Naim NDS - still a good used buy?

How can you possibly say something like that? It’s bizarre.

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@AllanP, I read that you are using a DigiOne Sig into an nDAC. In my opinion, you’ve done it in a smart way. Modern tech in the streaming part and an excellent quality nDAC. Happy with it?

I am just fairly confident that 2k is not a good buy. And other solutions maybe better.

Seee … this is a much better solution.

Way to backtrack :roll_eyes:

Have a lie down mate

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JFC, please read the thread. It’s the same DAC in there that you just declared outdated and useless

but for 1k€ is ok.

And you don’t get the additional isolation that’s in the NDS. It’s all there in the previous posts if you took the time.

I don’t need to defend any purchase as I don’t currently own an NDS or ND555 and I’m perfectly calm!

I just don’t happen to think that I know more than Naim about getting the best sound quality - they know far more about it than I do. I’m sure that Naim wouldn’t use ten year old tech as you put it in their latest flagship streamer if it didn’t still sound good compared to what else is on the market today.

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When you are always right, there is no need to read anything or indeed to think at all. You are right, and that’s that.

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The fact that he has never tried one, should have been enough really
As how can you have any real option on something, when you haven’t a clue what its like, well you can’t can you

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The saying ‘don’t feed the troll’ applies here of course, but it’s really hard to say nothing when people spout such unmitigated twaddle. Still, it brightens up the day and anyone remotely awake should be able to decide whose contributions are worth consideration.

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Going back to the original question the answer I believe is yes.

I have an NDS and bought it 2 years ago. It was mint and sealed from the factory back from a service and display replacement. It cost me £3.5k including Burndies from a reputable dealer. I’d pay the same if asked to today.

I thought long and hard as to whether to buy an NDX2 or NDS and decided on the latter based on value and ultimate sound quality. I had an NPX/XPS DR previously.

As a player to play local streamed music it is superb and arguably is Naims 3rd best source behind the ND555 and CD555. Even while the CD555 was still in production Naim chose the NDS to front Statement demonstrations until the ND555 came along. Nothing that has happened since changes that capability.

If you can live with the limitations of the built in services it remains an excellent buy and I suspect that if the ND555 hadn’t come along they would still be selling them at £8.2K.

As @simon.pepper has said you can add Roon functionality to the NDS with a bridge. This is what I have done. Once you have Roon and no longer use the Naim application you have access to a streamer that is pretty much future proof with Tidal and QoBuz. These services sound as good as local streaming just like the next generation streamers do. The DAC will always sound as good as it does now which is still pretty close to the top of the tree.

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There’s has been a lot of discussion about the DAC in the NDS vs the nDAc vs the nd555.
Whilst the chip may be the same, is the analogue reconstruction the same? This will help to validate whether, using the NDS as just a DAC over say the nDAC is worth the extra outlay or not.

The NDS is very similar to the ND555 albeit with some optimisations largely gained by removing the capability to use an XPS as a power supply. Apparently the NDS has some compromises due to this flexibility which the reference product doesn’t have.

The NDS does still gain from the sprung isolation etc that the ND555 has along with the capability of being ‘properly’ powered by a 555PS or two. This helps take it beyond the NDAC.

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Filters can and do change the way the dac sounds, but naim isn’t going to be working anymore on the NDS, so I guess that’s it for it.
We know the nd555 can and has had just lately a filter change, but also its limited to how its design and the limits of the chip.
Will be very interesting to see what they come up with next, I guess it will be very different to now and maybe have a few different maps and Filters, so you can choose and fine tune to your system and ears etc, just like the ring dac and a few others.
Whatever it is, it will be very different as the burr brown dac chips are no more

Very happy with the sound quality. Digione Sig (plus additional tweaks) into nDAC/XPSDR is the best source I’ve owned (including KDS/1 and CDS3/555). Physically it’s a bit messy being three boxes just for the digital transport alone (USBridge Signature enclosure and two Allo Shanti power supplies). Just waiting for a new generation of one- box transport/streamers to appear with optical fibre Ethernet connection built-in and might consider making a change if I hear an improvement.

At some point I’ll no-doubt feel an overwhelming urge to pick up a nice pre-loved NDS to compare with the nDAC. In my system I’d simply switch off the NDS’s streaming section and feed it SPDIF the same way I’m doing now with the nDAC. It’s one of those comparison I’ve been interested in for a long time and at today’s prices could be an effective low cost upgrade. Other upgrade priorities on the list first though.

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There was a big activity back in 2017, on the firmware releases for the NDS, where there were multiple versions in the range 4.4.7x that offered different SQ profiles, based on filter settings, timings in the DSP etc.
We were able to compare and we actually got to give our preference. Further fine tuning was undertaken for the 4.4.75 release. This then feed through into the 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7 releases during 2018 and 2019.
There has been stability in firmware for the NDS since then. I believe many of the NDS owners here on this forum, would declare that it is not broken, so no need for any further fixes or changes.

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It’s not what I was talking about
The NDS or ND555 doesn’t have the capability to have multiple maps and filters, that you can just swap over to and try, maybe the next one will, as its certainly very nice to have as one map and filter certainly doesn’t fit all