Hi,
How are you connecting the MR to the Naim DAC since the NDAC does not have USB. Assume USB to SPDIF device and power supply? I’m contemplating Roon and have a sealed 2012 Mac Mini but leaning to SGC i5 solution. I have a Chord 2Qute that I could use. My rig is all Naim including NDAC.
M
HI,
I use the Naim DAC V-1 which has USB.
Sorry, I assumed the NDAC instead of the DAC V1. Excellent. Assume you are pleased with the sound?
M
I went from the trial Core on a 2013 Mac Pro to ROCK a NUC 7i5 with a linear power supply. Much better sq imo (microRendu 1.4 also into a DAC V1 with Uptone USPCB and Uptone LPS-1). The gain from the rendu 1.3 to 1.4 board was a much much bigger jump though. Getting clean power on the mini would help, as well as a pair of FMC’s between (use 10/100 models only for the rendu).
Uptone sells a Mac Mini DC conversion kit so a better PS can be added but the SGC i5 is less expensive when one considers the cost to add RAM and SSD to a MM.
M
Absolutely, others might be better (or rather different) but I have had the V1 now for 5 years and still enjoy the sound a lot (combined with Naim 202 / 200 DR).
Excellent! Yes, agreed on the better or different scenario. Do you use the headphone feature?
M
Not so often anymore but I love the punchy sound of it with my Grado headphones. Maybe one day an LPS for the Micro Rendu, what do you have?
I have the following Naim gear…NDX/NDAC/282/HCAPDR/250.2
Probably your best bet is to get a Sonore Ultradigital in the chain for the NDAC. Get a good Y cable from Ghent Audio and you could power both with the same supply. Or use Bridge on the microRendu and stream to the NDX. I use the microRendu into a DAC V1 via USB and RAAT, and Bridge to stream to my UQ1 in the office. Works like a charm.
We have almost identical Naim kit . I bought the micro Rendu to use with a Hugo when they were all the rage with a Naim NDX. I sold the Hugo and bought the small green computer usb spdif converter to convert microrendu usb out to play into digital input on NDX, I assume you can do the same on NDAC. However, the most convenient and yet still high quality implementation is to get the UPNP bridge. You can configure it to output as WAV per Naim recommendations and you play from Roon and the NDX (in my case) auto switches to the UPNP input. Had I known about the UPNP bridge When I started I wouldn’t have bought a MRendu.
This solution doesn’t seem to be well known on Naim forum but works beautifully. I think the UPNP bridges are under 300 from small green computer.
The UPNP bridge on Small Green Computer is not available anymore. Sonores Sonic Orbiter was a $295 option but I think it only output Toslink.
I have a Naim setup, DAC, Nait XS, Teddypardo TeddyXPS and TeddyCap feeding Proac Tablette Reference Eight Signature speakers).
I use a Raspberry PI with a Liner power supply and a Allo Digione digital output card to output to the DAC SPDIF
https://www.allo.com/sparky/digione.html
I have dietpi installed on the Pi which has an option to install roonbridge which is then detected (over ethernet network) by roon as an endpoint.
Sounds rather wonderful to me and works perfectly.
This is interesting to me but not sure I understand it completely (please help!)
I have an nDac and would love to try feeding it WAV files (all my music on Roon server is FLAC). I currently have an Auralic Aries Mini feeding the nDac via coax. Is there a way to improve this with your knowledge (feed WAV to nDac and with better quality coax connection?).
Thx in advance for any help (please note I am not very technically minded)
Hi, it’s true that Naim gear is optimised around WAV, so possibly worth a try.
As a test, I would suggest putting a copy of a FLAC file onto a USB stick, converting it to WAV, and having a listen. If it sounds no better, probably just stick with what you’ve got.
The USB input is not really any use with a large library, and of course it’s not visible to Roon, but it’ll give you an idea of what improvement, if any, you can expect.
Thx, I have tried FLAC (not WAV but will) on a usb and it did sound better than the Coax input from Auralic. For the reason of the USB sounding better I am keen to improve the input sound. I was hopeful if I make a change that I can (to better my chances) get it to also send sound in as WAV.
You could also convert a few files to WAV to play from the Auralic and see how that compares to the USB. Then you’ll start to get a feel for where any future improvements might be made.
Ideally this is a part of what I am after. Is there a way to set up Roon to convert files to WAV before it sends them to the DAC?
Irrespective of whether the file is stored as a WAV or a FLAC, Roon sends out the music as PCM. It doesn’t send the file to the Auralic as a WAV or FLAC, that’s just the file format as it’s stored on the disk.
As John says above, what Roon sends to the endpoint is no longer FLAC or WAV so it doesn’t really matter how you store it. If you were feeding the files to the NDAC and letting it process the files, that would be another matter as they would be processed by the DSP in the DAC. Naim DACs were optimised for WAV, and there is an additional electrical workload if they have to decompress a FLAC file, and the consensus is that this degrades sound quality slightly.