Gustard R26

I sent a friend of mine a Matrix Audio I-3 mini Pro almost 3 years ago. It was only yesterday that I setup this DAC with a headphone amp and headphones at his place in Florida. He did not want to figure out how to put it all together.

He really does not have wired in either his home or office, just WiFi. The Matrix is maybe the most flexible DAC for streaming. It has Wifi support along with BlueTooth (via an iPhone for him). We were able to get music playing in minutes and have his musical experience improved from his prior iPhone speaker to a pretty nice headphone setup. I told him the way he was using the new setup was like putting 87 octane gas into a Ferrari, but it was still better than what he was doing before.

I owned the Matrix mini i-3 Pro at one time and I tested it out the Wifi. I was amazed at how good it sounded when it WORKED. When it did not work I had to restart the DAC. I think this was related to the WiFi’s inherent quality at my home. It will be interesting to see you it works for my friend.

Wifi has some advantages (no wire into the DAC carrying noise) that I would expect it to sound good. I have 3 different Fibre Optic streamers so I know what a decent setup sounds like.

I did’nt know this was supposed to be a rah rah session for those who purchased an r26.

i don’t follow, this is a discussion thread on a ’flavor of the month’ dac, getting lots of internet push, seemingly a decent performer, if one accepts the reviews

competing as they are in this crowded field, they try to offer good performance and a compelling feature set, so bundling in streaming capability is no doubt viewed by the maker as something a buyer/user would likely positively value or they wouldn't have done it ...

but as i read what is here, this ain’t no rah rah here about the r26 (and i ain’t got no horse in this pony race)

but if it doesn’t work for you, then move on, lotsa fish in the ocean...

@jjss49 Nah I’d rather not move on, I’ll just hang out here and rattle your cage 😀

One would think you owned Gustard...Just here to discuss the Good the Bad and the Ugly and why one would consider a purchase or pass, again this is an open forum; If you can’t handle that YOU should move on.

Do you have any first hand experience regarding the performance and ease of use of the R26 streaming function?...If so please do us all the honor of your enlightenment, if not what do you care what I think? I'm not banging on the R26 as stated I came close to buying one, merely saying it is likely in my opinion they will release a version without a streamer at a lower price point and that would work best for me and I'll wait for that version,good grief

A wireless input is going into the extender, so where is the logic of the lan being superior using a wifi extender? It simply is not so.

@balooo2 There are many here who use an extender to provide a wired connection to the streamer and find it superior to using Wi-Fi — and yes, I was skeptical at first too for the same reasons as you, but here we are.  Maybe @ghdprentice can chime in here as he uses an extender with his very expensive streaming setup.  Some people say using a mesh system is better than an extender, but it’s also a bit more expensive.  Sometimes things in audio don’t seem to make sense on the surface yet still provide meaningful improvements.  The good news is just trying running an Ethernet cable from an extender is pretty cheap to try out, so why not?

@soix I have used more extenders in the past than I can count some where better then others. As it turns out I have a very robust mesh wifi setup in my home; Asus RT-AX88U as the main router link to my modem and three RT-AX86U Pro's mesh chained around my home incredibly robust I highly recommend the Asus AiMesh system one of the best I've come across pricey but worth every penny.

Thank you for the insight.