A Streamer or Dedicated DAC With McIntosh MX110Z???

The best streamers are single function boxes made only to do this. They do not have variable output. The best is probably the Aurender W20SE… although I believe the W30 will be available soon. It is used nearly universally at audio shows for digital source. I can attest to equal Red Book CD quality on streaming the same resolution and better resolution on higher resolution. It equals my analog rig for sound quality… see my systems.

You want a separate DAC at the same or better quality. I can highly recommend the Berkeley Alpha Reference DAC. Altough I have a slight preference for my Audio Research Reference DAC CD9se. But exceptionally hard call. There are other exceptional DACs as well, but they can get pretty pricy.

In general combined Streamer / DACs will not sound as good as separates, all things being equal. So, I recommend separates.

Over the past year I’ve probably owned eight different streamers and they all came with a choice of either setting it up fixed or variable. I remember that being on almost everyone. I started with a blue node and ended up with high fi rose

You are worrying over nothing having a variable analog out in your case would be a good thing your old preamp probably doesnt have remote control of volume if it doesnt then having a unit with that feature would be good

as per dac plus streamer or streamer with dac comes down to do you prefer a simple setup which would be an integrated streamer

selecting a streaming device comes down to level of sound quality and price

as well as how will you operate the unit and does it have acess to the sources you want to acess

another question would be would you want to acess your cds/

our store specializes in streaming we sell nad, naim, atoll, mytek avik ,432evo servers, bricasti , chord and a few others

in the past we have sold cambridge, lumin auraylic,innous and aurender

Dave and Trou

Audio intellect. nj.

Streaming specialists