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.
no images were found
Click on an image above to open a 300dpi version suitable for print
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.
Windows Media™ is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
UPnP™ is a trademark of the UPnP™ forum.
iPod, iPhone and Mac are trademarks of Apple Inc, registered in the U.S. and other countries.
Adobe Flash® is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
DLNA® is the registered trademark of the Digital Living Network Alliance.
Naim’s UnitiServe is powered by the DigiFi platform; leading edge software technology licensed from DigiFi Ltd of London.
Copyright notice: UnitiServe users are reminded that copying CDs may, in certain circumstances, be illegal.