DCS Rossini + Digital or Puccini + CDs?

Auditioning a dCS stack is not at all easy. Suboptimally setup (Cables, footers, clocking etc) they will sound dry and sterile. And in my attempts to use them with direct non physical digital sources such as computer based, USB stick or streaming have always sounded thin and lifeless. Put a good CD in to a well configured setup however and you are away and in my case it’s only my even more religiously tweaked analog rig that beats it ... my system description has a pretty thorough description of the steps I make to optimize my four box setup.

regarding the OPs question.  @keiserrg why are you unwilling to countenance keeping your CDs? The marginal cost of the Rossini vs DAC is (in the context of the base price) low and likely less than you need to spend on the interconnect to the streamer itself. You own the CDs, and if you’re bothered about the space needed for storage switch to sleeves like I did. The pursuit of the absolute sound is typically not accomplished by moving two steps forward and one back, better to always be moving ahead 😉

@keiserrg I’m not familiar with dCS other than my recent audition of the Bartok, Rossini, and Vivaldi DACs and my ongoing interest in the Network Bridge. With that out of the way...

I am confident that a correct pairing of a server/streamer/player and the Rossini, will provide you with excellent sound quality.

Please note MY BIAS: I don’t buy into > "sub-optimal digital sourcing (i.e. from your server)"

Also note that I am heavily invested in streaming and have been since the mid 2000s when I walked away from CDP playback.

@folkfreak Thanks. I’ll make sure to audition the Rossini and Vivaldi with a CDP to gain a solid reference point. The server used when I heard the setups was a Roon Nucleus with cabling (source related) all of which was not up to the task.

OP here is our take on the matter, we had a client trade in the same DCS Pucinni you had, however, he did not have the clock.

He traded it in for a Lumin A1 which he found to far outperform his DCS.

As per streaming vs CD we find that a good server with a good USB cable or Ethernet cable for those that have streaming/dac's makes a very audible improvement in the sound.

We have right now in the shop three world class uber streamers, the Laufer Technik Memory Player, the Innuous Statement and a Baetis Reference and they all sound quite different.

We have also run testes of comparing Innuous, Aurender products and a few others vs the more expensive stuff, and the impact that a good server makes is incontrovertable by listening. 

A Roon Nuclus is not in our opinion a proper level streamer to power a big DCS rig, and it also depends on how the DCS is receiving its signal and are you using any upsamping or transcoding. 

If you want to be blown away by a one piece streaming dac the Lumin X1 is considered a match to the DCS Bartok and many people feel that the Lumin is in reality a class by itself for its price point.

A recent review on the X1 proclaimed it to sound better than most multi box setups at two to three times the price.  The X1 is rather extraordinary sounding and as an added bonus it benefits from being feed by a good server outputing a cleaned up ethernet signal as well.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Lumin and Innuous dealers

@audiotroy thanks for taking the time to reply. I am committed to DCS for a number of reasons but appreciate your endorsement of the x1.

In general:
As an engineer (but admittedly, not a great one) it would seem to me an easier task to move saved bits from a digital source (i.e., music file) to a DAC than to:  (a) ensure a disk and player are dust/error free; (b) read the bits from a disk spinning a couple hundred RPMs, and then (c) pass such info to the DAC.  It would seem to me that the former (all digital) would be, in the long run, inherently advantaged.

I guess what I am really asking is a A/A+ class DAC like the Rossini with digital only finally able to equal/better an older top level CD player like the Puccini?