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Who has Luv for the Lyngdorf 2170 and is thinking about the 3400.

Hello All,
I’m coming up on 40 yrs in this hobby,and or obsession of ours,and I started with a pair of Khorns and Macintosh at the age of 12 and Offcourse owned a ton of different gear over the yrs.
I bought a 2170 a little more than 6 months ago and I enjoyed it so much that I quickly realized I don’t really need anything else,solid state,tubes,or even dac’s anymore.I could step off that silly merry go round of amplification and just enjoy music.I was able to utilize the extra money and time and put together a really great sounding network audio system that rivaled the best in analog that I have ever had,I was mainly a analog guy all of these yrs but finally gave it up,I even sold my longtime record collection of 3k records which included many Hot Stampers that I purchased and also several that I found on my own.

So who Luv’s the 2170 and is maybe also thinking about the new 3400.

Happy Listening,
Kenny.

kdude66
grannyring's avatar
grannyring
6,506 posts
 
I use Roon’s DSP EQ to great effect.  Love Roon with Tidal and the 2170. 
jcarcopo's avatar
jcarcopo
504 posts
 
Thanks everyone, I forgot to follow this discussion so I apologize for the delays in replying.

@klh007 I ordered it with the HDMI board for my Nvidia Shield which I use for various Video related endpoints for Plex and Kodi. I didn’t bother with the premium analog board because I have no analog sources. Honestly, I could make do with a stripped down network only version that has no digital audio inputs or analog audio inputs if they made one that way since I run Roon and the Lyngdorf already supports RoonReady through the network board. The prices quoted were the same as @uberwaltz mentioned earlier.

TLDR; The Lyngdorf had better be a sonic Svengali because it has some very stiff competition.

I am currently auditioning the NAD Reference M22 Rev2 and I have a pair of Nord One-Up SE Ncore Monoblocks arriving tomorrow to compare sound quality against.

I am hopeful that the Lyngdorf competes and surpasses them all sonically (including my SET, but I am realistic in this regard), but I will say the NAD Ref M22 Rev2 is very very good, but it required some judicious manual Room EQ to get it to sound that way because initially it was busy sounding and congested in the upper midrange at louder volume levels. It’s really quite nice sounding now after my buddy Mike team viewered into my roon endpoint and we took measurements and tweaked the EQ settings in the Reaper DAW software using FabFilter ProQ2 VST plugins (I use various audio plugins to tweak the sound to my liking).

I could see myself possibly keeping the Lyngdorf just for room correction and as a Roon endpoint if it doesn’t beat the NAD or Nords or my SET in sound quality, but that’s an expensive proposition so the room correction/roon-endpoint convenience and sound quality improvement will have to outweigh any sonic differences between amplifiers in that case.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe theoretically I can bi-amp my forthcoming Ulfberhts with my current Diavolo SET tube amplifier on the top-end and the Lyngdorf on the bottom-end? I have no idea if this would be warranted, desirable, or even worth trying for possibly the best of both worlds, but I fear they might not coalesce properly. I tend to think that mixing SETs with Solid-State (even class D) would be akin to heresy in some circles and even I would say it may very well be an abortion of sonic proportions.

The versatility and simplicity of the Lyngdorf truly makes it the swiss army knife of components as @aniwolfe mentioned on the phone yesterday with me.

What’s truly amazing to me is that in the best case scenario the Lyngdorf could potentially replace my DAC, my passively cooled and dedicated ROON endpoint, my SET amp, and hopefully best the competing class D amps I am also comparing it to.

I feel kind of sorry for the Lyngdorf, it’s almost not fair to expect it to outperform everything, but unfortunately it’s going to have to pull a rabbit out of it’s hat sonically and amaze me or I’ll not likely keep it in my system. I won’t expect the SET like midrange, but it better do everything else so well that I forget about magic midranges.


david_ten
5,480 posts
 
@jcarcopo In another post you mentioned you would be sending the Benchmark DAC3 HGC back to Benchmark, in anticipation of the Lyngdorf 3400. Can you share why? Thanks.

Looking forward to your impressions of the 3400!
jcarcopo's avatar
jcarcopo
504 posts
 
@kdude66 I can't believe myself either. I just think the new speakers will need more power as they are less efficient than the DI's, and I really want something less fiddly.  I get tired tweaking eqs, plugins, and filters and messing about.  If the Lyngdorf can nail the room correction better than me, than more power to it. I am having some trepidation about giving up my SET amp in my main system.  I am not selling it though, I may repurpose it for a 2nd system so I never go without it ever again. I made the mistake selling this amp years ago only to repurchase it at great expense to my bank account, I won't make that mistake again. I've always wanted 2 systems.  One big and one small.  Now I am covered. 
jcarcopo's avatar
jcarcopo
504 posts
 
@david_ten

TLDR; Because it’s $2200 and I am within my 30 day return period and I’m hemorrhaging money like Richard Pryor in the movie "Brewster’s Millions" ;-) LOL

I’m running Roon so I’ll be using the built-in endpoint to stream music from my library directly to the DAC/AMP in the Lyngdorf. I see no advantage in doing an extra D/A conversion. It’s as pure a signal path as you’ll ever get running packeted RAAT protocol digital data over a network connection directly to the digital amp as PWM. In essence there’s not really a DAC involved in the conventional sense. This assumes I know what I am talking about, so please correct me if I am wrong. (I will however try my old DAC2 HGC fed into the Lyngdorf just for the hell of it and for the sonic comparison).
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