Canard

Yesterday evening I took a closer look at the Naim ND5 XS streamer. It caught my attention and rose new questions: What route should I go, regarding sound quality and user convenience (playlist, album browsing etc...): -MacBook Pro (Audirvana plus as player) to DAC to amp? or, -Naim ND5 XS streamer with NAS connected to it to amp, using the n-stream 3.0 app from Naim on my iPad? Has anybody used a Naim streamer with a NAS and the n-stream app on an iPad to browse through albums and create playlists? Matt

Hello Scott, I'm pretty sure that all tonal controls in iTunes were turned off at the time of the test, I'm running OSX Lion (did not upgrade to Mountain Lion by fear of slowing down my 2009 MacBook Pro), and the latest iTunes (11.0.2). Matt

Thank you David, I'll be checking the usb, but still, could you explain how the sound quality could be that different whereas I used the same usb socket and setup, switching between CD playback on the Mac's CD player and AIFF file read on the Mac?

Thank you Eloise for your reply. Here some more details about the test I did: As my dealer and I were quite surprised by the disappointing results we got, we tried different setups. We plugged the MacBook Pro via usb to the PSAudio Nuwave DAC and played alternatively the AIFF file of a track and then the same track from the CD I ripped through the Mac's CD player. I know that an AIFF file is not the iso image of the CD but, the dealer and I were really astonished as the sound from the CD played in the Mac was absolutely different from the sound produced by reading the AIFF file. The first being bright and detailed while the latter sounded kind of damped and thump. I thought I configured Audio Midi properly for the sample rates but I might did it wrong... I still have some troubles understanding how the two setups could sound so differently while the Mac, reading either the AIFF file or the CD sent the data to the same DAC through the same USB port and cable and so on. Any clue? Matt

Bonjour everybody, after having spent weeks reading through this forum, I dare today write my first post. Please forgive my bad writing as I post to you from Paris France. I'm currently setting up my first real Audiophile equipment: I chose to pair PMC twenty 22's with a Naim Nait XS2 amp, so that's the kit sitting proudly in my living room waiting for a source to join. I've got almost all my music on CD plus a couple of Hi-res albums I downloaded. I ripped all of my CD's (into 16/44 AIFF) to my (2009) MacBookPro for the convenience of iTunes playlists. Thanks to all of you, I understood I had to look for a proper reading software to overrule iTunes, I'm currently trying Audirvana plus out. So, to my questions: I went, a couple of weeks ago, to my local dealer to try some DACs out. I brought my MacBookPro and we plugged it into the different ones. I quickly narrowed the choice to one of the tested DAC's, a PSAudio nuwave DAC. The tests were done plugging in the Mac into the PSAudio by USB and using iTunes as player (I did not have Audirvana plus at the time). And I must say I was quite disappointed at the sound coming out through this setup, what ever the DAC, compared to sound I got through a CD player plugged to the Naim (Audiolab 8200CD and CambridgeAudio 851C). Cd sounded crisp and bright, precise, while through the Mac and DAC the same tracks converted into AIFF (stored on the Mac's hard drive) sounded dull and muffled. Was it because I was using iTunes as a player? Was it because the DACs were not suited to my kit (Naim NaitXS2+PMC 22s)? Was it because I should have stored the files on an external Drive and not the Mac's one to avoid the computer's proper OS to disrupt the signal by accessing to the Hard drive for its own needs? I'm planing to return to my dealer's for some new listening using Audirvana plus but I'm not sure this was the only explanation to my problem. Am I wrong to be expecting the same crispness of sound coming out of my computer+DAC as from a CD player? Thank you in advance for your Help!