I looked into trading in my turntable, phono, NDS and XPRS DR for a ND555 with 555PS DR.
The answer is 12K!!!
Decided to stay with vinyl and NDS as 12K will by a lot of vinyl and I am sure my ears would not hear the difference between a NDS and ND555 for. 12K
Unable to listen to the NDS and ND555 side by side due to lack of rack space and arthritic spine, boy are they heavy.
I am a bit like you. Trading my Nds to have Nd555 would be even more, 17 or 18 k euros.
I see also that you have a Supernait 3, hicap. I feel that for less than 8k, trading your SN3 for 282/250 dr, you would have a much greater uplift in sound, and it would serve also your Palmer turntable.
And Nd555 into SN3 is really unbalanced too.
Tried ND555 but not enough difference to merit changing from my NDS/555. Qobuz added via Roon on RooUPnP re functionality. Much prefer the IR remote re volume etc (ND555 remote seemed clunky in my system).
Hi @RogerGround , I’m happy to hear this. I also have an NDS with Teddy PSs and I look forward to getting a 555PS in the near future. I almost had my hands on a well-priced used one, but it got away.
It’s connected to an SN2 via Hi-line and it sounds very, very good to my ears.
As FR says, I may upgrade the amp at some point, but I do love the sound of the SN2 and the simplicity of an integrated. The SN2 also has Teddy which I will be changing for a HicapDR soon.
I was hoping for the Wow moment, as all you hear is how much better it is, for me that certainly wasn’t the case.
Doing a side by side, same download etc, i was expecting a nice inpovement, but it just wasn’t there, people say it needs time, etc, etc, but i find if i can’t hear a difference doing it this way, then thats because there isn’t one. I have done many tests like this before and heard major differences.
Not saying that there is no difference as i am sure there is, as naim is not going to bring a newer model out thats not better, but i feel the differences are small and can see why, as really the nd555 is a mk2 nds, its not a completely new design and shares many components, its just been worked over really to iron out bits.
Like others have found the price difference is great, especially when i saw a nds being advertised for under £2k from a dealer just a few weeks ago and it even had the 2 burndy cables, bargin.
In the end i went everywhere to find the inpovement i was looking for.
I’m running RooUPnP on a Raspberry Pi 3 which I bought second hand for a few pound. Roon subscription is more and runs on my iMac. A far cheaper way of using Qobuz to the NDS is with an iPhone app - mconnect which is free for the lite version.
I really think it depends on the rest of your system. With my 500 system, I much preferred my CD555 to the NDS in every area and stuck with CD, but for me the ND555 was in another league and spectacularly so with 2 power supplies.