It doesn’t surprise me that adding Hugo 2 improves the sound quality, but I agree an expensive transport especially if you use the M Scaler is unnecessary. However, I have not tried ND555 and am unlikely to do so because of its cost. I have no doubt it is superb engineering and wonderful build quality.
Please bare in mind that I never found changes to the network to make any difference provided there are no dropouts. I did find using audiophile cables made a difference for the worse. I also found not using a separate pre-amp advantageous.
I’m not suggesting I would give up the ND for the Hugo, and, anyway, the ND is certainly providing the H2 with a very fine input …
Yet, yes, there are certain qualities to the Hugo that I am attracted too. I have heard the Hugo TT2 recently, and I was even more taken with its presentation, and I will revisit that at some point. I’m happy to have the option to move between DACs and their differing presentations.
Simon, I had an original Hugo until last year but let it go for reasons as much to do with functionality as sound.
I prefer Hugo 2 to Hugo and Hugo TT2 to both and DAVE best of all. However, if it were a choice between M Scaler and DAVE, I’d opt for M Scaler with the cheaper DAC. If there are no constraints then it’s M Scaler with DAVE for me. Not needing a separate pre-amp or expensive transport made this viable.
However, this is but one view and I’m sure other folk may prefer other options.
Yes, i think the M Scaler and TT2 are going to put a few DAC and amp oriented traditions into question. But it is early days yet, very interesting, though. Perhaps we can come back to these questions later in the year.
it was not my intention to take us off on a Chord theme here. I was surprised with what I heard with the H2 and knowing Simon might be using his Hugo I was curious to how what he thought. Let’s keep the Roon thing going …
Hi, yes the Hugo really comes to it’s own when feeding a 552 with the output level appropriately set. I noticed this on other people’s systems so I ended up trying and doing it myself. The Hugo2 on a 552 sounds relatively artificial to my ears, but perhaps on other NACs it works well.
You know what it’s like when everything snaps into place it becomes quite evident.
Oh yes worth saying Hugo very dependent on transport… quality coax SPDIF. Other inputs like USB seem to fall away significantly. USB was improved on the Hugo2, but I don’t use it and have never heard USB matching a quality coax spdif implementation. Though of course spdif transport only formally supports 192/24.
Yes directly into power amp (I used to use NAP 200, but now use Chord Etude).
I use USB in to M Scaler & dual Canare Coax into DAVE - using the volume control on DAVE gives excellent results. I did try NAC552 and preferred it without, during a demo where I couldn’t see whether the NAC was or was not in use. I consistently chose the setup without the NAC.
I have tried Coax instead of USB and it makes no difference that I can hear in my setup. I have used various transports and again it makes no difference. Mac mini works as well as anything I tried.
I also use Hugo as a portable, it does not have the magical qualities of Blu2 & DAVE, but it is very good nonetheless. If I were buying a portable now then I’d buy PolyMojo for its convenience.
Of course, there will be as many opinions on this as posters, we can only report what we find. I don’t think the pre-amp adds anything and is very expensive, but there are lots of posters who don’t share my views.
Ah, it is a shame we all can’t sit and listen to music together. I’d be very interested in hearing what it is that Simon hears as artificial sounding with the Hugo2/552. That is the set up I have here and as much as I struggle to find appropriate terms to describe the sound I hear I would not choose ‘artificial’.
Perhaps I’m not listening for the same parameters and affect - such a fascinating pastime we are engaged in with all this variation and complexity.
Just to mix things up - I’ve updated to Roon 1.6 with Qobuz and I’m streaming high resolution Debussy sonata via the ND 555 DAC, I’m smiling. I’ll sneak the Hugo back in later.
A little off-topic given that I currently only have a single Naim item (a Muso Qb), but I hope that some of you may be able to give me a little advice about Roon.
I have long resisted being tempted by Roon, and to be honest up until now never really understood why it has become so popular. However, having looked at a number of Roon related threads and videos recently, I think I can now see what Roon might be able to do for my own listening experience - especially so since my Linn Klimax DS streamer now supports Roon. My music NAS (a Synology 216+II) which is nigh on perfect for its current use as a NAS is simply not powerfull enough to run a Roon core, and I don’t have any other devices that I want to use for experimentation, and so I may just bite the bullet and buy myself an i5 or i7 NUC with an m.2 sata drive, download Roon Rock and take it from there. I have 2 questions - one related to the NUC hardware and one related to Roon functionality.
The first question is - just how intrusive are the fans on 7th or 8th gen i5 or i7 NUCs? I know I could buy a nice fan-less case from a company like Akasa and disassemble & refit the NUC motherboard, but I really can’t be bothered with the extra work this would give me. I also do not want to go to the expense of purchasing a Roon Nucleaus as an alternative. Can anyone give me some idea of the fan noise, because I may will end up positioning the NUC in the same room as one of my systems. Bear in mind, I already run my Synology NAS in my music room and do not find it intrusive. Is the NUC likely to be any worse?
The second question is - Roon Radio is something that really interests me from a music discovery perspective, since I have a Tidal subscription. However, I have read on another forum that Roon Radio will only select items of music from your personal music collection or from your bookmarked ‘favourites’ in Tidal. Is this actually the case? I had hoped that Roon Radio would be sophisticated enough to pull back recommendations from more or less anywhere in the Tidal catalogue. Is this the case, or am I wrong?
First off the fans on an i7 can get a little heaey when first importing your library but after that they settle right down and a lot don’t hear them. Might get loud again if you use heavy DSP.
You need to ask yourself if you need an i7 though? If you have a very big library and want to use full DSP in multiple zones then likely you need one, but if not then its really overkill and you can get away with an i3, I had an i3 gen 4 for 2 years and it ran Roon perfectly until it died. I would imagine a NAS is louder than a NUC but I have never really compared them.
You can buy ready built nucs that are silent from a few places but it obviously puts the price up. Fanless is really only needed though if your having the PC in the same room as you hifi, if you putting it away in another room then its not something I would worry about.
I have a silent i7 system that was ready assembled and has a custom milled case thats really excellent as a Roon core and looks the bomb to but its not a NUC, but runs Rock effortlessly without any issue. It cost significantly less than a NUC to under 600 Sterling.
With 1.6 released today, Roon radio is vastly improved and now learns you listening habits much like Spotify does. It will also play music thats not in your library as a favourite from Tidal or Qobuz. Not tried it yet but others on the Roon forum say its a massive step up.
Before you do anything though try it out on your NAS or local computer first with the free trial they give to see if you like the experience and what it offers, if you do then look to put it on better hardware. Whilst it might not be as quick it will give you an insight in to it.
I think it probably is unlikely that I would need an i7. However, the difference in cost between an i7 powered NUC and an i5 or even an i3 isn’t huge in the grand scheme of things. I not sure I will use heavy DSP - I may use DSD to PCM transcoding to allow DSD files to be played on my Klimax DS/1 or to carry out the first MQA unfold from Tidal for my Klimax, but that’s about it. Even so, I think I would go for a minimum of an i5 processer for my NUC if I end up going with Roon.
Your silent i7 system with custom milled case sounds interesting at the price you quote - I take it that this wasn’t something you purchased commercially?
Freely available from Tranquil Pc in the UK it’s custom for the systems they sell. They make them for industry and are only built to order. Excellent service to takes about 2 weeks.Very pleased with mine build quality is excellent It might not have the same ooomph as the new NUCS but it’s really all I needed and no wanted a nice silent one to sit in the rack but did not want to spend much more. Here’s some pictures
Hi, I’ve spent a lot of time working in very noisy industrial environments, so my hearing issues are almost certainly related to that.
If you have a proper hearing test, you get a little graph with the results, and mine shows a distinct dip in the upper/mid frequencies which is pretty much what you’d expect to see under the circumstances.
I had a play with Roon, to see what happened if I boosted the same frequencies. At first, I seem to have boosted those frequencies too much, as there was a lot of distortion. Even so, I could hear a quite startling increase in the amount of extra musical information coming through in that all important frequency range, which made me think that perhaps I’ve been missing out.
I didn’t have much time to play with this, but I might have a more concerted effort at some point. I didn’t quite figure out how to manually create the curve I wanted on the Roon DSP graph.
That is indeed an interesting possible option. It certainly looks better (to my eyes anyway) than the standard NUC option, and doesn’t seem to require active cooling. I have just had a look at the TranquilPc website and the possibility of ordering one of these does look a little tempting.
I guess the compromises are (if you deem them to be compromises) that the system drive would be a 2.5" SSD rather than a slightly (?) faster m.2 SSD, and that you would be installing Roon Core (or server?) on Windows 10 rather than what I guess would be the optimal Linux - or did you order the TranquilPc without an operating system and install a version of Linux yourself?
I guess in the context of Roon and running an i7 processor, the slight hit in respect of SSD type wouldn’t really matter much if at all. The thing that I find more difficult to understand is the difference (if any) between the software labelled ‘Roon Core’ that would be installed on a NUC as part of the ‘Rock’ build and the ‘Roon Server’ which is what I understand would be installed on this Windows 10 device. What is the difference between ‘Roon Core’ and ‘Roon Server’ or are they in reality more or less the same thing?
I have just re-read your previous and can see that you have already answered some of my questions. You installed Roon Rock on your TranquilPc. Does this mean that you ordered it without an OS and installed a Linux version as the operating system for Roon Rock?
M2 vs SSD really makes little difference that I care about. I have ROCK Roons own OS installed on it not window, i just asked for no OS installed. ROCK installs from USB stick and works well on most Intel modern based systems its just not officially sanctioned but tons of people do without issues. NUC’s are just too expensive for what they are in my eyes. It might stop working at some point if they change something massively but then that would break whats out there now in terms of NUC’s so I think its safe if not i have lost nothing. Its easy to put on another OS and restore my library to its previous state thanks to Roons inbuilt easy backup solution. I had ROCK on my previous system which was years old and has no issues. I would never use windows for music ever, previous to using ROCK I used VortexBox OS which is a light weight linux designed for audio. There are plenty of these popping up now that offer low latency etc all supposed to give you better audio performance.
Yeah the new UI is a bit Marmite amongst the community. But this is always the case with these things. People want change, others don’t. You cant please everyone in this game.
