Hello, just recived my NDX 2 yesterday, and after listen to music from Tidal and other places than Roon for an evening without any problems.
I started this morning to use Roon, after 5-6 songs NDX 2 turns to standby, has happend twice.
Anyone else discovered this?
Update: Happend again after the same amount of songs. After 1 minute or so, the NDX 2 turns on again.
Update 2: Just played a album thru my QNAP NAS, Twokey, DNLA, and I played 12 songs now without issues.
Update 3: change auto standby to never, make it works good.
Hi @DPH congratulations on your NDX-2. I have the same one in a set-up with 282/HiCapDr/250Dr/NDX2/XPSdr and Focal Kanta 2 speakers. Up till yesterday I have been testing Roon by using it on a MacBook in wifi mode. In that set-up I also experienced a few times drop-outs etc especially by Hi-Res and MQA. I guess it had to do with the bandwith of my wifi. SInce yesterday evening I use a NUC with Roon Rock which is wired conencted via a switch to both the NDX-2 and NAS and this is perfect. I don’t have the drop-outs anymore. One other annoying thing I noticed with the NDX-2 is that it does not “remember” the last selected output device: for example I use the system also for TC sound. When I put my TV on I select the opt out on the NDX2 that has a toslink to the tv. When I put the tv off, go to bed and put it on again the next day, the system select is on something else. Strange, never happened with my previous NDX. Cheers Iver
Naims auto standby is very buggy as are all the new Unitis to some degree, software does not seem to be Naims forte. I have an Atom and it does it whilst listening to the analogue input. This is something you should report to Naim support.
Funny, these things are never mentioned in reviews. I’m intrigued by the Uniti Atom, so good to hear a real world user experience. I wonder if Naim were aware of this and just released the product anyway?
I know. The Naim app is just atrocious and more so on Android. You can only get Gapless using upnp via their own app to. It locks up from time to time for no apparent reason. I think thry are well aware of all the Uniti faults and shortcomings but don’t seem to know how to sort them atm. They do sound and look amazing though and I do love it foebles and all but I don’t think I would buy another Naim unit myself. This is my 2nd as first started to sound awful after a firmware update , I know some who are on their 5th Novas. Why anybody would have 5 exchanges I don’t know Naim fanboys I guess.
Roon works very well though and stops me having to use their own app If Roon adds Qobuz I won’t have to use upnp or Chromecast for Qobuz either .
My Atom doesn’t have any issues, has never locked up or gone to sleep unexpectedly.
My previous Naim streamer nd5xs would lock up if used as a DAC so I’m aware of Naim frailties…
Hello @Iver_van_de_Zand Thank you, Congratulations on your own NDX2, its a own kind of a network streamer!
I made my problem go away by removing the auto standby to never. I have been asking about this on the Naim forum, and people there suggested to me to set it to never, and the naim system never so go in any kind of standby anyway:) and after I did, it has been working flawless!
One other thing I have notice is that the green naim logo in front of the NDX2 is pretty low light compared to my other boxes, and someone at naim forum told me that there is a firmware coming to fix that, but duo to bugs, the firmware where taken down from the public, to they could make it better.
Other than that, im really satisfied with my NDX2, and I haven’t had any problems with remember last selected output, because my NDX2 never goes to standby:)
Great review! Actually I have never been doing DSP, because I have to little knowledge and haven’t had the time to go thru it.
Right now im running Roon via my Alienware X51 that has Ubuntu Desktop running headless. And I will see in later how I will run roon. All music is on my QNAP NAS.
for those of you that have no access to the Naim forum, here is my review:
After testing Roon initially via MacBook that was wireless connected to my system-switch, I now bought a NUC to embed in my system. The test phase convinced my of the Roon experience and the SQ quality seemed on par, yet a wireless connected MacBook results in drop-outs with Hi-Res and I do not like a laptop that needs to be “on” for playing music.
Reviewing the web, I opted for a NUC with an i5, 8GB RAM and 128SSD spec and installed Roon Rock. The NUC is wired-connected to my Netgear system switch that also holds the NAS, and Airport Express for Internet and my NDX-2. Roon delivers a detailed installation guide for Rock, yet I needed some additional technical videos (tip: watch the Hans Beekhuyzen channel on YouTube) to get everything in place. I also had to change a DHCP setting on the Airport Express.
Building up the Roon library out of my NAS (holds some 6000 albums) is quick and a matter of one or two hours.
My conclusions so far are:
the user experience of Roon is second-to-none: this is how modern streaming should work. Everything is incredibly integrated and streamlined, and works flawlessly. It is very difficult to stop playing music when using Roon. Literally at every (!) moment you are encouraged to listen to “related” music based on genre, composers and more. Very nicely done. A good indicator is that one hardly has the need to look into the user guide; I think that says a lot about the user experience and interface. Yes, there are things to improve (like the Tags in my opinion) but they are relatively small
Sound Quality: playing albums from my NAS, I believe the sound quality through the Naim App is slightly better than Roon. Especially with H-Res albums. When I “passed-by” Roon and played directly over the Naim App there was more blackness and attack in the music. It also has a bit more warmth than when using Roon. I have an Hi-Res album of Amy Whinehouse that highlighted this quite well. The differences are not huge, but they are there. One reason I could think of (apart from the longer data-chain, since the music physically passes the NUC so there is an extra device in the chain) is that I have invested in high quality UTP cable for all devices (AudioQuest and Chord) but not yet for the wired conenction of the NUC. That has a standard UTP cable. Maybe I should buy a good cable for that one too?
Sound Quality: initially I activated the DSP Conversion but this took out a lot of the NDX-2 magic. Absolutely less good than when de-activated. The DSP setting I used was with only “Sample Frequency” activated to sample to DSD128; all others where off. Now, this DSP conversion to me is all pretty complex, so I could be me who chose the wrong settings. Therefor I’d be really interested in the experiences of others here on the forum. If somebody has a positive experience, I’d love to see some screenshots with the exact (!) settings chosen.
Sound Quality: I am very positively surprised by Tidal. This sounds wonderful through Roon. The big, big surprise are the MQA Master Labels: apart from the massive library of MQA albums available in Tidal through Roon, the sound quality is very impressive and on par with a lot of Hi-Res good-quality-labels I have on my NAS
So bottom line, I’d be very interested to permanently flip over to Roon … if … if I get the Sound quality of NAS albums on par with regular play. I probably will look into a good UTP cable for the connection of the NUC onto the switch. Maybe an Sbooster on my Netgear switch could help too
If Roon adds Qobuz I won’t have to use upnp or Chromecast for Qobuz either .