Naim ND5XS USB Question

Streaming Audio
1

I’ve never been able to successfully connect an external Hard Drive with Flac music files to my Naim ND5XS.

I tried the same Hard Drive today on a Naim ND5XS2 and after awhile (it had to process a lot of files and art work) it worked fine.

Is it the case that the older streamer just could not read external HD’s or am I missing something ?Any advice much appreciated.

Thanks

2

The USB socket on the older streamers was provided to allow an iPhone to be connected. You can sometimes get small USB sticks to connect, but it’s not easy to find ones that work.

So the answer is that you can’t really expect to connect a USB hard drive to the USB socket on an ND5 XS.

3

USB playback on 1st gen streamers is officially supported and it should work, but the basic folder view is best suited to relatively small libraries and it’s expected that USB memory sticks are used.

The port provides power for the drive: don’t attempt to use an externally powered drive of a spinning HDD. A correctly formatted USB stick should be fine.

4

I just had a dig in the office.

Put a FLAC file on the following:

  1. USB thumb drive

  2. USB Seagate portable HDD

  3. USB NVMe enclosure

Our SuperUniti read all 3 via front USB port.

1 Like
5

Thanks David that seems to be the issue

6

Thanks Chris Im after using a HD with larger library so may need to change streamers to allow this

7

Thanks Ian but I think that the SuperUniti,like the ND5XS2, is a newer model and can read drives that the earlier streamer cannot.

8

Our SuperUniti is a 2013 model.

Never had any problems with a correctly formatted USB (and our 272 was the same - also a naim gen1 device).

9

I found that spinning hard drives would sometimes work, but not always, whereas I never had a problem with memory sticks, even relatively large capacity ones.

If you’re otherwise happy with your ND5XS a better option might be to buy a NAS and use UPnP, which is what 1st gen streamers were primarily designed for. Otherwise an ND5XS2 has plenty of advantages over it’s predecessor.

How large is your music library? Even with a 2nd gen streamers you may find that a NAS is more versatile than a USB drive.

10

Thanks again Ian. I will try using a correctly formatted thumb drive as you suggest but what is the correct format ? Do you the details ?

11

Thanks Chris, I will take a look at the Upnp / Nas connection.

12

If I recall correctly, FAT32 works best.

You could search the forum, likely been covered before.