I'd owned a Melco N1zH Mkii since 2018. I upgraded it to EX and lived happily with it serving files via USB straight into my Le Dac 2. In today's models, it's probably at a level equivalent to the Melco N50-S38 or Innuos Zenith Mkiii. It's a strong, lively performer.
Recently, in dealing with some edginess in my system, I turned to optical isolation and dropped a Sonore Optical Deluxe kit between router and EE switch. Queue epiphany moment. More relaxed sound (not less dynamic) freer of grain, more airy. That led me into a deeper dive into optical and, ultimately, curiosity about the N5's optical-in. After a quick message to the ever-obliging and patient Mike and Caroline at Audio Destination, UK, a long-weekend home demo' was arranged.
Two weeks later, a stunning, black N5 arrived. Its good looks warranted a place on the rack, but there was no room, so it would have to hide its bushell behind the wooden door of the media cabinet which, at its opposite end, houses switch, ADOT, Sonore, Plixir and SBooster. (The router sits as far from these as I can get it.) The (abbreviated) chain, then, was router - optical - switch - optical - N5 - USB DAC.
Once connected and on powering-up, the N5 quickly found my network and DAC and - that is all. Done. Ready to rock and roll. I really appreciate such plug and play simplicity because when they were handing out the patience required to 'Read the Instructions', I must have been having a nappy change.
Copying the Test Tracks folder on my laptop to N5 was easy; just drag it into the N5's files folder. Well, it was easy after my Mac found the N5 - it required a quick 'connect to server' search in Finder and a log onto the N5 requiring a common Melco id and p/wd; but once done it's pretty much set for life. Copying finished, navigate to the folder in the Melco app on ipad (it gets bashed in some places, but I find it comprehensive and a cinch to use) hit play and go fiddle about in the garden while the Gryphon system warms-up for its requisite 45 minutes.
In my mind, I'd prepared myself to hear little difference between N1z' and N5. It's just a fancy computer server variant isn't it - how different can it be? And that wouldn't have been such a bad thing because it would have saved me £7,500 and the need to sell my unit and my analogue front end, to fund it. Unfortunately, it didn't pan out that way. The magnitude of change was great and from which, impossible to reverse. I had to have one. There was no option. Fast forward three excruciating months (waiting for N1z to sell) and a beautiful, new, matt black N5 is now part of my system. Some three weeks in, what follows is my evaluation of its performance in my context. Advance warning of several audiophile cliches..
It's a serious step up. Unquestionably. Much of the difference, I suspect, owes itself to the attention Melco have paid to minimising/isolating any and all electrical noise pollution in and from the unit. (As well as new clock, PS, anti-vibration measures..) Because when you do this, following happens:
The soundstage has grown to fill my room with instruments and vocals spread higher, wider, deeper and closer and beyond the speaker boundaries. It's BIG. The space and air between instruments is more clearly defined. Any remaining edge has gone; and the occasional vocal line which had, previously, been incoherent or unknowingly mis-heard, has become comprehensible. I'd always thought Martha Tilston sang 'I'm in space' in her beautiful track of same name from 'Bimbling'; but the N5 super-clearly reproduces 'I miss space'. Many other examples of this. Nuances in vocal expression, particularly, strike me; I can hear a degree of emotion in the way words are expressed - particularly in less instrument-heavy, solo vocals - which haven't been at all audible before. Same for instrumentals - e.g. Lofgren's guitar in one of the fastest parts of 'Keith Don't Go' has played a tiny bit disjointed in the past, but now it times perfectly and makes complete sense. Thus comes the performance closer to me, emotionally; and physically, too, with vocals and lead guitar, particularly, moving from behind/level with the speaker boundary, to ahead of it. Gilmore's outstanding guitar presence in Comfortably Numb is right there just in front of me, flying up through the ceiling. Imaging has jumped by degrees with different instruments and voices occupying precisely different and obvious places throughout the stage. 'Holographic' springs to mind all the time. More elements come to my attention than before and from all dimensions. Perception of recording space in live recordings is superb.
Pause - Jethro Tull's 'Aqualung ', from 'Live at Montreux' has, ruthlessly and unapologetically, yanked me from the sofa to the mosh pit and hijacked my thought-train..
Yes, the recording space.. Suzanne Vega's 'Live at the Barbican' can give a fabulous rendition of the sense of the hall, on the right set up. The N5 feeds right into that with all the spatial cues of decays, subtle echo and dimensionality needed to rebuild it in all three dimensions right in front of me, almost around me. The chattering of the crowd and clinking of glasses/cutlery and the background diner's line '..it's empty..' in Bill Evans Trio's 'Some Other Time' is perfectly clear and proportionately positioned side to side, front to back. It spreads out behind the beautiful piano taking its front-of-stage-right place and truly makes me feel like a guest in the top spot, yet amongst the other guests. Strings are reproduced with a greater sense of naturalness and detail. The cello in Amber Rubarth's 'Grass Top' has never sounded so 'real' - presumably as prevention of 'muck on the wires' allows the detail and timbre to come through as it was recorded, pollution-effects-free. The result is weep-enducing. Dynamics traverse a full range from super-relaxed and effortless to seat of your pants exciting and everything in between. Some tracks seem to slow right down. This worried me to begin with. Until faster, more raucous tracks grabbed my arse and tore through the streets with it, on fire. I conclude that those 'slower' tracks are simply closer to what was intended originally; they're certainly no less for it. Quite the opposite. Raising the volume doesn't result in an ear-skewering, just more involvement. Bass has more weight and texture. Bass guitar lines are more obvious and easy to follow. Mids and highs are more detailed, yet utterly unforced. Decays seem longer and are more textured.
In summary, I'd just say, overall, sound served up by the N5 is more natural, coherent, involving and lifelike. I find myself simply lost in it.
I almost exclusively use the Melco to play local files. I'm still evaluating which of the two player apps on the N5 I prefer - Minimserver or Twonky. (Above is comparing Minimserver on N5 to same on n1z.) There is a very noticeable difference between them. If it's an acoustic album, I might prefer Twonky for yet bigger air and sense of recording space; if it's a rock album, I might prefer Minim' for its seeming faster speed and bass slam. (My perceptions - YMMV.) These are early observations which may change over further acclimatisation and/or if there are burn-in effects. I never noticed this on the N1z - though I didn't really spend much time looking. I won't go into any more depth on it here, as it's a subject of its own. Elsewhere, N5 can be selected as a Roon endpoint and also runs Qobuz, Tidal and VTuner for radio. I don't Roon, but I will set up my Qobuz a/c so I can d/load straight into the N5. (Though I'm also in process of deciding whether or not it's more optimal to buy and rip CD's on a D100, where available, instead.) I do listen to Radio Paradise (great station) on N5. It sounds excellent, but I haven't used VTuner for critical listening; so that's as much as I can report on it right now.
I don't use the dedicated RJ45 player port for streamer - because I don't use/need one. But when I demo'd N5, I did borrow a streamer with a view to determining whether it would be a better investment than a 'bare' N5. I've not written about this because N5 direct to DAC was clearly preferable to me. The streamer wasn't 'bad' at all; it was just different. It was more 'energetic', but I found it lacked the nuances, blackness, scale and depth of N5 direct. Of course, in this scenario, I wasn't hearing the Melco, I was hearing the streamer. It was a £5k streamer. But any streamer can only benefit from the noise-isolated, dedicated player port and music so superbly rendered to it. Maybe a higher-end unit will work out preferable to the N5 as player. It'll be down to personal preference. I will say the N5's USB-out is fabulously well implemented; presumably, aided by the quality new clock, power supply and anti-vibration measures.
In (overdue) conclusion, the N5 is good enough for me to sacrifice my analogue front end to pay for it. Well, for now I calculate I can get by on selling my excellent Moon Neo 310LP phono stage (and a bunch of other bits) and downgrading to something basic, given the tt is now more nostalgic ornament than practical machine. The N5 bears out the adage 'garbage in, garbage out' and clearly all (player)servers are not equal. It's just such a 'quiet' machine. The isolation work done to eliminate electrical noise, particularly from the USB-out, is transformational and that new clock must support what comes across as superb timing. The scale, colours and flavours delivered by my system with the N5 in place is beyond anything I've heard before. Music and emotions simply soar. Never mind Red Bull, now Melco gives you wings. (Groan..)
Recently, in dealing with some edginess in my system, I turned to optical isolation and dropped a Sonore Optical Deluxe kit between router and EE switch. Queue epiphany moment. More relaxed sound (not less dynamic) freer of grain, more airy. That led me into a deeper dive into optical and, ultimately, curiosity about the N5's optical-in. After a quick message to the ever-obliging and patient Mike and Caroline at Audio Destination, UK, a long-weekend home demo' was arranged.
Two weeks later, a stunning, black N5 arrived. Its good looks warranted a place on the rack, but there was no room, so it would have to hide its bushell behind the wooden door of the media cabinet which, at its opposite end, houses switch, ADOT, Sonore, Plixir and SBooster. (The router sits as far from these as I can get it.) The (abbreviated) chain, then, was router - optical - switch - optical - N5 - USB DAC.
Once connected and on powering-up, the N5 quickly found my network and DAC and - that is all. Done. Ready to rock and roll. I really appreciate such plug and play simplicity because when they were handing out the patience required to 'Read the Instructions', I must have been having a nappy change.
Copying the Test Tracks folder on my laptop to N5 was easy; just drag it into the N5's files folder. Well, it was easy after my Mac found the N5 - it required a quick 'connect to server' search in Finder and a log onto the N5 requiring a common Melco id and p/wd; but once done it's pretty much set for life. Copying finished, navigate to the folder in the Melco app on ipad (it gets bashed in some places, but I find it comprehensive and a cinch to use) hit play and go fiddle about in the garden while the Gryphon system warms-up for its requisite 45 minutes.
In my mind, I'd prepared myself to hear little difference between N1z' and N5. It's just a fancy computer server variant isn't it - how different can it be? And that wouldn't have been such a bad thing because it would have saved me £7,500 and the need to sell my unit and my analogue front end, to fund it. Unfortunately, it didn't pan out that way. The magnitude of change was great and from which, impossible to reverse. I had to have one. There was no option. Fast forward three excruciating months (waiting for N1z to sell) and a beautiful, new, matt black N5 is now part of my system. Some three weeks in, what follows is my evaluation of its performance in my context. Advance warning of several audiophile cliches..
It's a serious step up. Unquestionably. Much of the difference, I suspect, owes itself to the attention Melco have paid to minimising/isolating any and all electrical noise pollution in and from the unit. (As well as new clock, PS, anti-vibration measures..) Because when you do this, following happens:
The soundstage has grown to fill my room with instruments and vocals spread higher, wider, deeper and closer and beyond the speaker boundaries. It's BIG. The space and air between instruments is more clearly defined. Any remaining edge has gone; and the occasional vocal line which had, previously, been incoherent or unknowingly mis-heard, has become comprehensible. I'd always thought Martha Tilston sang 'I'm in space' in her beautiful track of same name from 'Bimbling'; but the N5 super-clearly reproduces 'I miss space'. Many other examples of this. Nuances in vocal expression, particularly, strike me; I can hear a degree of emotion in the way words are expressed - particularly in less instrument-heavy, solo vocals - which haven't been at all audible before. Same for instrumentals - e.g. Lofgren's guitar in one of the fastest parts of 'Keith Don't Go' has played a tiny bit disjointed in the past, but now it times perfectly and makes complete sense. Thus comes the performance closer to me, emotionally; and physically, too, with vocals and lead guitar, particularly, moving from behind/level with the speaker boundary, to ahead of it. Gilmore's outstanding guitar presence in Comfortably Numb is right there just in front of me, flying up through the ceiling. Imaging has jumped by degrees with different instruments and voices occupying precisely different and obvious places throughout the stage. 'Holographic' springs to mind all the time. More elements come to my attention than before and from all dimensions. Perception of recording space in live recordings is superb.
Pause - Jethro Tull's 'Aqualung ', from 'Live at Montreux' has, ruthlessly and unapologetically, yanked me from the sofa to the mosh pit and hijacked my thought-train..
Yes, the recording space.. Suzanne Vega's 'Live at the Barbican' can give a fabulous rendition of the sense of the hall, on the right set up. The N5 feeds right into that with all the spatial cues of decays, subtle echo and dimensionality needed to rebuild it in all three dimensions right in front of me, almost around me. The chattering of the crowd and clinking of glasses/cutlery and the background diner's line '..it's empty..' in Bill Evans Trio's 'Some Other Time' is perfectly clear and proportionately positioned side to side, front to back. It spreads out behind the beautiful piano taking its front-of-stage-right place and truly makes me feel like a guest in the top spot, yet amongst the other guests. Strings are reproduced with a greater sense of naturalness and detail. The cello in Amber Rubarth's 'Grass Top' has never sounded so 'real' - presumably as prevention of 'muck on the wires' allows the detail and timbre to come through as it was recorded, pollution-effects-free. The result is weep-enducing. Dynamics traverse a full range from super-relaxed and effortless to seat of your pants exciting and everything in between. Some tracks seem to slow right down. This worried me to begin with. Until faster, more raucous tracks grabbed my arse and tore through the streets with it, on fire. I conclude that those 'slower' tracks are simply closer to what was intended originally; they're certainly no less for it. Quite the opposite. Raising the volume doesn't result in an ear-skewering, just more involvement. Bass has more weight and texture. Bass guitar lines are more obvious and easy to follow. Mids and highs are more detailed, yet utterly unforced. Decays seem longer and are more textured.
In summary, I'd just say, overall, sound served up by the N5 is more natural, coherent, involving and lifelike. I find myself simply lost in it.
I almost exclusively use the Melco to play local files. I'm still evaluating which of the two player apps on the N5 I prefer - Minimserver or Twonky. (Above is comparing Minimserver on N5 to same on n1z.) There is a very noticeable difference between them. If it's an acoustic album, I might prefer Twonky for yet bigger air and sense of recording space; if it's a rock album, I might prefer Minim' for its seeming faster speed and bass slam. (My perceptions - YMMV.) These are early observations which may change over further acclimatisation and/or if there are burn-in effects. I never noticed this on the N1z - though I didn't really spend much time looking. I won't go into any more depth on it here, as it's a subject of its own. Elsewhere, N5 can be selected as a Roon endpoint and also runs Qobuz, Tidal and VTuner for radio. I don't Roon, but I will set up my Qobuz a/c so I can d/load straight into the N5. (Though I'm also in process of deciding whether or not it's more optimal to buy and rip CD's on a D100, where available, instead.) I do listen to Radio Paradise (great station) on N5. It sounds excellent, but I haven't used VTuner for critical listening; so that's as much as I can report on it right now.
I don't use the dedicated RJ45 player port for streamer - because I don't use/need one. But when I demo'd N5, I did borrow a streamer with a view to determining whether it would be a better investment than a 'bare' N5. I've not written about this because N5 direct to DAC was clearly preferable to me. The streamer wasn't 'bad' at all; it was just different. It was more 'energetic', but I found it lacked the nuances, blackness, scale and depth of N5 direct. Of course, in this scenario, I wasn't hearing the Melco, I was hearing the streamer. It was a £5k streamer. But any streamer can only benefit from the noise-isolated, dedicated player port and music so superbly rendered to it. Maybe a higher-end unit will work out preferable to the N5 as player. It'll be down to personal preference. I will say the N5's USB-out is fabulously well implemented; presumably, aided by the quality new clock, power supply and anti-vibration measures.
In (overdue) conclusion, the N5 is good enough for me to sacrifice my analogue front end to pay for it. Well, for now I calculate I can get by on selling my excellent Moon Neo 310LP phono stage (and a bunch of other bits) and downgrading to something basic, given the tt is now more nostalgic ornament than practical machine. The N5 bears out the adage 'garbage in, garbage out' and clearly all (player)servers are not equal. It's just such a 'quiet' machine. The isolation work done to eliminate electrical noise, particularly from the USB-out, is transformational and that new clock must support what comes across as superb timing. The scale, colours and flavours delivered by my system with the N5 in place is beyond anything I've heard before. Music and emotions simply soar. Never mind Red Bull, now Melco gives you wings. (Groan..)
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