Best Audiophile desktop for under $2500?

asvjerry

Glad you like that vertical turntable, Mitsubishi LT-V5. Linear Tracking, Belt Drive. It’s very good, the round dial is the heavy counter-weight, it screws forward or back for tracking force. The horizontal versions are Quartz Locked Direct Drive, I helped my friend find and setup a LT-22. Fitting on the top of the bookcase allowed me to have a TT in my office.

I traded a member here my Fisher 800C Tube Receiver for his unfinished project: use parts from his two LT-5V’s to get one that works. All went well!

The Tape Recorder: I bought the Mickey Mouse Dust Cover many years ago, never used it. Now, using the deck vertically for the 1st time, out of the box it came. Teac X2000R

OP

that HP Slimtop I linked was just to see one, not a good choice: it does not have USB-3.0 or USB-C, features I would want. USB 3.0 is like lightning, makes USB 2.0 seem like a turtle.

btw, they can be used horizontally or vertically.

Some have card readers, I didn’t pay enough attention, thus I have a small external USB-3 card reader.

Some versions like mine come with DVD drives, and I have a slim external CD drive to make faster copies of Music CDs for the car or friends. That version has small SS drive and larger spinning (noise) HD, not SS. Mine has 2tb SS drive which I only use for programs. I have slim external 2tb usb-3 drive, fast, silent ALL my data is on it (an identical back-up one in my car). So fast you have no idea you are writing/reading from an external drive.

I don't stream hi rez music, just pc sourced content, usb out to dac,

There must be separate sound cards (no fan noise) that are very good, better than motherboard's usb out, right???

just a quickie find, must be even better than it I suppose.

And, what if you want wireless to self powered speakers????

@jhnnrrs

I play hi-rez music directly from a local SSD as well. The significant change I made was shifting from using a laptop/PC/Mac to the ifi Zen Streamer. One of the primary reasons for this switch was to eliminate the audible fan noise that was present when playing music through the laptop. To address this, I opted to use the fanless MacBook Air, but unfortunately, the sound quality did not meet my expectations. Ultimately, I transitioned to the streamer platform and couldn’t be happier.

My question to you is, setting aside any electric noise and non-fortified usb port that might not be audible to you but could potentially degrade sound quality, were you bothered by the fan noise at all?