@pcd I understood that this issue, which I had experienced on numerous occasions, was meant to have been fixed with this update and, in fact, since an earlier version of the beta firmware.
That being said, I recall Will saying that the development team thought artwork freeze was likely caused by an interruption (internal or on the network) coinciding with a track transition.
My immediate impression of the new firmware release was that there was a degree of distortion on piano and across midrange frequencies in general. However, that improved quickly - by the end of the evening my test tracks were already sounding better. By the next morning, it was cooking! I hope those who have been disillusioned by the new firmware have given it time to warm up again. Although I haven’t yet tried Qobuz, as far as I’m concerned it’s all good and I too think it’s marginally better than the previous release.
The update process re-booting does take a day or two to settle I found and sounds a bit thin and bright the first day and then fills-out with the ND555.
DB.
Hi Jim, I use both the Naim app and Roon.
The key thing for me is that I use the streamer in digital output mode, and the effects of firmware changes are a lot less compared to analogue output mode in my experience.
I agree with DB a reboot, or restart does take a little while for the streamer to settle down… although for me it’s a few hours as opposed to days.
I agree also. My Atom takes 3-5 days to stabilise after update. And first symptoms after update are harsh, detailed, bright sound.
Except for the last update. The sound was good right after installation.
I frankly believe that what takes some time to stabilize after a firmware upgrade are our eras and our brains, not the streamer’s hardware, let apart its firmware!
I have several sets of speaker cable and the issue is the same in all of them. I am also not the only one to have issues like this with the Atom and others have had similar issues with Nova have we all got bad speaker cables? Doubt it. Its flakey software if you ask me.
100% agree.
I am not convinced… but there is definitely a settle in time after a restart. I do notice if I need to reboot the streamer because it has locked up etc when testing beta firmware etc.
Thanks for all your suggestions for helping me out - I’ve done full power down on everything and re-boots 3 days ago, unplugged for a couple of hours in between…still experiencing the same disappointment! I tried a change in Ethernet Cable from 2960 too (reasonably standard cat5 & 6) and a change of interconnect - with no improvement - I did find though that the sound was much less affected by cable changes than before. Speaker position changes had the usual effect but no better either. I find it disconcerting that only feature changes are referenced in the firmware update details and sound quality is not mentioned - especially when it appears that beta testers feedback on version sound quality. At least then it would be more of an informed choice for people like me (and others?) as to whether to ‘press the button’ - especially when myself and others (noting the comments on here) have noticed such a large change (good or bad!) - now that there is ‘no going back’!! If sound quality is not mentioned because sound quality is ‘perception and system’ dependent then that’s another reason to allow people to go back!
I’ve noted comments the firmware update has improvement to sound quality of the the NDX2 and ND555… has anyone experienced the same with the ND5 XS2 following the upgrade?
I haven’t had mine long enough to be objective about any SQ improvements. Sounds great though…
I won’t quote myself from a previous post, but yes I noticed the improvement with my modest ND5XS2. My quote is above if you’d like to see it.
The fact that now when you buy a naim product you also get additionally, with no surcharge the naim company committed say for the next 10 years (this is what I hope the lifespan of my nd555 will be) to make sure that any possible SQ improvement during those 10 years that can be squeezed out through their ongoing research does land into your piece of hardware…well this is FANTASTIC!
So I’m very positive about this, which helps me put up with some inconveniences in this upgrade process
Ah yes, sorry I messed the previous one and thank you for the feedback
…missed…!
The CPU load and the power consumption of a renderer are typically high at boot time and stabilize within a few seconds after boot is completed.
For instance, on the RPi 3B+ that hosts my DigiOne Signature, I measure between 0.5A and 1.0A current at boot and less than 0.4A after boot is completed.
It is conceivable that transients in CPU load and power consumption have an impact on sound quality, but that effect should decay very fast once the system is up an running.
On music servers the situation is a bit different: after boot, they typically rescan music libraries and start administrative tasks that can take minutes to complete.
Perhaps the behavior that you observe has to do with the PSU. In my system I do not need to switch off the PSU when rebooting.
System software shouldn’t anyway have any significant impact on sound quality: If a new version of MPD, a Tidal plugin or a bug fix would impact the sound quality of a device perceivably, we would be at the mercy of chance.
I routinely upgrade my systems and install new versions of upmpdcli, MPD and other application-level software and I never observed any changes in the sound quality.
New device drivers, kernels, etc. can of course have an impact on the sound quality of a renderer. But this is not a software layer that typically needs to be modified to fix a bug or to add support for a new internet streaming service. There are exceptions, of course.
If Naim’s software design does not generally allow to fix bugs without impacting the sound quality, be this for the good or for the bad, then that design is obviously deficient.
I very much doubt this: since the new streaming platform is based on Linux, Naim will most likely use standard Linux components, perhaps with some own specific software, for instance for the UPnP server that also runs on their streamers.
If the software allows fixing bugs without impacting the sound quality, then why do not they clearly distinguish between firmware upgrades that are meant to fix bugs or improve functionalities and upgrades that are meant to improve the sound quality?
They could use even numbers for sound quality upgrades and odd numbers for bug fixes and functionality improvements and one could decide to just upgrade functionalities, sound quality or both.
This is true, but not convinced this is the reason… I think it’s more about the crucial synchronisation clock reaching its quiescent operating conditions again in its thermal bath and feedback systems… I understand a lot of focus went into the clock stability in the new streamers with improvements over the legacy models. We know for a digital transport that serialises digital media (which is a requirement in the Digital to Analogue conversion process) , the clock is as crucial as the sample values them selves.
I use an NDX2. When the firmware first went in the sound was very brittle, but settled down quickly and next day it sounds superb, so much better. A lovely free upgrade.
