NAIM NDX User Manual

Also see for NDX -: Connection guide Guide Supplement Manual Update guide Quick start guide

Contents

NAIM NDX User Manual Manual pdf 2 page image

Copyright Naim Audio 2010 Page 2 of 8Network StreamingUsing the UPnP™ network protocol the NDX plays musicstored on a hard drive across a standard ethernet network.With today’s trend of downloading or ripping musicto hard drives the ability to achieve audiophile soundquality from music data stored on an HDD or NAS isparamount. Good engineering techniques and principleswere utilised to realise this goal with the NDX, as with allNaim products, but this project posed some new andinteresting challenges.The first requirement for achieving high quality soundreproduction from a hard drive is that music data rippedfrom CD must be of the highest possible quality. So theripping engine developed as part of Naim’s HDX harddisk player became the first building block of the NDX.Although the HDX can also play audio files from networkdevices, it and the NDX work differently. The HDX is ahard disk audio player where the music is played fromthe internal hard drive or from music files found on thenetwork. The HDX scans the network to find playablemedia which are then added to the database and can beplayed. By contrast, the NDX uses the UPnP™ networkprotocol to find UPnP™ servers on the network and playaudio files served by these servers. As part of the NDX’sdevelopment Naim has tested many UPnP™ servers andwe have written our own UPnP™ server for Naim’s ownserver products. So now the HDX and the new UnitiServeare not only hard disk players but also UPnP™ servers,from which the NDX can stream audio.Naim’s UPnP™ servers deliver the uncompressed audiodata ripped from CD using the Naim ripping engine toensure the best quality reproduction. Uncompressedaudio data will always give better results than compressed.Even lossless compression may not reproduce audio withequivalent quality to the uncompressed original as theprocessing required to uncompress the data increasesthe computational load. This raises the power supplynoise floor, which detracts from the sound quality.Control DevicesHDXUSB memory stickComputerNASNDXAudio OutUPnP Servers NetworkA typical network layout incorporating the NDX