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Streamer vs Directstream Memory Player

Interesting discovery this weekend, we built a new home close to 8 years ago and within the home is a dedicated listening room/theater. I had the assistance of Bob Hodas and Bob Cardas designing the room, all electrical was done to audiophile standards as was treatment and equipment placement.

I’ve been at this for the better part of 40 years but had never set up a space such as this before.

I open with this preamble as I’d like to try to avoid some of the comments that are not relevant to what this post is about.

Recently, or about the past 18 months, I have felt that my streamer is not sounding as good as I would like it to. I use Tidal and Roon into a Directstream DAC and Bridge II. One of my local dealers has loaned me some state of the art components to help my journey of finding what I believe to be best in class streaming sound.

Now to where I am going with this, I bought a Directstream Memory Player 3 years ago but I never got around to unboxing my CD’s. Well, I bought some CD racking and organized them all on Friday night and Saturday AM. I warmed up my system for 2 hours Saturday afternoon and all I can tell you is that in every case, over 20 CD’s listened to, the Memory Player blew away anything that was streamed, wasn’t even a close fight. Still not as good as my analog setup but better than any streamer used in my home including separate DAC’s. 

I can assure you that there is no puffery in my findings, simply the best digital I have ever heard. My system has a retail value of close to $200k USD and one of the streamers that was loaned to me was close to $50k CDN (I live in Vancouver).

I would encourage any of you to hear these two matched components together, it was one of those positive startling situations I have experienced in our hobby.

Good listening all.
 

 

 

gnaudio
audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,347 posts
 

Keep in mind the DSD DAC is praised for its qualities as a DAC but its network bridge is known to be subpar. A high quality dedicated streamer will always beat any DAC’s inbuilt network renderer. If you want to level the playing field (streaming vs cd) you need a good streamer. If you want to continue using Roon one streamer you can try is PS Audio’s own airlens. 

gnaudio OP
56 posts
 

@audphile1 thank you again. I have demo’d in my home top line Aurender, Chord, Bricasti, Mytek, Innuos etc and the Memory Player and DAC beat them all in what I regard as important in sound quality. Was pretty cool for a change, especially when I had the components in my rack.

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,347 posts
 

Cool. Then I guess your main source will be CD transport and Roon can be used for new music discovery. 

gnaudio OP
56 posts
 

@audphile1 only if I can't find a streamer to beat the SQ I have now. I wonder how much the I2S connection contributes to the sound??

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,347 posts
 

That’s why I was recommending you try AirlLens. You can use i2s.
There’s an optimal connection with each streamer. For example my Aurender N200 has two digital outputs - SPDIF and USB. It’s by far the best via USB due to optimized USB out and the fact that it passes the responsibility of clocking the signal to the DAC. I’ve used it with PS Audio’s own DSD MkI, Chord Hugo TT2 and Bricasti M3. USB is the way to go in this case. With a higher model Aurender N20 that features OCXO clock your optimal interface to your DAC would be AES/EBU which would allow the N20 to clock the signal before it sends it down to the DAC.
So when comparing streamers you should take this into consideration.
The AirLens via i2s according to PS Audio’s provides low jitter signal to the DAC but at the same time Ted was stating in the PS Forums that all inputs on the DAC sound equally good. With AirLens you’re confined to Roon or Mconnect. With other streamers you take advantage of their proprietary signal processing when you use their native app.

So what’s your next step?

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