I don’t know where to start but there is one thing for sure, since I got the ND555 my system is sounding off. I’m quite frustrated and tried a lot of things to solve that problem without success. The forum is now my hope to get some more ideas.
I got my ND555 last year in August. I had an NDS (firmware 4.4) before that. When I first plugged the ND555 in it was certainly different, it had a little more detail but was most of the time harsh (voices) sounding (I had good moments as well). I thought this is still an effect of running in and I also got that ups and downs (roller-coaster), but I never got the sound everybody was describing (run in should be over by now!?). Actually, the sound was most of the time unpleasant.
When I try to describe it in comparison to the NDS sound it is mostly the voices that are different. With the ND555 the voices are more background but when the singer gets louder it suddenly is to loud and unpleasant. It almost hurts. Because of the voices are in the background I turn the volume up to get some scale, but then the effect of when the singer gets louder is even worse.
As I told you I tried many different things and first of all I did put the NDS back in. What a pleasure. Music listening was suddenly fun again. The NDS is really special. 4 of 4 people in our household would choose the NDS any time as the better player compared to my ND555. That is frustrating considering the investment.
What else did I try:
Networking (different switches, different ethernet cables, network filters, no filters …).
Naca5 instead of Super Lumina.
Normal leads instead of PowerLines.
Fraim rebuild …
…
Finally, I involved Musicline (German distributer). I did send the ND555+Power Supply and Cables (Burndies and Super Lumia) to Musicline and they checked everything and did listen to it. Result: Everything is ok! They suppect that the combination with the SL2 is causing the problem.
When I got the unit back, I immediately tried it with different speakers. It sounds different but the character describes above stays.
My dealer will lend me Kudos 606 in two weeks to try some “modern” speakers, but I suspect it won’t make a difference.
I’m kind of clueless right now. I can’t believe that there is a mismatch with the SL2, but maybe …?
So any feedback or ideas are more then welcome and if any SL2 owners do have an ND555 I would be very much interested in there experience.
Thanks in advance
Stefan