Award-winning Naim HDX Gets SLC Solid State Drive

Making a Great Server Even Better

(Editorial note: Within the past year our British sister magazine Hi-Fi+ favorably reviewed the Naim HDX Hard Disk Player. Now, AVguide.com has learned that Naim plans to offer the HDX with an onboard Solid State Drive, with the new version to be called the “HDX-SSD”. What is more, owners of existing HDX players will be offered an SSD upgrade option. Below, we present the text of the Naim press release announcing the new HDX-SSD.

Note: Readers interested in high performance music servers may also wish to click here to read about Naim’s recently announced compact hard-disk player/server, called the UnitiServe.)

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Award-winning Naim HDX gets SLC SSD

May 6 2010 High-End Show, MOC, Munich.   Naim confirms, in an aggregate of abbreviations, that the multi-award-winning Naim HDX is to be offered with a 16GB Enterprise grade, Single Level Cell (SLC), Solid State Drive (SSD). This totally silent drive will contain the operating system and includes space for future upgrades. This and the performance upgrades are an upgrade option for existing HDX owners.

HDX-SSD – designed for the music lover with a larger music collection – has no local storage and is designed to save to Network Attached Storage (NAS), giving almost infinite storage capability.

Research carried out by Naim indicates that there is an almost exactly 50:50 split between HDX owners and potential owners that would prefer to store all their music locally or on a NAS drive somewhere convenient in their homes. The option, of course, exists to start storing locally and expand to NAS but many potential customers have expressed a preference to start with NAS.

The Naim HDX-SSD will be available in July 2010.

The HDX–SSD also gets significant performance improvements with double the RAM to reduce paging and therefore reduce variable current draw and more importantly a new Naim designed low-profile PCI audio card.  This new card is designed for a single stereo output is further optimised and consumes less current than the one it replaces.  This delivers a twofold opportunity for a sound quality improvement.

These improvements are also heard on the digital output.

Existing owners can upgrade their HDX with the new RAM and PCI card at their Naim retailer. The upgrade to the SSD drive is also possible but this would require a return to Naim or the local distributor.

Owners should contact their local retailer for availability and cost.

Notes

Naim recommends that a second backup of all music is kept, ideally off site, as drives can fail and even Raid 5 NAS stores can become corrupt. A second drive as a backup will seem like superb value for money in the event of a primary HD failure.  Naim will publish documents on backup strategies on its website shortly.

Solid state memory stores data in individual memory cells, which are made of floating-gate transistors. Traditionally, one bit of data was stored in each cell in so-called single-level cells, or SLC flash memory. SLC memory has the advantage of faster write speeds, lower power consumption and higher cell endurance. However, because it stores less data per cell, it costs more per megabyte of storage to manufacture. Due to faster transfer speeds, SLC technology is used in high-performance memory.

Specifications

AUDIO OUTPUTS

Line Outputs: DIN and RCA
Output Levels: 2.1Vrms at 1kHz
Output Impedance: 22Ω maximum
Phase Response: Linear phase, absolute phase correct
Minimum Load Impedance: 10kΩ
Frequency Response: 10Hz - 20kHz, +0.1/ - 0.5dB
THD+N: <0.1% 10 Hz - 18kHz at full output level
Digital Outputs: 1 x S/PDIF, 75Ω BNC and TOSLINK

FORMATS

CD Formats: Red book
Disc Compatibility: CD, CD-R, CD-RW
Audio File Formats Supported: WAV, AIFF, FLAC, ALAC, OGG Vorbis, AAC, WMA, MP3

SAMPLE RATES

Sample Rates: 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 192kHz native. Other rates converted to 44.1kHz.
Bit Depths: 16bit, 24bit, 32bit fixed, 32bit float