Can anybody tell me what their experience is with switching off the front panel display of the NDX2 for optimum sound quality during playback?
I personally don’t hear a difference on my set: NDX2, Supernait 1, Hi-cap, Quad ESL63.
Done both extensively to see what I thought and I hear no difference between on or off. 
1 Like
I personally cannot hear a difference, but leave off because it is so far away from my seat that its pointless as i cannot read it. Naim did mention that including a screen did knock back the sound quality and more work was needed to recover the sound quality. But that is different to hearing a difference when on, or not?
Ditto here with mine, i hear no difference whether on or off. Just for simplicity reasons i keep mine off, but if the display were capable of displaying the album track(s) titles, fixed, then it would be of some use.
1 Like
Not heard a difference with it on or off. If there was a difference then I’d expect Naim would not have fitted it. And certainly not on the 555.
For many the screen is not easily seen when listening anyway, so can be turned off. Persinally I prefer the “what’s playing now” rather than album art. But that is even harder to see. But easier for me if using headphones though
The thing I think was noticeable to me in terms of better fidelity was having the ‘Auto Standby Time’ set to ‘Never’.
G
1 Like
On the other hand, if there is no difference (including for the listening team at Naim), they would not write this part in the help Q&A, one would think.
Never tested what this sounds like on or off, as mine, like yours is set to never.
“If there is no difference (including for the listening team at Naim), they would not write this part in the help Q&A” was also my thought and was a reason for my question. I hope the Naim moderator can say something about this.
1 Like
Interesting. I will set the time to never instead of the default 20 minutes.
1 Like
O guess its about never saying never. As soon as you quote it makes no difference, someone will want to find ( in their opinion) that it does.
1 Like
Who knows. If it makes no difference I’d expect that nothing is said about it at all. But then, we know the forum 
However, if standby is set to Never, this makes the display stay enabled for 12 hours in the following scenario:
- App > Settings > Other Settings > Display > “Turn Off During Playback” is NOT checked. (I.e., display is on during playback)
- You pause the music during playback with the Play/Pause button on remote or in app. (I.e., the music does not come to an end because the album or playlist is finished, but just paused). In this case, “paused” counts as playing.
In this case, the display turns off after 12 hours (same as when music is actually playing) but not before.
Just mentioning it because it confused me.
It’s primarily a convenience feature as opposed to being a performance enhancement/restriction.
Some will use the built in display frequently, others little or not at all.
The best test is your ears in your system to determine what is the best setting for you balancing ease of use against any miniscule performance changes associated with these sort of settings changes.
The reality here is once you’ve put confirmation bias to one side, an average person would be highly unlikely to be able to determine if the screen was on or off based on what came out the speakers alone. I’d be inclined to set it to your listening behaviour and enjoy what comes out the other end regardless of what you’ve told the screen to do.
The screen in the NDX2 uses less power and produces less EMI than the old screens so should have less detrimental effect when operating. Easy to try yourself. Don’t sweat it if you can’t tell any difference.
1 Like
I’ve my display is always off. I’d be happy if the NDX3 doesn’t have one.
G
In this case you wouldn’t notice, but those who do have it on see this behavior
I believe that in use when displaying a static image it’s is basically inert with data transfer switched off to reduce any noise.
2 Likes
But… there is an improvement in sound quality if the writing is set to green not white! 
and the more green the better the sound