Pretty much sums up my experience with the NDX2, very good on some material but not so on others, I am getting used to it but if I had a choice I’d prefer the previous version I think overall. It sort of reminds me of walking in to a tv retailer and seeing all the banks of tvs with 4K alpine scenes playing, all very impressive technically but a little unnatural and hard on the eyes after a while.
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I was thinking it was my ND555 that was still running in and improving (4 weeks old) but perhaps it was the effect of the new firmware instead ? haven’t tried on too many songs but overall I find it sounds pretty good (feels more together / cohesive on some electronic / pop).
The annoying part is the album art work being displayed with 3-4s delay after a black screen
Fully in line with my experiences! I’ve just spent some additional money to adapt and slightly tweak the sound, in accordance with my personal preference, … and … oops, new firmware (3.5) unexpectedly changes it again, i.m.o. mostly not for the better. It also gave me a feeling of having seen this before: two years ago on the previous NDX v4.6! I do understand Naim’s drive to further enhance customer experience, but really doubt whether this is fair towards audio-enthousiasts, who have consciously chosen Naim streaming products for their specific sound characteristics! I hope this doesn’t happen again soon!
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Having spent weekend having a good listen I think the SQ has changed for the worse - brighter, harsher and, yes that awful euphemism, more forward. A shame I can’t go back to previous FW
It happened once. I will see if it happens more I will contact support. If it would become a requiring fact it would become annoying. So let’s see. But from now on I will again the principles of waiting with the installation of new firmware as I see first reactions in the forum, this time I was too early pushing the update button.
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Me! I’m happy as a dog with 2 d1(k§. I didn’t upgrade. 
Yet another crash of the NDX2 having upgraded a few days ago. Whilst listening to music streamed locally from the Unitiserve, there was a God Almighty noise from the speakers as theNDX2 disengaged, and then rebooted itself. After the reboot, all fine again. Had I been listening at higher volumes it might even have damaged the speakers.
The “update” has broken the NDX2. Royally p*ssed off.
Getting a lot of stuttering tonight on NDX2/Qobuz and another mid track reboot
Hi XMB,
what you describe indicates, that the Star “powered up its main transformer” coming from standby. This makes the first click, and then (depending on system) there might be this “thump”, when the powering up reaches the speakers. (Which are disconnected during sleep; well usually.)
Sounds to me, the Star detected the WiFi connection being lost (which it keep in standby, to be available for the app, Airplay, Chromecast, Roon, …). Maybe it wanted to check things, and took this as a cue to “wake up”.
When it then reconnected to the WiFi, it was happy again and went back to sleep.
This assumes, the Star is connected to your Orbi-WiFi.
It would be an interesting test, if this happens when the WiFi is lost - or also, when the Orbi looses connection to the internet.
Whether it is a bug or expected behavior I cannot tell.
Indeed- as I said on another thread where the issue gad been mentioned:
Surely feature updates such as maintaining or enhancing online streaming capability, or problem fixes, should be kept entirely separate from sound quality changes, and be possible to apply independently. If I had one of these products I’d want sound quality changes, if offered at all, to be fully reversible without affecting features.
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This switching off which also happened to me with my ND555 scares me, especially if an odd noise is produced. Naim should get their Firmwate back on track again rather sooner than later.
So today I tried a factory reset of the NDX2 as others have reported that it fixes things.
The NDX2 has now disappeared from the (hard wired) network and can’t be seen by the app. I’ve tried restarting it and also rebooting the router, but to no avail.
I have of course emailed NAIM and Steve Harris, but am posting this for information. To anyone still on version 3.4 and considering updating my advice would be don’t do it until NAIM have sorted the mess out.
To say I am incandescent would be an understatement.
Paul
You don’t mention stopping and restarting the app. I presume you tried that too? You should do that last after restarting the router and the NDX2.
Best
David
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Doesn’t sound good, hope it get’s sorted I don’t want to be without music…
Hi Bert,
Are you disappointed by the change in sound with the 3.5 Firmware?
Hi David
Thanks, forgot to mention that I tried restarting the app, and also the iPhone, to no avail.
But… after I had calmed down I thought that I have nothing to lose by trying the factory reset one more time. Lo and behold, it is now back on the network and working again. Very strange. Whether it continues to reboot itself periodically remains to be seen.
Paul
Someone in this thread mentioned about having “Server mode” ticked even though I don’t use my Uniti Star as a server and so I tried it. I am grateful as the sound has taken a leap for the better. Thank you!
Interesting as DB found quite the opposite! I guess we just have to try these things on our own systems, personally I hear no difference between server on and off mode, but my 72 year old ears aren’t what they were years ago.
It was me - I un-ticked it from the otherwise defaulted green ‘on’ to ‘off’ and prefer that it is off in my system is what I meant.
The reasoning was that Naim said that noise from various circuits has an effect - this does not mean any option off is better as it may just move the noise elsewhere you do not like, but it was easy to try - and I figured a Server would be putting-out something I was not actually using, so try it off as easy to put back.
The effect was initially subtle - but I wanted to listen to more music so that was good. Over time it seems less subtle and worthwhile and removed a bit of hardness as I hear it.
Until now I’ve used ND555 ‘as it shipped’ to me out the box and not played-about with it at all. I find if you like something generally leave it alone.
But if you are unhappy and are given options - carefully explore them one by one and give it time and do not assume anything - and things can interact so do one thing at a time or you may miss something.
Otherwise all is working perfectly here - it just updated and worked - and more robustly and quickly than previously.
As far as SQ is concerned - there is a change and I need time to decide overall how it settles with me. It is not awful and some things are done better - but it can sound poor if other things in my system are a bit off.
There is more top-end and on a lot of material it works for immediacy and speed/tempo in the music - but it can also harden certain things like softer ‘s’ parts of vocalization/singing voice on female vocals, so I’m not wanting anything doing that as it otherwise gets very fatiguing.
I have long runs with music where it seems to work great and other periods with it where I’m not sure - but the Server Mode ‘off’ helped.
DB.
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Agree with all this. Plus, for me, the biggest plus on my NDX2/XPSDR was setting the app Standby to ‘never’.
G
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