Gustard R26

@soix I was given an amazing opportunity today to purchase the Esoteric Grandioso D1. So I did so. Do you think a DDC is still necessary?

@zeusodin Im sorry, I’m not familiar with your DAC so I can’t say.  I’d certainly reach out to Esoteric and ask them what input is best and go from there.  If they say their DAC works best with an i2S input I wouldn’t hesitate to get a good DDC, but at that level I’d be looking at the Denafrips Hermes or Musician Leo given their better clocks.  If i2S is the best connection according to Esoteric, then hell yeah I view a DDC as mandatory. 

I was looking at the Audio-GD DI-20HE DDC. Will look at the Musician Leo as well. Will reach out to Esoteric. Thanks so much.

The majority of R26 users using lan connection are finding nice improvements adding a fiber media converter run off a lps. You can add this all in under $200 very much worth the try. If you don’t like what it does for your dac mover it over to a lan tv set up.

Hi guys, first post here.

@kairosman I have the R26 and recently became one of those guys with a couple of inline switches. I found inserting a modestly priced Netgear GS108E (albeit Alpha Audio recommended) upstream of my already very good LHY SW-8 gave a nice improvement in soundstage focus and tightened up the bass of my R26-based system. I have yet to try FMCs but have found the R26 LAN input / renderer (I use its HQPlayer NAA) very sensitive to and able to resolve all upstream ethernet chain improvements I've made. This includes for e.g. adding Quartz Acoustics grounding boxes on my server, switches and router. I have a couple of Ifi LAN iSilencers (galvanic isolator & USB regenerator) on order to further optimise things after some early very positive feedback from a few folk with already well sorted systems.

I concur that adding a decent clock like the LHY OCK-2 to the R26 lifts it to another level, particularly when used with a high quality clock cable like the 50 ohm Harmonic Technology DC III or better. When the R26 LAN input is selected I understand a connected masterclock will be used by the R26 to clock both its renderer and DAC sections. This may explain in part why I find the sound of R26's HQP renderer superior to that of DDCs I own like the U18 and SU6, even when the U18 is also externally clocked.