I’m packing my bags!
I think @gk_audio prefers MDP-8 into ND555 with 2 power supplies. That’s where we are at for now.
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Sorry no personal experience.
I would like to hear the Grimm MU2. Highly regarded sound but also considered to have a very good preamp stage.
1 box instead of an ND555 + PS555dr + 332. Naim kills the Grimm on aesthetics though.
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I heard the Grimm MU2 demonstrated with the Gryphon Diablo 333 monster integrated amp. It was a very revealing and musical sound. It would be worth auditioning.
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I’m currently running a Grimm Mu2 into a Gryphon Antileon Evo (into Magico A5 loudspeakers.) Prior to that I was running a Naim 222 into the Gryphon for a few weeks - which worked really well actually! That said, two things that the Mu2 does distinctively well by comparison (to my ear):
One, timbral separation. E.g., in chamber music with two cellos, it lets you hear the distinct voicing of each instrument. This won’t matter for all music, or all listeners, but for a lot of the music I listen to these days it can allow a different kind of engagement, which I value highly.
Two, analog-like CD replay. Fed through the Mu2, music from my Atoll CD transport loses a layer of digital glare in the higher frequencies that I had never realized was there. To my ear, in my system, this is like magic: 16/44 sounding kind of like master tapes, and without fatigue.
There are other areas where the Grimm falls short vs Naim - ergonomics, management of sampling rate changeovers, front edge presentation (a double-edged sword) - but overall, given the way my listening has evolved, I am quite happy with it.
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Out of interest which Atoll CD transport are you using?
The CD transport is an Atoll DR200.
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Mr. Andreas Koch certainly has an impressive set of credentials, perhaps no surprise that his work is of the highest quality. Massive respect.
In a similar vein, using the current Naim streaming engine to feed a high quality DAC is a very successful endeavour; transformational really. Since making the same change last September, using the S/PDIF output of the NDX 2 (with 555PS) to feed a Pilium Elektra has been nothing short of a revelation in terms of what the platform is truly capable of. Maybe a pragmatic route to achieving your favourite combination, sell the ND 555 & one PS, then pickup any one of the lower cost streamers to combine with the remaining 555PS and MPD-8?
Guess it’s difficult to get everything in one package and while it is a technical tour-de-force, the Playback Designs MPD-8 doesn’t quite reach the same level in terms of aesthetics. It’s fugly and that’s coming from an owner with a somewhat industrial taste in design. Beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder!
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Having experimented with my digital front end over the last couple of years I have come to the view that the DAC is much like the cartridge on a vinyl system. Important but only if the digital infrastructure is up to a high standard. I would certainly allocate more money to the server, switch and power supplies than the DAC given the choice. Just ensuring that there are no cheap switch mode power supplies connected electrically to the system (from the router to the DAC) provides a great leap in sound quality. A very good server and switch provides benefits that are difficult to take in. The fatiguing nature of digital vanishes and your shoulders can relax.
Hans
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I switched and now feed the DAC directly (bypassing network) USB from the music-server using a quite expensive USB-card. It really changed my listening habits. In practice I guess I turned my server into something more like an exclusive CD-player :-). JCAT USB Card XE EVO externally powered by Farad S3 with L2-S DC-cable.
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That is very interesting. Didn’t know PC Cards with an external PSU were a thing. Certainly is pricey.
Would also need to source a decent value DAC with USB input, so would be quite an expensive media server experiment.
There are also very fine USB cards from SOtM and Pink Faun, still pricey though. They are intended for optimized server builds with selected CPU:s, most motherboard features disabled and so on. You either build with low-power to reduce electric-noise, EMI and stuff or with fast CPU:s with lots of upsampling and that is where USB DAC:s come-in as they can handle upsampling to high samplerates, like 1,5GHz. But I run the low-power variety with no oversampling at all, chasing down quiet motherboards and so on and use s/h components to keep cost down …
Just don’t use USB is the best way if you can, it was never designed for audio and many much better ways to transfer an audio signal without all the problems.
Why spend thousands on trying to ?
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I think that is a fairly blanket view. The “USB wasn’t designed for audio” argument is often repeated but somewhat misses the point — the same could be said of coax S/PDIF, which was originally designed for consumer electronics and carries its own well-documented jitter and grounding issues.
Modern asynchronous USB audio is quite a different beast from the USB 1.0 era. When the DAC controls its own clock (async mode) and the USB input is well-isolated from the host’s power and ground, it can perform at least as well as S/PDIF — and in many implementations, measurably better. The reason people invest in quality USB cards and external PSUs isn’t to paper over USB’s flaws — it’s because they’ve found it genuinely outperforms the alternatives in their system.
What alternatives would you recommend instead?
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Standby for a mention of ..
This might be shocking but have you listened to Quad ELS speakers? Unbelievable for the sound signature you describe. Now for the bad news the panels need service every 7 years or so. 12 panels @ about Euro 400 and lots of basic soldering.
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Oh, thank you for the suggestion! When, inevitably, the bug next strikes I will certainly have a listen.
Even though I don’t do upsampling/oversampling the ones that I can get reliable good sound out of is AES/EBU and USB. I know people get good result with SPDIF (BNC or not) or I2S but they never worked out for me, But the Jorma AES cable gives a wonderfully musical sound but cost as much as a JCAT-card and I have a collection of 352 kHz DXD-files from HDTT I like to listen to and AES can’t play them.
So I stick with USB. There is the Pink Faun USB card at less than half the price of the JCAT that sounds different but in my opinion in the same class. But I got the JCAT at a good price and had the Farad S3 as leftover from a preamp so there you go 
I built an AudioLinux/Audirvana box out of used parts I think digital can sound really good when you don’t build a local network with streamers, ethernet cables and all that stuff around the boxes. Certainly not near the DAC. One good network card beats all that office-crap I currently like the famous Intel i350 which you can get cheaply (and you configure it for audio). And then I use USB to the DAC even though it is expensive - it can sound really good.
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“panels need service every 7 years or so”
Well … sometimes. Quads are weird. Sometimes you have panel failure at 7-10 years. Other times they seem to last for decades.
I have Quad 2805s. Bought in 2006 or so…20 years old. No problems at all. Could be I am just on the lucky side of the statistical failure rate distribution. Could also be causal…my Quads have always been run in a cool dehumidified environment - warm humid conditions kill the glue on the panels. Also i take Quads amp maximum recommendations seriously (100w per channel) and run them on an olive 250 (70w). They are not overdriven…i listen in the 82-85 db range which is plenty loud in the small rooms i have used them in.
Knock on wood.
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