Behold Gentle G192 Media Player

Correction, this is the runt of the litter at $16K. The $50k sibling is newer.

No DSD.

Hi Mcondon, what a great post, thankyou, I would like to find a streamer of excellent sound with a quality volume control to run direct to my amp and get out of cd-player's, dac's-transport's all together, I am not that interested in computer audio, that's silly to me, computer's do not have quality power supplies, tube's, quality capacitor's, etc..., plus usb cable's are a silly way to attempt to get state of the art sound, some usb implementation's inside of some of the best Dac's out there may sound good, however, the usb cable is a bust!, a media streamer that has balanced cable out-put with a quality volume control to run direct to amplification is what I would like to audition, is their such a unit on the market yet?

"01-26-15: Audiolabyrinth
Hi Mcondon, what a great post, thankyou, I would like to find a streamer of excellent sound with a quality volume control to run direct to my amp and get out of cd-player's, dac's-transport's all together, I am not that interested in computer audio, that's silly to me, computer's do not have quality power supplies, tube's, quality capacitor's, etc..., plus usb cable's are a silly way to attempt to get state of the art sound, some usb implementation's inside of some of the best Dac's out there may sound good, however, the usb cable is a bust!, a media streamer that has balanced cable out-put with a quality volume control to run direct to amplification is what I would like to audition, is their such a unit on the market yet?"

I think you just set the record for the longest sentence on Audiogon. That aside, I'm not sure what you are asking for. For computer audio, you use the PC as a transport only. But unless I'm mistaken, a streaming device is essentially a computer as well. The way you interact with a streamer is a little different, but you still have to rip all your CD's and they get played back essentially the same way. I could be wrong, of course, but I thought that's how it works.

ZD, you are not wrong.

Streamer is just a quiet transport that is designed optimized for music, accepts ethernet/wifi, etc and outputs in Dac friendly formats like USB, HDMI, RCA, BNC eutc.

Audiolabyrinth,

So you want to keep your amp, but replace your CD transport, DAC, and preamp with a single digital server with balanced outputs? I believe a Lumin server would fit that bill. Nothing else comes to mind, since most digital servers output a digital signal that needs to be converted to analog by a separate DAC.

I briefly explored the idea of demoing a Lumin. I don't know if you are in the US or somewhere else, but Ciamara in New York is a Lumin dealer that allows 30-day trials within the US (or rather, the right to return the product for a full refund if you don't like it).

Mind you, I have never heard a Lumin player, so cannot recommend it based on personal experience. And Lumin is not cheap. But it might be worth investigating if you want to retire your CD player and move to a one box solution.