To Stream or not to Stream

For me, at a certain point, I realized that I needed to focus on what I really wanted. First and foremost, it was a streamer and high-quality DAC in one box. The rest fell by the wayside.

@izjjzi 

If you don’t mind me asking. What did you not like about the sim audio integrated as I am considering one. Thanks 

@ronboco I don't think I ever said I didn't like it? I love and HIGHLY recommend it. It is the best integrated amp I've heard to-date. Period. It's just that at its price point I wanted more in terms of features and the McIntosh integrated had it all. What I've learned after the fact is that is that I may not end up using much of the McIntosh. I'm not going to invest in vinyl, headphones, etc. I may also end up with a discrete DAC. So my basic thinking at the time was $14k for the MOON and then have to shop for a DAC, or spend the $11k I did for an "all in one", with a dac, display, meters, etc. I can't say I regret my choice and I have an MA-12000 on the way, but I cannot argue that I may have been better off having separate components for everything. I hope you get to hear the MOON, and I'm talking about the 700i. I did demo the 600 at home and it is NOT close to the 700. It is entirely different and I didn't like it, especially after hearing the 700i. Please let me know if you get it? I would love to hear about it.

IN reply to the requests above, her is (part of) what I’ve learned.______________________________________________

Guys - I’m not sure where the best place to put this all is - since i expect I’ll think of many things over time, and since i cant write everything in one sitting. LMK if there is a place for a blog-type entry.

Start with "what’s in my system?"


The rest of the system:
_____________________In the large this list may not be all that meaningful -- because it almost cannot be familiar as a reference. I design stuff commercially so much of what i have are in fact prototypes. Some are prototypes of old products my companies made; others are prototypes of designs I performed contractually for others, and never appeared exactly in the form i use them. Most today are new designs I’m working on and kinda like, so i keep.

In my reference/main system

• -- speakers are Vienna acoustics Mahlers
• -- amp (either one or two monoblocks ’depending") is a Sonogy Concept 60 prototype from the late 90’s. Still as good as anything i know.-- preamp is a prototype where I’m using computer controlled logic to provide remote control with fidelity that exceeds the best high end volume, balance and selector hardware. Its addictive.
• -- alternate preamps when the prototype is down for experimentation or loaned out ) are either a Sonogy Concerto or a Rappaport PRE-3 of which only ~ 3 were made and mine may be the only one that works properly - it never did as built - i finally tore it down, reverse engineered some issues, and rebuilt. Its pretty damn good and used actual stepped attenuators with 1/2% mil-spec resistors for volume and balance. A user-factor horror show but pretty revealing sound.
• -- cables are high quality but nothing brand name or particularly fancy. I do have fuses since systems often have hand made, experimenter equipment in them and the thought of blowing up $20k worth of speakers that don’t always have replacement parts is not attractive. Anyone who tells you home depot fuses ruin the sound is hearing the glass of wine. The fuse holder and its contacts, OTOH, matters.

The digital chain;
_______________OK, now to the stuff at hand - the digital playback chain. I have about 300 CDs ripped, FLAC. I also have a Tidal subscription and may add qobuz.

Library/streamer: Roon. I like Roon a lot. I also hate Roon a lot. Its software; there are issues and always feature development disagreements - but it does more better than anything else i know and will get better over the ages, rather than just old. I like Roon for many reasons:-- myriad remotes - any laptop, tablet or phone works-- multi-room, with synched or independent streams-- excellent UI with all those liner notes etc of years gone by-- MQA first unfold-- upsampling-- DSP for many possible uses including not-bad digital volume control (with only minimal loss of resolution)-- lots more. read up

I run Roon on a dedicated 4-core intel I5 NUC headless server.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Unit_of_Computing

I run what is called ROCK Roon Optimized Core Kit, the free linux appliance base code that makes Roon an appliance on the server, and self-updating and managing. Mostly. Roon + ROCK + NUC = Nucleus. A NUC like mine with one SSD for Roon and another for music (1TB) can be had for $700-800. Roon is like $750/life or $129/year or something. I’ve had it for years. IMPORTANT: early on i had good luck running Roon on a 10 year old MAcbook pro. But i was not doing fancy things, liek DSP on 4 streams, at that time.


I do not have a particularly fancy power supply for my NUC, but i do have an in-line noise filter on it that i built. But careful- this is only because i don’t hook stuff directly to my Roon/ROCK/NUC. I run ethernet (cabled, not wifi, wifi is compromised for music, mostly by jitter radiated noise, to a "bridge" for each room. A bridge connects tow different networking types/protocols, in this case Ethernet and USB. That provides electrical and ground isolation so the power supply doesn’t really matter much.


My bridges are all Raspberry Pis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_PiA Pi is an open source computer on a board that you can buy for about $75-100. But its DIY - you need power, a case, blah blah. For mine i built a very quiet linear power supply that costs more in parts than the computer/bridge itself. But i do that. You can also have regular cheap Pis and cheap-y wall warts in places you care less about. It still sounds damn good, just less good. I run DietPi Linux OS with Roon Bridge and Airplay too. I can hook several DACs to it via USB, and i do. Int he big system sometimes there are 3, some of them experiments.


All of my DACs also have, right at the USB input:

1. ground and power supply isolation. This means you need to power the DAC side and the USB plug side independently. The USB plug side is powered from the computer bridge itself like any other USB. This cuts down noise.
2. Re-clocking immediately after USB decoding to reduce jitter.
   
   
   SIDE NOTE: You can read an old blog at www.sonogyresearch.com on jitter but suffice it to say that a digital signal to a DAC is not 100% digital. This is why the bits is bits argument is flawed. Music is reproduced from the SPDIF signal to essentially PAM and then reconstructed to an analog signal. You can think of this as a cartesian coordinate system (remember them? X & Y axes?) in which the digital code is the Y-value and the timing is the X-value. Jitter changes timing. Change timing and the waveform changes. Simple as that. We can argue all day about whether its significant but i hear it all the time. Or its the wine talking. But i don;t believe so since I perform repeated tests and my work depends on not lying to myself. I also recruit others to call BS on me when needed.
   
   
   
3. Really excellent power supplies, always independent for the digital and analog stages. I don’t mean tow different 75 cent regulators: i mean independent back to the wall. I’m not alone, most really good DACs do this somehow.
   

None of my DACs are state of the art. I have not spent $15k on one, and the ones i have partially designed and built reflect that I am still learning. Yet even whit these, i can get some remarkable, almost analog-sound, but with much better noise and dynamics. I have typed so many times its a broken record (remember records? I also have three cool turntables, but i digress) that the key to any good digital music is the original recording and mastering. Most of the best i have heard are.......... really old analog recordings lovingly converted to RED BOOK CD. 16/44. Nothing special. Old verve. Old blue note. Old Mercury Living Presence (Matt Fine may come over and listen now that Covid is under control around here....).

https://www.stereophile.com/content/fine-art-mercury-living-presence-recordings

Sources: I have a wall of albums and a great Turntable ( 3 actually). I have 100s of CDs. I rarely listen to either - i listen to Tidal. There is usually a remastered version of whatever that sounds better than the one i have. And an MQA version (which i typically find to be just a bit better). But the mastering makes a vastly bigger difference. Listen to Ella and Louis on verve. Or Song for My Father on Blue Note. Or the needle and the damage done on Reprise. Still think CD sucks? Then you have system issues IMO.

Do i wish that studios had learned how to filter and record digitally earlier? Of course. but what we have is much better than it is given credit for, And of course, the mid-80s awful recordings still sound awful - worse with all their shrillness revealed in its glory. But that’s not CD’s fault. Note I ma playing whit what i amusingly call a "de-nastifyier" filter. we shall see if it sees the commercial light of day in some product.

I hope this helps. My fingers are tired.

G

@itsjustme (G) Thank you for taking the time to respond in such detail. Absolutely helps to understand. : )  I hope your fingers have recovered!

I am on vacation and will be reading more on this topic, but thanks to everyone's responses and a special thanks to a private helping hand, I am in a really good place mentally to take the next steps over the coming weeks. 

Joining this forum was a good move and something I think can be included as a component in many of our systems - the audio loving community - you.

Best,
J