thegm
Responses from thegm
| To preamp or not to preamp. That is the question. While I agree with the previous post about the types of preamps that exist, I don't think the $15K price point for No. 4 is necessary. I have built tube preamps and bought tube preamps and I have rarely spent more than $6K. Particularly, if you s... | |
| Tube preamp options As is often the case, this has drifted away from the original question. TUBE PREAMPLIFIERS, I believe was the query. While it is nice to see everyone here can afford $20K SS preamps, I have gone a different way. I'm using a Primaluna Dialogue Pr... | |
| Best Dedicated Streamer So, I spent about 3 years running down a solution for my setup. I have two main requirements (besides superb audio quality of course): - I2S digital output from the dedicated Streamer to my DAC - Roon Ready certification I also require PCM 384... | |
| Streamer creates a Wow experience Your journey to separate Streamer mirrors my own. I was an early user of the ZEN Stream, and was impressed by this little unit. I have a DAC that offers I2S and I really wanted that, so I bought the Matrix X-SPDIF 2 USB Interface with I2S. I used... | |
| Are There Roon Ready I2S Streamers? I spent several years on my search for a top quality separate streamer to pair up with my DACs. As I went through this journey I ended up with a PSaudio Directstream DAC. This was my first DAC with I2S input. I tried various combinations of stream... | |
| For those that have separate Streamers & DACS After trying many combination streamer/DACs and spending thousands of dollars I have been a very happy Musica Pristina A Capella III owner for a year now. This streamer has been Roon Ready for many years and in fact was designed as a Roon endpoint... | |
| DAC recommendation in 5 to 10K range @Bigby Completely agree! I was auditioning multiple new DACs to replace my PSAudio Directstream when I decided to go with both the Edcor transformer upgrade and the JKRichards Analog Board replacement. Unbelievable! The DSD sound quality with Su... | |
| HDMI cable for I2S Well, ‘no’ may not be the best answer to the question from soix. I2S most definitely will use any standard HDMI cable to transport the clock and data signals between two compatible I2S interfaces. I use I2S all the time with standard HDMI cables.... | |
| No frills speaker manufacturers I must second the GR Research suggestion. I have a pair of XLS Encore from GR that are my cheapest speaker set (out of 3 total) and the best sounding of all. I am NOT a woodworker, so I had them pre-built for me with the upgraded Xover components... | |
| Streamer Entirely satisfying. Now understand I went through multiple streamers prior to the A Capella III, including the Zen Stream. One of my key requirements is to have I2S output to go into my Directstream DAC. This is still unusual to find in a Strea... | |
| Which Streamer is a Major Upgrade over PS Audio Bridge II in a DSD DAC Just went thru a bit of a journey replacing my Bridge II. LOVE my DSD DAC BTW, it’s going nowhere. First is budget. The cheapest solution I tried was an iFI ZEN Stream paired with a Matrix Audio X-SPDIF 2. This got me I2S into my DSD. AMAZING ... | |
| Streamer Just to update. I have purchased the A Capella III from Musica Pristina. It will be here this week. I will update my experiences after some burn-in and listening. | |
| Can a Bluesound Node 2i power supply really be upgraded? Agree about PD Creative, in Poland. https://pd-cf.com/produkt/bluesound-node-2-2i-upgrade-low-noise-psu-interface/ .Pawel has been doing this for quite a while now. He has kits for both the original Node 2i and the new Node 'Gen 3'. I have... | |
| If you’ve heard an iFi Zen stream, anything better under $1k? I owned the original Node 2i, using it ONLY as a streamer into my PSAudio DSD DAC. I upgraded to the new Node Gen 3, modded with an external LPS. New Node was incrementally cleaner, clearer than original. I then moved to the iFi Zen Stream with an... | |
| Streamer Yep, understand that fully. I am already using a Matrix Audio X-SPDIF 2. And my DAC is the PSAudio DSD, so I can validate whether a particular vendor supports that particular LVDS pinout. Luckily, the DSD DAC is a 'sort of' standard. |