ND555 dilemma (or else)

They take at least many days and I’d say a few weeks to run-in, which is why I retained my old run-in set of Burndies when changing from my CD555 to ND555.

I tried the nice new ND555 burndies as I’d had the successful home demo with my old CD555 leads - the result was glare and harshness and they obviously (to me) needed to run-in as I’ve experienced the same before. So I retained my old set of Burndies that sounded better and allowed immediate access to the ND555 over the new ND555 Burndies, which would give me that in several weeks.

Just for information. If you are finding the unused Burndies better there is a lot more to go yet and they get a lot smoother over time - allow several days. They also may go through a harsh ‘spike’ of noise on day 2-3 which passes and it is much better than at start after that passes, so allow for that too.

DB.

I may have missed this but is your 555ps a DR model, your profile doesn’t say it is?

If it is not DR then maybe this is the issue. The NDS was designed before DR whereas the ND555 was designed for DR from the outset.

I’ve been following this thread with fascination. I cannot imagine how gutted I would feel to have dropped £13k and not feel joy every time I sat down to listen. Whatever the end point turns out to be in terms of SQ, the starting point with any piece of HiFi ought to be, at the very least, a significant improvement upon what it replaces, with no negatives. Unless a stupid mistake or oversight has occurred on installation, or the ND555 itself is faulty, these conversations should not be taking place! If the negatives described by the OP are apparent to impartial ears, get the thing replaced. If not, it’s obviously not the machine for him, and a home demo would have revealed that and saved a lot of heartache. Forgive my lack of empathy with the finer points of audiophilia, but I honestly don’t think they are of any relevance in this situation. A £13k machine should never, all other things bring equal (which they were before it replaced the NDS), sound anything other than bloody fantastic! Wait 3 or 6 months by all means for it to get even better, but not for it to transform from c**p to wonderful.

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Hi Stefan,

Its good to see you back on the forum, I am sorry you seem to be having problems with the ND 555.

As you have only just put the new Burndies in the system I would give it at least a week before commenting.

I am sure you heard the ND 555 before purchasing and I wonder how different yours is to a demo unit. I know new units can be inconsistent and its not impossible for the ND555 to be faulty but I believe all reference units are double checked before leaving the factory.

I also doubt its the 552DR, you system must have sounded good before installing the ND555 or I am sure you would have had doubts before installing the new unit.

Strangely enough the system Lindsay mentions is mine and I have the same view, I have yet to hear any streamer that I would want to change the CD555 to.

Kind regards

PB

Yes, lessons learned.
With the all over and generall positiv review I thought it is a no brainer. Before that I never had a problem with naim in this respect.

That gives me hope DB. Thanks for ensuring me to hang on it.

It is DR. I will update my profile immediately :slight_smile:

That’s the thing with run in. In the beginning it was ok not sounding perfect and so time went by. It changed it’s sound got better then worse again. I had this before and always ended up with a really good sounding system. Not this time.

That made me laugh, the ND555 should be a clear improvement over the NDS whether the amp is a 552 or a 552 DR :smirk:

Not always possible outside UK.

Hi Polarbear,

Thanks for your empathy.

Even right now the system sounds very good putting the NDS in it.

And the new Burndies sound promising so far and I will give them time now.

Thanks
Stefan

At least it is much more complicated…

I was referring to the 555ps which powers the streamer, I made no reference to the pre-amp.

My point was that if the streamer was powered by a non DR supply it could sound different to how Naim designed it to be used. Especially when the NDS came before DR.

The op has confirmed DR status but I am pleased to have been a source of amusement.:grinning:

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Personally i am very sensitive to brightness. It’s the reason i have an all tube preamp.
However i have listened to the nd555 at my dealer place a few months ago, in an all naim system, apart the speakers. It’s the first time that i found a complete naim system ( amp, preamp and source) not sounding bright at all. The nas was a melco, which can help too.
So for me the nd555 sounded accurate, dynamic, with soft high frequencies. Any hint of brightness or harshness.
In one week, with the new burndys running, if there is no big and positive difference, i would ask for a replacement.

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That is about my position too - I’m very averse to high-frequency distortion and can’t easy abide it - and certainly not in my system.

The ND555 is more revealing than NDS at high-frequencies and it presents a lot more information there, which must be handled by the rest of the system. I found the NDS very good and nearly at one point purchased one, but it was not better than my CD555 so I declined in the end to do so.
But the ND555 came along and the comparison of a new ND555 against my well run-in CD555 which I loved showed that the ND555 had areas it was clearly doing better and a more open and refined top-end.

In time the ND555 has run-in and is, in my system (which ruthlessly reveals things wrong), silky-detailed High-frequency rendition - no problems at all.
With the wrong cables and poor set-up - yes the HF can be more prominent and make you identify the problem elsewhere, but it is not an innate problem of the ND555 as such.

DB.

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Occasionally when you add a highly resolving component the sound gets worse, with harshness being the main element. Why? Because the extra air and ambience resolved by the component is not resolved further downstream…the extra treble energy is simply combined back into the main signal components to make them unbalanced and harsh. So there’s 2 ways to resolve the issue:
Have your dealer bring another ND555…if the problem resolves, your ND555 is faulty. If the issue remains, yet the less resolving component sounds good, something downstream of the ND555 is causing the problem.

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The OP has a 552 are you saying the 552 is not up to the job even though the 552 worked perfectly well with the NDS.

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A 552 nearing need for service can become bright and it does not like being fed a lot of HF - that is what happened to me at the 10 year point with my 552, so just for consideration and elimination as a possible problem I’d have the Dealer insert a known recently serviced good 552 and if still bright then the existing Pre is not the problem.
But the 552 in question has 12 years on it - it may be fine but do not assume the 552 will gracefully go dull with age as mine and another I know of both screamed when they needed the service.

DB.

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All I’m saying is that when a component that should be more resolving isn’t, then either the component is faulty or something down stream is losing the extra resolution. In my experience, extra resolution generally results in lower treble harshness as the unresolved treble is usually heard as distortion. In a hi-fi system, a chain of increasingly resolving components will sound good whereas a chain with decreasing resolution will sound bad. That’s why your best cables for example should always be placed at the end of the chain.

I can say for my case, that my local Naim dealer is not one I have confidence in, and operates with a certain tone that is intended for make him feel superior and you inferior. You all in the UK are very lucky, as you have dozens of dealers, and it sounds like many good ones. By comparison, we have about a dozen dealers that are withing a one day drive, 600 miles. I chose one that seemed to understand Naim and able to answer my questions. He was 500 miles away. Based on this forum, the ND555 did not seem to be a small upgrade, and I was moving from and NDX. So I asked him, and he was honest, telling me that he had not actually heard it (at this point they were not available in the States) so I had him put me on the waiting list–he said that 5 units would be coming in in several month–several months turned out to be from August to dely in December. So it all worked out, and in those several months, this Forum continued to get very positive feedback from what seemed like dozens of owners/demos. So I pulled the trigger, and could not be happier.

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I am completely mystified as to why this thread is still spinning. The ND555 is, in my experience, the finest source Naim has made, and, for me, the asking price is realistic. It is not bright, it is not harsh, it is simply musical. It puts a smile on your face, while simultaneously burning the music into your memory. If it doesn’t do that in a particular system compared to an NDS, then there is a fault with that particular ND555.

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:small_blue_diamond:RipVanRadio,…I Agree,…As Simply As That.

/Peder🙂

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Very sorry to hear about your situation OP. Anything I could think of has been covered already.

Sometimes things just don’t work for reasons unknown. This is why I audition obsessively, but sometimes even that doesn’t pan out. Like HH (and possibly others - it’s a long thread) I prefer the presentation of the CDS3 to the CD555. Prior to listening to the ND555, and factoring in my love for the NDS, I wondered if I might possibly be back in that territory again. I was not. But in different systems/rooms/ears it may be that the S level sources just sound better for some reason.

We had a similar experience with our 552. The audition amp we listened to at home for a couple of weeks sounded so much better than our new 552, even after several months. The factory took it back and listened at length.It was stripped and rebuilt. Nobody wants to be in this situation, but my dealer and Naim handled it professionally and successfully.

I know that non UK dealers and distributors have different plates to spin and different logistics to grapple with. Nevertheless, I believe it would be perfectly reasonable to ask for a replacement, or that your ND555 goes back to Naim UK for a pull down.

Best of luck to you.

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