Mola Mola Tambaqui Roon vs Separate Streamers

To upgrade the power supply in the Aries, you can replace the power supply circuit board with the Hoer-wege circuit board, or the Sean Jacobs external power supply requires that you remove the power inlet and connect with 2 custom DC cables (the power supply requires 3 different rails, voltages) terminated with plastic Molex connectors.  Sean Jacobs will supply these cables.

But I’ve been using Kubala Sosna in the analog portion of my system for many years; upgrading from Emotion to Elation and now Realization.  Their cables share a common design philosophy and sound.  They are to my ears very neutral regarding frequency response.  But each generation significantly lowers the noise floor allowing much more musical information to be heard.  I started experimenting with their digital and DC cables about 4 years ago and have been similarly pleased with the results.  

Calgarian

The Grimm and the Tambaqui are a special combination if you can make sense of the cost of the Grimm. Something about that AES output from the Grimm that the Mola just loves leaving it to DAC only duties. Metaldektor said it correctly, at this level of playback it's about subtlety that mostly is noticed when it is removed. That is the Grimm, you'll want it back in if forced to take it out. Rest of system needs to be dialed in to justify even the Tambaqui. The Grimm / Mola is all anyone would ever need for redbook...... 

Hello, I am very keen on the Grimm / Mola combo, but for now have opted to upgrade my Auralic Aries G2.1 with the Sean Jacobs Power supply.  As davidyny states, it is a custom 3 rail power supply.  I have ordered custom K-S Realization umbilicals that replaces the IEC port and plug directly into the Auralic.   Maybe David and I should speak as I am having growing pains getting it all hooked up.

I have temporarily taken the Auralic streamer out of the loop and gone back to ethernet into my tambaqui.  Talk about going backwards and noticing things as Metaldektor and Calgarian said!  The Tambaqui without the Aries is still great, but not near the life and visceral experience as with the streamer!  

ken your auralic is running wifi (not wired ethernet) yes?

if you are looking at the grimm you should also consider the 432Evo Master

a reviewer in the netherlands listened to the master with The mola MOLA DAC and was thrilled with the combo

the reviewer was also keen with the multitude of filters and the analog like presentation of the Master:

With the last generation of the 432 EVO Master, Frederic Van den Poel has delivered his best music server to date. Both chassis look excellent and even though the web interface (mainly used for the filter settings and switching between Roon and Logitech) have some resemblance with the well known Vortexbox interface, everything else is so very different that it cannot be compared. This is a totally different machine, which is obvious from the enormous amount of custom features and their sonic impact. Because no other Vortexbox based solution from the recent past comes close to the performance of this high-end machine.

Even though the price is downright hefty, and a small minus is the fact that it only support USB connections towards a DAC, what we have here is a very special music server which within it’s price class, is among the best challengers today. Even though a top class CD transport still sounds substantially different in it’s own way and still is hard to beat on it’s own strong aspects, there is indeed a far-reaching analog sound. This makes the rendering smooth, airy, spacious and naturally realistic and moreover, also has exactly that right outlined and catchy character that is so typical of a good analog source. Nice work Frederic!

Dave and Troy

Audio intellect NJ

US importer 432Evo music servers