dac and streamer or seperates


Want to spend about 5k

System right now is a Krell S-300  love it!

B&W 804's  love them too

Well treated medium sized room.

but I'm using the built in streamer and dac.  

I would like to take my streaming to the next level.

At 5k would you go separate DAC and Separate Streamer or all in one?

128x128asmithkash

Showing 3 responses by audphile1

@asmithkash I’ll give you a bit of a different answer.
If you love the sound of analog, which is natural “unprocessed” sound, you can do equally well with separates or a one box solution.
For separates, streamers to look into are Lumin - great sound, crappy UI but Roon ready so you can compensate for the garbage UI by using Roon. Second option would be the Aurender which has a very nice UI but isn’t Roon ready.

For a one box solution, assuming we’re talking used, in a $5,000 price range you have a Bricasti M3 with a built in Network renderer (below $4,000) and a Bricasti M1SE with the latest MDI and a built in Network renderer. Both are Roon ready and you can use the Mconnect app to stream Qobuz and Tidal. I prefer Roon.
In my system the Bricasti M3 w/Network renderer streaming using Roon, Qobuz and Tidal, beat out the Lumin U1 Mini connected to the same Bricasti M3 via a very high quality Audience USB cable and a number of AES/EBU cables I tried.
It also beat out my vinyl front end (MoFi UltraDeck, Hana ML cartridge, Sutherland 20/20 LPS phono amp) and a Pro-Ject DS2T CD transport.

In case of separates, you’ll be getting a lesser quality DAC as part of your $5,000 budget will be allocated to buy the streamer. Just something to think about.

@russbutton most of the seasoned audiophiles here have experimented with different streamers, DACs and network components. FTPing files and knowing how to do checksum in Linux does nothing for your credibility when it comes to audio.
T
here is plenty of material to read to learn how streaming works on these forums and internet in general. YouTube has few good channels where this subject is discussed and explained at length. Spend some time educating yourself.

One other thing, the OP had posted a specific question. Derailing the discussion is bad form. Stay on topic.