ND555 Impressions

Reduced the Melco to 89% fill rate. Issues of stops still exist - will move those specific albums to the external storage to avoid it being a bad sector on the Melco, while I would find that strange. Not happy with this, as it never occurred before… and my Sony doesn’t have the problems…, so conversion, connection issue, drive issue or issue in the ND555…

Try putting those albums on an USB stick. Disconnect your Melco and play them using ND555’s internal server. If the issue with those albums disappears, then you have your answer :smiley:

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I love the sound what`s coming out through internal server

Bert, I’m not sure why you’re seeing the star on the screen. I see it when using Tidal, and you tap it to mark the track as a ‘favourite’ but this is a Tidal function, and I’m surprised that you see the star when using UPnP.

i was using tidal for a month recently. I discovered if i was not stopping a file on tidal, then passing on upnp creates drop outs and stopping file.
Can you disconnect tidal from the screen and play these files without tidal on the background? maybe it’s something like that?

Thanks all for the tips will try some more stuff to get behind the root cause, before calling for professional support

At least the one album is now playing as it should be. I reduced the capacity from the Melco to give it more breathing space. And also moved the specific troublesome albums to the external disc. So seems like a bad sector issue on the disc, this is the scary part of this streaming age as it can happen unexpected and you never know where and it’s difficult to detect.
I also don’t know what the advice is on replacing the discs every now and then. I have this specific Melco about three years in permanent operation.

Would appreciate an opinion of the more techie forum members.

You can’t have too many backups.

I have enough that’s not the trouble, but if your main source is creating issues, you have to see if it’s wise to replace disks or wait a bit longer…

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I would drop Melco an email to see what they suggest. In the past I have seen the odd post complimenting them on their after sales service.

perhaps create a specific thread to have more visibility for the techies?

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If you are running a NAS with a mirrored array, plus backing up regularly, HDD issues are not perilous. What is perilous is using a proprietary storage system with fiddly redundancy and no upgrade path without taking it to bits or returning it to the dealer.

I am fascinated by what Melco claim and produce. I’ve just read a review of their two box £6K model and it seems more and more like I am foolish to not seek one out to audition. Then I look at the spec and the ability to configure the hardware and software as I now do on my NASs. It looks too much like a blind alley to me.

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Bert, I would be curious to know if your problem persists if you remove the direct connection from Melco to streamer (assuming you use this) and just use it with a regular network connection, as you would with a regular NAS?

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Doesn’t @Darkebear use a Melco? Surprised he hasn’t weighed in on this @BertBird

What server do you use currently, Harry?

I run Asset on a dedicated NAS, and Minimserver on another dedicated NAS… Both mirrored and both separately backed up.

Yeah, I know. What can I say? I’m a Virgo.

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I’ve not seen this with my Melco, but mine is the 6TB HDD version and I’m less than half-full capacity, if indeed it is a capacity thing, which I’d doubt.
SDD versions of Melco do have smaller capacity and generally with SSD for longevity these like to keep about a third (or at least a reasonable amount) of the SSD disk space free for swap and refresh, as SSD lifetime degrades much quicker when nearly full - having said all that very unlikely it is that either as there should be many years of life even when crammed-full.

I’m finding the Melco is very transparent to other changes elsewhere made - almost everything seems to have an impact on the tuning of the performance of the ND555 - Rack - position on rack - cable-dressing freedom - type of cables …etc and more, but the Melco has given me few problems so I have not much to say on this problem.

The Melco is not a weak-link is what I’m appreciating. There are further gains to be made ahead I’m certain from what I’ve heard to date - I’ve auditioned the SSD version of what I have and the new two-box Melco and still prefer what mine does in my system - albeit I do hear what the others do better in aspects of music rendition, mainly in clarity and perceived dynamics.
But in system-matching I’ve found care is needed not to end-up with a lightweight or over-bearing presentation and at present it is about right in terms of detail extracted and rendered in a musically pleasing way - in my system and for my taste.

…and I’m loving my ND555 sourced system now. :slightly_smiling_face::bear:

DB.

Did you use a NAS before DB?

I didn’t - I had a WD NAS and use it as a secondary back-up in parallel with the various other back-ups I keep.

I was not that interested in Streaming until I heard a Chord DAC with Melco catch my attention and it was finally free of a cloying low-level coloration I’d always heard Streaming systems prone to and here it was finally just not present. Then followed demos with other versions of Chord DAC-upscaler then the ND555 and I settled on the latter - but with the Melco, as I liked the cleaner sound and liked the concept of a HiFi-designed low-noise music server-database-direct not via switch solution.

I’m sure there must be other and now better ways to do all this but I wanted a win that worked in a demo that could get me going with Streaming finally. I’ll always re-visit the various parts of the replay chain as possibly better ways to achieve what I like emerge - I’m not wedded to Melco but it was best I have encountered so far.

…and when I stream the same ripped music from the WD NAS it is a murky colored version with poorer-timing than that offered by the Melco; other than that it is fine and ND555 plays it to good results - but the choice is obvious in my system.

Possibly unfortunately - or maybe not - there are the two main schools of approach that either technically ‘know’ what is best and just implement that - and those that experiment. I prefer the latter as although I’m trained in the former it does not yield the best results.

DB.

Now this is interesting. Thank you for that.