I had the chance to try out a Chord Qutest with the ND5 XS2 (friend upgrading to the TT2). Loved it, the soundstage and imaging was definitely an improvement, more air between instruments, the decay in notes just seems to hang more rather than being cut off short.
This of course left me using the ND5 XS2 as transport only. It felt a bit of a waste as @frenchrooster said. So, I started looking at other options for investing the full 2nd hand value of the ND5 XS2 into a transport only device. So, next week Iāll receive a Auralic Aries G1 on demo with the option to buy with a couple of hundred off the priceā¦ full warranty etc. This would mean zero outlay once if I decide to go ahead. If it sounds the same or better I feel I will be in a better position.
The Auralic Aries G1 will give me a screen, button controls as well as the usual Roon and other service connections that the Naim streamer offers but most importantly (for me) a variety of digital outs Optical, Coaxial, BNC, USB and AES. This will give options later should I add a Chord M Scaler as it would use both BNC connections on the Qutest. The Naim only has BNC digital out.
So, looking forward to the demo to see how it sounds!
The Innuos zen mini is the first of their range. So itās logical that you can find something better.
All is taste dependent.
For me there is a great synergy between Naim and Melco, and one complete the other.
Ear and Naim have, to my tastes, a great synergy.
Have you tried the Innuos zenith with the Ndac, it would be on the level cost of the Nd5xs2. You would see which one you would prefer, the zenith or the Nd5.
The Innuos zen mk3 was one of the other options I looked at, it gets great reviews as well! I didnāt go with it in the end as I wouldnāt use the storage/ripping facility at all and it had no button controls.
I do have a lot of local media on a QNAP pro NAS that runs a Roon Core on it. That said, Iāve been using Qobuz a lot of late.
The reference to Darkside of the Moon (another thread I believe) has made me revisit the remastered copy on my NAS at the moment and it sounds incredible with the Qutestā¦ 3D soundstage/ imaging. Need to dig out more forgotten tracks to see how they sound!
Unfortunately we donāt have Innuos dealers in my country. I bought mine from UK, so I wonāt be able to compare it with ND5XS2. I started listening mainly from Tidal plus Iāve seen the Naim app and I like the navigation a lot more than the Orange Squeeze player needed for Innuos. So if I go again with Innuos I would use only 1/3 of its potential + the need to invest in high-quality USB to SPDIF converter and high quality USB cable. The higher range of Innuos have SSD and better vibration isolations for the CD transport and the HDD. These 2 improvements are one of the main benefits in the more expensive models.
Much better power supplies, isolation from noiseā¦
But I understand that in that case you described itās not for you.
No Melco dealers in your area ?
Iāve heard the streamer of NAC-272 and I liked the sound a lot (of course the DAC and preamp also contributed to the great sound). Iāve also heard Naim Unitiqute 2 and Naim CD players. I liked the sound character of all of them, so I believe it is a safe bet.
Yes the Zen and Zenith has separate power sections for the HDD, transport and the streaming board but in the ND5XS2 used as a digital transport I will have also a great PSU entirely for the digital section. The prices are similar but I think I will utilize more from the ND5XS2.
I would keep the ND5XS2, the BNC output is the superior oneā¦ 75 ohm impedance matches well with the BNC input in the Qutest, TT2 and Dave DAC
I now use an allo digione signature and the BNC output sounds better than the coax one with an adapterā¦
My next on the wish list though, is an ND5X2 only for streaming purposes with my Chord Dave DACā¦
reasons : it isnāt all about the hardware, there is no native tidal streaming for RPI, unless used with roon or a Volumio (one has to pay a small monthly fee to Volumio for this)
There are other UPNP solutions like Bubble UPNP and Mconnect for IOSā¦ but they pull the stream to the phone and then push it to the RPIā¦
Also the Naim streamers have Chromecastā¦ which seems to be a good way to access other streaming servicesā¦
The big advantages of the ND5XS2 are that it does not require external power supplies and that it looks very nice. It might or might not sound better than the Allo DigiOne Signature with good power supplies. It is unfortunate that no direct comparisons are available, I was planning to actually do one but I am too busy at the moment.
I seem to remember that some forum members have compared the DigiOne Signature to the NDX2 (also used as a transport) and found the NDX2 to sound better. But I do not remember which power supplies they used to power the DigiOne Signature.
When considering the DigiOne Signature agains the ND5XS2 as transports for an nDAC, there are other differences that you might want to take into account: with the ND5XS2 you have to use the Naim app as a control point (unless you run Bubble UPnP server on a networked machine to make the ND5XS2 be available as an OpenHome renderer to non-Naim control points), with the DigiOne Signature you cannot use the Naim app. I do not know whether the Naim app brings any system integration advantages over other control points. If so, this could be an argument in favour of the ND5XS2. The opposite holds if one does not want to use the Naim app, of course.
upmpdcli comes with 4 streaming plugins (upmpdcli-gmusic, upmpdcli-spotify, upmpdcli-qobuz, upmpdcli-tidal) one of which is for Tidal. This is native streaming for Tidal, to the best of my understanding. I use upmpdcli since years and, although I have meanwhile cancelled all my subscriptions, I have streamed Tidal and Qobuz (but not Idagio, unfortunately) using the upmpdcli plugins.
I typically run only upmpdcli (and MPD, upmpdcli is just a MPD front-end) in a minimal Raspbian Lite distribution or in GenTooPlayer. Without additional software and with all unnecessary interfaces (USB bus, wired Ethernet, HDMI, internal sound card, etc.) switched off, the RPi + DigiOne Signature combo only drains about 0.2A from the two power supplies. It is a very quiet, low power transport.
