The Nova has been my first venture to Naim. Had it about 18 months using NACA5 into PMC 25.23’s. Really loving it. I have started to get back into playing keyboards again and gigging (was a working musician 30 years ago for a few years playing in various bands). I would like to create some rough demos at home and use software such as Audacity to record. I’m using a standard Dell PC running Windows 10 but cannot find a way to play back within Audacity to the Nova apart from terrible sound taking output from the headphone socket. There is no Chromecast function within Audacity. Is there any way I can use the Nova DAC outputting from the PC USB or will I need to buy an intervening DAC? I checked with my dealer who drew a blank. Keep thinking there is something obvious I’m missing here! With all the Nova inputs I hoped something could work?
By way of side comment I played my recently acquired Nord Keyboard through the Nova and it sounded wonderful. It is widely used by musicians (easily spotted by its bright red colour). It is based on sampled piano, Hammond organ and synth sounds. The samples came alive on my hifi compared to keyboard amp - but resisting doing this regularly due to risk damaging speakers with over excited playing!
Thanks Bart for suggestion. I may end up getting a laptop dedicated for music purposes and this might hasten that decision and find one with a good sound card. Just hoping there could be a simple work around to use Nova now.
The Nova USB input cannot do this. You would need to use an SPDIF input, either via optical out if your computer has it, or using a USB to SPDIF converter.
One option is to save your rough mixes as FLAC or other compatible format in your PC or other network drive, and point a UPNP server to that directory… then choose that server in Nova, select track and go. This won’t work live, but is an easy step to your workflow if you are checking mixes and so on. If you add something like Asset or Minim on your PC, you could have it appear as a dedicated server for your local mixes to ease finding your stuff…
Thanks Alan. Saving as FLAC file to Asset would be cost free way to playback recordings. If I want to playback within Audacity (or other DAW) then installing sound card with optical out as Bart suggests or USB to SPDIF converter as Chrissu suggests. Just the advice I was looking for! Very helpful.