercial CAT6 was bland and weak, CAT5 was best but a bit dull - then my first success was with AQ Cinnamon which was everywhere better - and later the AQ Vodka after a week or two run-in was an improvement again. But I’d start with AQ Cinnamon as it is relatively inexpensive and will show if there is an issue or not.

DB.

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Probably not.

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when i bought my nds/ 555dr it was first connected to my cheap commercial router and common ethernet cables. However it was never bad sounding and i had no instability in the sound.
Adding a cisco switch, high quality ethernet cables improved dramatically the sound. But i can’t say it was before bad sounding.
So i feel that buying a melco or an additional ps to cure a problem is not the solution. The nd555 should first sound very good and everyday. Then it can just be improved.

I agree with what you say that good sound start in the beginning,but everyone has his own demands to hear what is good,and sometimes the demands are different because they are related to emotion,or a very good experience with a system I had before,on the other hand there is maybe also other reasons to fix the sound,but I can still get the maximum from a Melco server.

i probably didn’t understood you well. I just read that your nd555 can sound very good one week and a bit bad another week. My understanding is that is not normal.
However the melco will improve the sound vs a raspberry, it will be a big jump for sure.
The innuos statement would also be a good choice, from what i read.
But perhaps you choose more melco?

Ermm, why?
That makes no sense at all, if comparing like with like via Ethernet.
In other words it may or may not, there is nothing definite here. It really depends on many variables on your Pi.

On UPnP on the lageacy streamers I found the best sounding media server was the bundled ReadyDLNA on a basic Netgear RN02 NAS when setup a certain way.

I did examine and measure why. There was a deterministic reason. I shared this with Naim whilst they were developing the new streamers.

The innuos statement is more expensive and also could not get a listening because it does not exist in my country at this moment, and the Malco n1zh/2 I heard,but I can get a good deal for the bigger one n10,about the bad sound I mention earlier,you think it comes from my Nd555,I don`t ,its probably with my acoustic room or with my network,a good streamer needs around the best area,like a server and ethenet cables

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which source had you before the nd555? if i may ask