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Getting with the 21st century, need DAC for streaming

Hi, I guess I’ve been suspiciously dragging my feet on the whole streaming and DAC revolution, but now I am interested as it has been difficult living abroad to continue growing my CD collection lately. I’ve been listening to a Bryston B60 for 22 years, some very nice E16 Audio monitors and "recently" an ERC 2 CD player when my Rega pooped out and I saw the review on Stereophile. I’ve been researching the DAC subject and I’m curious if I might be able to expand my library by simply buying one of the Audioquest DAC and subscribing to Tidal (or others) and use my iPad to stream music through the Bryston, or if it might be better to get a more full featured DAC and use the ERC 2 as a transport and go through the external DAC, although honestly the ERC 2 sounds pretty fantastic as it is. But alas this isn’t all about the CD player, I’m really just curious about a decent intermediate level DAC set up to get me started in this nuance of hifi. I realize there are plenty of sources to research that, but I wanted your opinion on the CD DAC (AD1955) upgrade as well. I’m totally open to getting second hand as well. 
wetfeet48
danager's avatar
danager
965 posts
 

@mholloway 

I believe that most are based on one of the linux OS with just a custom app to provide the user interface.

Volumio (formerly RaspyFi) is an open source Debian-based Linux operating system

Moodle is primarily developed in Linux using Apache, PostgreSQL / MySQL / MariaDB and PHP (sometimes known as the LAMP platform).

 

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arafiq's avatar
arafiq
1,695 posts
 

@chorus 

Denafrips Pontus is a good starter. $1800. If you hate it they resell in seconds. 

+1 on Denafrips Pontus. And he is not kidding when he says they resell in seconds. I was fortunate to buy a gently used Terminator 2 recently. What a phenomenal DAC! My friend had been on the look out for a used Pontus 2 and like chorus mentioned, they show up on used marketplaces and are snapped up in minutes if not seconds. He finally gave up and ordered a new one. These DACs are the real deal -- above average sound, build quality, and customer service. There's a reason you can recoup more than 80% of your investment when selling a Denafrips DAC.

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