Poll - New firmware: sound upgrade or downgrade?

The answer will be overall. It’s not a detailed poll specifying different areas.

My system has been sounding a bit more harsh, at times.
Not sure how much of this is due to power of suggestion. When others hear things one starts to hear the same.
Guess I’m not that confident about my listening prowess.
I have 2ps on my 555.
Seems to be most noticeable at higher listening volume
Look forward to another fw update
David
Ps. Still sounds great at times so :man_shrugging:

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I agree with you completely and didn’t want to modify the poll. I am just curious if the musical nature remained the same, or maybe even improved. My attraction to Naim is because it sounds like music. I’m intrigued by this quality and thought the answers might be interesting. Analogous to vinyl being typically captivating independent of the ‘pops and snaps,’ etc., if they aren’t too severe.

I should give my experience: I believe it to be as musical and, needing some more time to listen, may be more musical.

I have tested one ps as well today (geko also did).
With one ps there is less detail and it is a bit more rough and slightly darker. The dark sound initially “looks like” the HF is better. But the sharpness is identical. Same signature with one PS.
With 2PS more detail and overall smoother, but also with HF overload and sharpness and muddy bass.
The new FW does not push it too much. With 2PS it is slightly worse as it is overall more revealing!
Even with one PS it is definitely worse than before. Have used one PS for a long time, remember well how it has sounded. ND555 - I think especially in 500 system - will show the weakness/faults in FW.

@Geko:
Afaik this matches your findings when doing the hard reset with on PS - correct ?

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Thanks Dan - but nevertheless this is by far a solution. Downgrading to get the system “duller” and less revealing in order to mask …
I have not listened for 2,5 weeks now… it is so sad!

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My present settings preference.:

I’m finding it is extremely sensitive to the settings in a way that I would think should really not be and that Naim probably not intend.

I did the swap one PS mode a couple of weeks back and it hides many things but loses the reason I purchased the ND555 - with two supplies - for my system and what I prefer to have done so I’m not messing with that again. It takes a few days to come back on tune after swapping and I do use my system every day and I have the answer good enough for myself.

I quote the settings above as I found again today it had further ‘moved’ in this run-in thing and some input settings permutations (and it is the array of them you select and not each on its own) - some were horrible and one ‘worked’ well enough to open the window again into the music with timing in the bass correct, soundstage depth present and the remaining harsh effects out of band high enough to not intrude on the enjoyment. Meaning it was a bloody-good better than I’d heard in many ways ‘live music’ experience - but one where you initially note their sound system is not perfect, but then the whole essense of the live performance hits you and you forget that.

For now this is good enough, but there is more to be had and it is hard work to wrestle with this each day…

DB.

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Fully correct! Naim should give it a try with both one PS and 2PS. It is even very much prominent with one PS only. In my room it is. In my system the roughness of one PS, which I liked a lot with old FW is now a kill switch. :frowning:

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The information will be sent to Naim via @HungryHalibut. This is what we need.

I agree, downgrading to 1 x PS is not an option. 2 x 555PSDR is a recommended upgrade by Naim, so they need to stand by their customwrs.

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THANKS for your help!
If naim does need any more information or testers (I have applied via mail), I will be glad to help!
If naim wants to hear the full drama, they should check (listen) old FW against new FW with full 500DR/ND555-2xPS. Think these are the main suffering enthusiasts here … but there are other (NC) as well :slight_smile:

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Good man for doing the test. I know it’s disconcerting as we spent so much time getting things right this year.

Ok another day since restarting the nd5 xs2 it has helped a little but I’m still finding higher quality inputs too much and I’m back to good old airplay :joy:.

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Even though the new firmware hasn’t put me off listening via an ND5XS2 into a Chord Dave if I can help in any way to assist with a new firmware roll out, I will.

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Hope this is now enough for Naim to correct it. I don’t want to have this much longer.

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@BertBird @drago I made a step forward with this over the weekend. Apologies for not posting sooner, however I wanted to be certain the improvement wasn’t short lived.

On to the method, powered down the amplifier, the streamer and then turned off the 555 PSU.
I then unplugged all connections and after about 20mins powered up the PSU, then did another factory reset on the streamer. Shut down into deep sleep, reconnected everything, rebooted and now it is listenable.

A little too much energy remains in the upper registers compared to previous firmware, but at least the pain (hard and at times strident edge) is gone.

There is still a hope Naim are able to improve after re-assessing sound quality.

I have:
Favourites
Qobuz
airplay
Spotify
Servers
USB
inputs enabled (appear to have lost the ability to disable Internet radio?), all others are disabled.

Good luck.

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After a few days with the 222-250 I’ve now updated my Atom HE-Nait50 too and, blimey, it sounds very ok! Not sure if there are any other HE users on the new FW with impressions but similar to the 222 there seems to be more air and physical presence, pianos are very colourful and punchy.
… Or may be I am just hearing things but in any case last night Charles Lloyd sounded wicked. Or it could be of course that the Nait 50 just improved lol, but certainly nothing bad or worse to my ears with this setup too.

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If you’re based in the UK, eight days after you posted that comment it would indeed be true. If in the US, a much more recent change!

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@Blackbird can I ask how you discovered that Naim use the StreamUnlimited framework?
[edit: corrected vendor name]

It’s in your device webclient info

The NP800 board is StreamUnlimited hardware, supported by their SDK

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Thanks, what type of device is that from?

For the NDX2 I see acknowledgements from a number of vendors, but not StreamUnlimited.

That’s my NDX2