ND555 Impressions

Getting up every track to reconnect and load another track then disconnect may mar the Streaming experience overall a bit. :slightly_smiling_face: May be too much of the ‘Vinyl experience’ of playing all your music as singles for many.

The Ethernet effect is nothing to do with integrity of data and seems an important secondary ‘noise’ effect that does not lend itself to easy fixes - if it did I’d do it.

All my delving into these seemingly black-arts stuff is to get an optimized solution to get the very best I can from my ND555 - it certainly does not need any great effort to get it to work, just that a much higher level of replay is demonstrable with these tweaks to cables - switch - database - etc…

But it works without any of these effects taken into account, but that may account for some people not moved so much by their experience of the ND555 and some very impressed, as the cumulative improvements really add-up - and most of them are inexpensive and just need some effort if people want - or not.

DB.

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Im just wondering if it lends itself to the experiment I propose – unplugging during replay.

I’ll see if my wife will indulge me; I’ll have next week an Ansuz ethernet cable purchased ‘gently used’ and I’ll see if I can convince her to listen to that vs. my current Cinnamon cable for a blind test. I have to catch her in the right mood for that!

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i am curious to know how the evolution of this belden cable is? still burning?
i promise, i will not take your impressions as absolute truth :pray::star_struck:

As you have spent so much time an effort in ‘optimising’ the performance of the ND555, and I have similar experiences with the NDS, it would suggest that such tweaks are almost a requirement if one wishes to get the best out of the top Naim streamer.

Furthermore, this all suggests that some could be put off the ND555 if demoed in less than ideal circumstances. If this is true then maybe Naim have reached the point where they really need to issue some installation guidelines and some recommended cables, switches and servers to run with the streamer. Also is it best to connect the ND555 ‘direct’ to the server or use the more traditional ethernet LAN?

As most of us do not have the detailed experience of DB, Dealers will also need to up their technical savvy in the art of setting up the ND555, or sales could suffer.

Just some thoughts.

Hmmn…the worst sounds out of an ND555 i have heard have been Naim demo,s…even in the same dealer that i eventually bought from. Left to their own devices my dealer gave a great demo that thankfully convinced me. I am still at a loss as to why some of these demo,s did not capture what i hear every day?
But as you mentioned in the Kudos thread…
I have learnt to enjoy the event, but not to make definitive decisions.

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Don’t disagree Gazza, but you are blessed with a wonderful dealer who takes the time and effort to test, and hence optimise the ND555. Other dealers may not, and hence risk selling the ND555 short.

Surely it is up to the manufacturer to optimise the installation of their products, recommend peripherals and train their dealers accordingly. After all, it is Naim that have done all the testing and auditioning during development, surely they must have found ways of optimising the ND555’s installation. A simple recommended list of do’s and don’ts would be a good starting place. There would still be the freedom for the more forward-thinking dealers to experiment.

It just seems to me that we are reaching uncharted waters in the ability and sensitivity of streaming. Time for Naim to grasp the nettle IMHO.

You are right Nigel, i guess one of the problems at the Naim demo,s was the choice of music to make a point of sound quality over what i want is musical enjoyment. Probably the set up was spot on…but choice of music was unusual, not what the majority would normally listen to. Left to my own devices with my music…bingo. So a hit list of points for dealers, not a bad idea. I thought i had heard that Naim were proactively doing what you suggest, but not heard it confirmed. They certainly did help my dealer with their Statement amps recently.

are you ironic Nigel, still the same self and other depreciation?

Ah, the age old problem of the playlist! To be fair this is only an issue at Show and dealer Roadshow demos. I am sure we are all encouraged to bring/listen to our own test tracks and favourites at an individual appointed demo, I know my dealer does.

Having said this, we went ‘off piste’ at Cymbiosis on Friday and I must say it was a real eye-opener and great fun. The poor Kudos guy made the mistake of handing the iPad to us lot. Although I had control of it, others were picking the tracks. Even so, the difference between passive and active was clearly demonstrated as the Kudos guy made sure we repeated the same intro of our random tracks, usually active, passive then active again.

Although I didn’t hear much of my favourite music it was interesting and revealing to hear the selection of my fellow guests. We heard the obligatory ‘No Sanctuary’ by Chris Jones off the Roadhouses And Automobiles album. Then the chap I was sitting next to suggested a ‘Dance/House’ version of the same track on Tidal. I was dubious but managed to find it on Tidal and it was absolutely brilliant with Chris Jones himself doing the vocals with the beat at least twice as fast as the original. It was a blast!

Nope FR, that post is straight up and I mean every word.

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Indeed - still running-in. I found I had to re-swap the direction back again to what I began with after another few hours as lots of smeary distortion appeared and annoyed me - swapped back and it was gone and the sound clearer.

Presently running the Belden direction (as designated by the writing on the cable sheath) reading from Melco to ND555. Coincidentally also from switch to Melco the same direction, but that is the only way I tried it so far for that run.

It is still running-in and I don’t want to pronounce on it yet until a few more days to settle. Provisional at this point is that it has good strengths and some weakness, the latter may disappear with time or not.

For simplicity if considering the sound as having two ‘dimensions’ of Amplitude and Time then the Belden is excellent at rendering fine details into the Amplitude - small changes in level, inflection, emphasis well. But there is also an overlay of harmonic colouration and some murky effects that is reducing with run-in.

In the Time domain it is still not as accurate as the Vodka - this sort of thing may be more obvious or annoying when not quite right on an Active system like mine which opens-out the time domain accuracy to more perceptive insight, but I don’t like effects like I used to get with cassette tape timing errors or poor Vinyl timing - again these are slowly retreating as the cable runs-in but I do not yet know where it will finish. Timing for high-frequency things is good, for bass drums it is good, but for tunes played on bass it is not as good as I’d want as of yet.

For some types of music - like large-scale classical productions where things are more set-out in space then the Belden does a very good job at involving you into it. For things that work with small changes in timing to get the musical communication then the Vodkas presently does that better.

I’ll update after another few days at weekend how it is.

At present I can definitely say the long 4m run from Melco to switch will stay as that did a lot to remove congestion and open-out the sound. The Beldens open-out the sound and reveal what it inside well - it is just the final timing accuracy where they will settle after run-in - particularly in low-bass where colouration seems to interact, where I need to decide if it is good enough.

I may well end-up running a hybrid of Belden for Melco to switch and something else (presently Vodka) from Melco to ND555, as this leg appears to be more strongly-impacting on timing - and with the Melco it is the only leg transferring music so perhaps that would be expected.
If the Belden finally shapes-up I’d use it for the ND555 connection too as I do like what it does on big complex music - but with a reservation about resolution in time-domain for now.

DB.

At the Naim bash at Signals i got the ipad first as well. I started listening and looked round and the room had emptied…my music choice? I did later ask Alistair were they queuing up to order Statement amps or was it the food, apparently the latter.

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FWIW the BJC solid Cat5e Belden cables have less dramatic burn-in effects than the stranded CatSnakes

They should be almost fully run in now - not a bad moment to check you are still happy with which round they are.

I’m not mucking about with cables in this heat, they can wait until it cools down a bit. All I’m planning tonight is to unplug for another thunderstorm.

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Hi Db…another question for you,if I use Melco as a server do I need still to use Cisco switch for lan,is there any benefit? or I can go straight to my router with a cheap regular Ethernet cable and give up Switch? And putting a good Ethernet like Vodka direct to my Nd 555 without losing any sound level?

I use a very cheap Cisco 2940 8-port switch as it is physically quiet (no fans) - and I like it! SH price is very inexpensive and given I have the Melco upstream of it I though I’d try it - so far I’m not itching to change it. Melco claim to use ‘light-pipe’ isolation from LAN input and a low-jitter system clock to reclock everything onward to the HiFi source box, so it seems why not try it and see if it is enough?

I use the above much-discussed Belden cheap Cat5e cable from switch to Melco - that was better than another Cat5e I had used so I recommend that.

I swapped-back to Vodka cable from Melco to ND555 last night as I was wanting to play music without the LF mush effect I was getting with the Belden for that final link - the Vodka presents a cleaner quieter more controlled sound that I could enjoy.

I will be putting the cheap Belden back-in to see if it runs-in more, as it was slowly improving and in areas from upper-bass to HF was excellent, but I’m really struggling with LF performance on that final Melco-to-ND555 run now.

Advice? The above is what I’ve done so far. I think you do get an easier time with cables using the Melco close to the ND555 as it means a short run of expensive cable if you need that outlay - and the ‘LAN-side’ to your house network seems to benefit the Melco by using a good Cat5e cable. My listening tests give me the impression that the latter cable acts like a sink to dump energy that is otherwise pinging-about in circuit - but that is just a subjective impression.

So I may be going down a hybrid implementation. I just had a message from a friend, who also uses a Melco and ND555, that he just purchased and tried the Belden Cat5e yesterday and is very impressed with results when used from the Melco to switch connection and reports similar effects as I have said - but he as of now still uses an expensive HiFi connection for the final Melco to ND555 link.

Hope that helps.

DB.

Okey…but my question do I need a switch, not about any Ethernet cable between them it doesn’t bother me, only having more place without needing switch…less boxes, or it will actually effect sound performer without switch ?music is going direct from Melco to Nd555

You can do that.

The port from the Router will only feed the HiFi, but the Router is a busy-box generally doing a lot of things and also possibly because of that a bit noisier than a switch. I put in a cheap switch to add a level of isolation between my Router and the Melco as the switch cost me about £30 it seems worth the outlay.

Also I run my HiFi control via a wired iPad Mini for the Naim App so that can also connect to the switch in my case and not have to traverse the Router for control data traffic.
I’m trying to keep the Router traffic segmented away from the HiFi - people put in a ‘HiFi’ mains to lower noise and it will do some of that I think.

But try it - it is cheap and you do not need an expensive switch to determine if it is worthwhile.

DB.

Okey undestand ,I will keep my switch in the same place