I ordered a ND5 XS2 yesterday and can’t wait to hear it with my Supernait 3! Have to say the Supernait 3 was a game changer for me, it’s just so damn engaging, the thought of adding another Naim component to the table has me pretty excited…
I do have a few questions for the ND5 XS2 owners if I may…
Is there a burn-in period?
Sound quality wise is Din to Din the optimal means of connection to my SN3?
Should I plug directly into outlet vs power strip? (I made a point to plug my Supernait 3 directly into it’s own outlet).
Thanks in advance, I’m sure I’ll have a few more questions once it arrives …
Congratulations first off! Yes the nd5xs2 does sound better after a month or so but it should sound really good straight out of the box. I’d highly recommend going Din-to-Din.
I have mine into a power strip. Accessories wise the HiLine interconnect is good along side the Poweline but I’d wait for both until your unit arrives.
The ND5 XS2 will be supplied with a grey Naim 5 pin DIN interconnect, that’s your best starting point.
Later you may consider replacing that with a Hi-Line DIN to DIN and swopping in Powerline AC to replace the Powerline Lite they both ship with.
Connect directly to wall outlet if possible, both same socket/circuit ideally for grounding path consistency.
Leave it streaming something 24/7 for the first few weeks, even if at night time you turn volume down to minimum or mute/select unused source on SN3, it’ll help stress the components and let it settle in.
All good otherwise, enjoy!
Hope you really enjoy your new purchase. I’ve had mine > a year now and it’s not missed a beat. Giving the new equipment and you a month to settle in is v sensible and can’t disagree with what has been posted above.
Depending on how you stream an Ethernet switch (EE8) with relatively cheap BJC cables gave a nice uplift compared to going direct from router (Virgin Hub 4) but that’s further down the line.
Enjoy journey and music .
You have made a good choice, I have had mine for about 9 months and it has worked flawlessly, at the moment I use the grey Din to Din into a Netgear switch but may look to try what Tapp and a few others have suggested and use a better switch or probably go the Ndac route,
at the moment though just enjoying the system.
An EE8 switch is 5 hundred quid which is a large percentage of the purchase price of a mint nDAC.
We couldn’t hear any difference so removed our Cisco 2960 we used with 272. Now just have a good quality (not expensive boutique) cable in wall conduit from BT Hub to NDX2.
It will be one of them when it arrives … Love Fagan and all Steely Dan’s music, luckily had the pleasure of seeing them multiple times before Walter passed away. Fagan still tours, hopefully he’ll come close this upcoming year…
I ran wifi only for well over a year, no issues at all for me, just make sure your network is sorted out. I switched to a hybrid wifi/ethernet approach once I purchased an EE8Switch which was a nice upgrade.
Had my ND5XS2 for around 2.5 years. I’m just using wifi and connection has been spot on. I’m just using the stock DIN cable that came with it. Love its simplicity and most of all the sound. No plans of upgrading or changing it.
I only ever used mine over Wi-Fi when I had one. Worked fine, you could argue in loops forever whether one is better than the other but there’s no reason why with a properly setup Wi-Fi access point, you can’t achieve solid performance and certainly equivalent to what is possible on a wired connection.
It also makes the setup easier and neater if nothing else
IMO tried hard wired, but reverted to Wi-Fi for err… wife / family / neatness reasons. No difference in sound to me, so kept it on Wi-Fi, runs perfect. The router is about 5 m away in another room. Its a killer at the price point for us. All on standard delivered cables so far. BTW after getting ours, I was home office for 3 to 4 weeks over the period it improved a lot. Then I had a 2 months business trip away and returned. Wow different beast altogether, so I would say a couple of months running will still give noticeable benefits. Enjoy!
“Connect directly to wall outlet if possible, both same socket/circuit ideally for grounding path consistency.”.
Excellent idea, luckily I can and will connect the ND5XS2 to the same outlet/ circuit that my SN3 is presently connected too.
Not sure what speaker cables you’re using but it’s generally considered there are safe/obvious choices and those best to avoid.
The baseline is Naim’s own NAC A5, annoyingly stiff but works consistently on any Naim amp!
WitchHat, Tellurium Q, Kudos etc are also popular and typically work well in a Naim System.
Avoid anything braided or very short (under 2m) longer tends to work better if you have the space to tame it, over the years I’ve settled on 4.5m as my sweet spot, others prefer 6-8m but experiment to preference, longer is better than shorter anyway in most setups.
I love my ND5 XS2, but it can be at times, quite frustrating-especially updates. Mine is wired, as Wi-Fi has been very spotty on it working, if at all. Yet my 1/4 of the price Lindemann Bridge 2 connects every time wireless, and I have to say, sounds every bit as good as the Naim, even when in wired mode. Sigh….
I just connected the audio out of my LG TV to my ND5XS2 using a 3 metre TosLink cable. I have a Sony CD/DVD/BlueRay home cinema system which has no audio out facility and listening to my collection of music DVDs through the 5 tiny speakers and sub was never too enthralling - most haven’t been played in years. With the surround sound turned off and using Digital 1 on the ND5XS2 the sound is phenomenally good, true stereo, finely detailed and with great natural bass. My only problem now is choosing whether to stream, play CD or DVD - it’s a tough life!
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It’s one of my goto albums for new kit.
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