To my ears the detail retrieval seems to be have been pushed a little too much at the expense of ease of listening. It depends of the recording and as always, some seem to sound better, some seem to ound worse than before. I am a bit sensitive to upper middle range / highs and am always looking for a detailed yet not fatiguing sound. The current update seems to be more edgy than 3.4 (which was the first one i used since my unit is pretty new)
I am currently choosing between 2 speaker sets and am listening to the KEF R3 since a few weeks (the other speaker set beeing a Harbeth C7ES-3).
The KEF R3 are already a very detailed in their presentation. I feel that the new update may have turned what i perceived as a slightly dark and relaxed speaker a bit on the harsh side.
Of course trusting your ears and your aural memory is difficult and i may be biased by the comments i have read in this forum about the new update.
So âimprovementâ is really subjective - and as people spend quite some time and money to optimize their system incrementaly - i think the goal of the firmware update should be to improve functionality by keeping the sound as constant as possible between updates.
What puzzles me Richard is that support is not directly reacting on the forum to these issues. Where I am also a bit puzzled is this advise to do a factory reset. I am quite anxious to do that as I donât know which current settings will be affected. And I also see two groups of issues and donât know if in both cases the cure would need to be the factory reset.
The one group like me have experienced issues with Qobuz being slow and not showing progress in a song and a bit after that my ND555 rebooted while playing something from my NAS. However I donât have issues with sound quality.
Another group of people seem to have issues with sound quality.
I would appreciate if Naim would provide a clear response as what to do and when they expect to have a fixed firmware available.
For the amount of money we have invested this is I think not too much to ask for.
As mentioned in my other post it was one listening session in which first Qobuz had some issues, slow reaction and not showing progress in the song or even being unable to start a song. While I was a bit upset about this I switched back to normal playing from my NAS and somewhere in the middle of the album the device rebooted at once, without me touching anything as I was just listening to the album.
Bert, are in contact or correspondence with Naim tech support at the moment? Thatâs definitely the best way to proceed as itâs hard if not impossible to manage via the forum.
As I wrote earlier, I went through this thread and also one or two others and compiled a precis of all reported issues (including any reported solutions) and that is now in the hands of Naimâs R&D software team to go through and investigate. They are also putting together an FAQ, which should provide some or all of the answers youâre looking for. I think theyâre hoping to have something in place by this weekend, but Iâll hopefully know more by tomorrow.
As for individual tech support cases, this is best dealt with via the usual support channels.
Yes - that does matter!
My App update was just evoked and on first use (checked it was the 5.18 ) it all worked fine, but the SQ was a bit dull and bass âthuddyâ as Iâll describe itâŚjust swipe closed and re-open and looked identical on App but the SQ now as it was before the update from 5.17 to 5.18 (back to good in my case), so there is âsomethingâ that goes on that needs the App re-start. Since this takes seconds and it all connects and works lightning-quick now (it used to take tens of seconds to find my music DB) then it is very easy to compare and hear the difference.
No factory resets for my ND555 were done or needed - it all just smoothly worked.
âŚjust for information.
+1 to firmware update success on both ND555 & Core. Well done Naim.
Sorry to hear my fellow forum Naimees that things arenât going to plan. Keep the faith, it will be worth the wait.
Sat listening right now and to be honest itâs sounding glorious.
I have tried the new App update this afternoon, without even turning on the integrated amplifier until testing and checking how the App-NDX2 interaction works.
And desolate⌠Again itâs basically the Naim App same behaviour around hereâŚ
Restarting the Naim App after its update it logs out from Tidal, so I turn to log in back in Tidal (settings>input settings), and the App recognizes Tidalâs favourites, well.
But now, some Tidal playlists appear double, duplicated in the playlists tab on the App home screen. Besides, it still doesnât work minimally: I can only see Tidal playlists, albums and tracks on the App home screen, but I canât see the tree-structure in the device accessible through the remote>home>favourites route; now I can select any favourite Tidal as a preset tapping the âadd to presetsâ option in them, and they do appear in both the App presets screen and in the device favourites screen (with the tree-structure accessible through the remote>home>favourites route), but in a few seconds they disappear again, dropping out from both the App presets screen and the device favourites screen. So nothing has still been fixed to me.
Also, from my Tidal account, from the App home screen, when I go to the playlists screen, tapping each playlist doesnât play it directly but opens a new screen to access the playlist itself.
So, the truth is that I am taking away the desire to listen to music, because the short time available I have Iâm dedicated to restarting the App, logging in and out from Tidal and unplugging and plugging back again the device. Frightening!
So, I hope for some prompt solution on the Naim dev team part.
Richard. I have a Nova in a second system and have recently updated the firmware. That unit too now has an annoying habit of switching itself off whilst on one of the digital inputs (Optical link from a TV). Have never had this problem before. To be fair I have not powered down and restarted so will give that a go to see if it cures the problem. But at the very least I thought I should report that the firmware update has not gone well here. Might be helpful for your input to Naim. Sorry!
I would like to talk briefly about my experience with the firmware update on my NDX 2. Last Friday I connected my newly purchased PS 555 DR to the NDX 2. Immediately I noticed a noticeable improvement in sound - tighter bass, more punch, much better fine resolution in the treble and more âairâ between the instruments. The âsharpnessâ in the voices has also disappeared somewhat.
In the course of this week, I then carried out the firmware update. Everything ran without any problems. I listen to my music almost 100% over my NAS with roon. From time to time also web radio. At first I couldnât understand why so many had problems with the update, either because of the sound or functional problems.
Yesterday, however, after I installed the naim app update, my NDX 2 also stopped while playing a song and rebooted several times. Initially I suspected a network problem and rebooted all routers and access points, but this did not help. I remembered various forum posts recommending a reset to factory defaults.So I did this and wow! everything worked perfectly again!
Thanks for the good recommendations from the forum!
Having rolled back with thanks to Steve Harris and not Naims support who frankly where pretty useless and I wonât be rushing to update to 3.5 and will wait for 3.6 or what evers next. There is definitely something wrong with this one. I also agree having to factory reset after each update is not my idea of fun. I donât want to have to keep running setup again and again.
I havenât tried a factory reset yet, Iâm really very reluctant to do that, as I donât want to have any more issues and being in NZ, a repair etc would mean many months without the unit.
Update - Iâm finding that since I later preferred the âBluetoothoffâ mode section that now the âServer Modeâ on is sounding OK and probably better - probably aligning with what you were finding - a fuller sound and now without the edge I had noticed before.
Possibly there are interactions between these selections.
The Blootooth Off mode does give me a lot more and clean dynamic range and resolution.
I only listen to music from a local NAS and very rarely experience a reboot after 20 minutes (the auto-shutdown time when no music is playing) into playing an album.
Also have another screen freeze from music I was playing the other day.
