Roon Nucleus with a nice LPS?
Discerning a difference between streamers is difficult...only me or common for all?
I have struggled to appreciate the upgrade to the streamer in my system. A couple years ago I had an Audio Research DAC 8 being fed by a Bluesound Node 2i. I picked up an Aurender N10 and did not appreciate anything so sold the N10. I tried a couple all-in-one units. First was the Aurender A20 and I was happy but curious about dCS. I got a Bartok 2.0 and felt the music was more natural sounding from the Bartok and sold the A20. I have always wanted the Audio Research DAC 9 to match all my other AR gear so got one that showed up on eBay a couple weeks ago. Since I couldn’t use the Bartok to stream I ordered a new Bluesound Node Nano so I could utilize the DAC 9 immediately. The pair sounded wonderful but I did not compare it to the Bartok. I ended up getting a quick buyer and it was already gone. The following week I purchase an Aurender W20. I was prepared to have my mind blown....but no. Some albums I could not tell any difference in the sound and others I think the W20 sounded slightly better but again...nothing huge. For the money and the space the W20 took on my shelf, I sold it. Over the years I always appreciate upgrades for all other components. This makes me feel like I am losing my mind. Have any others experienced this regarding streamers? I want to try more. Auralic and Lumin are on my list.
Thanks,
Dana
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If you're going to stick with the BlueSound Node, get yourself a Teddy Pardo power supply....you will notice an immediate and substantial improvement in the overall performance of of your Node....it elevates everything head and shoulders above the BlueSound without the Teddy Pardo power supply. You will be very pleased. The Teddy Pardo Power Supply is around $400. Bluesound Node/Node-X/Node2i Upgrade Kit - Teddy Pardo Audio
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My explorations over the years have led me to understand that differences between components can be minor but significant improvements could be had by spending attention (and money!) on modem, router, their power supplies, acoustic isolation, the quality of the AC going into the streamer and of course, connecting cables. I use a 12V deep cycle battery to power my modem and router and another, via a pure sine wave inverter, to power my streamer/DAC. All connecting cables have RF filters installed. My audio experience from Qobuz is delightfully musical: tirelessly detailed, spacious and very immediate, often sounding more ’live’ than Live... |
The server just has to get the correct series of zeros and ones fed into the DAC with timing that's accurate enough to keep jitter induced noise and distortion to a minimum, assuming it's a synchronous connection. If it's asynchronous then it just needs to get the ones and zeros into the DACs buffer in a reasonably timely manner. A lot of server software can do that, with jitter noise well under 100dB below the signal. There may be something going on that's causing it to not deliver the correct stream of ones and zeros at least some of the time, or perhaps to be accidentally sending analog signal along with the stream of ones and zeros that somehow ends up causing noise in the analog output stage of the DAC, or causes the DAC to otherwise not function correctly. So I know there are sonic differences sometimes. I've experienced it. What I'm not getting a good explanation for is how the server software can possibly make the sound coming out of the DAC sound different if the system is actually working to spec., and not having a problem that could be readily identified with a little analysis. At least the effect could be measured on the DAC output even if the root cause might be hard to track down. It's much harder to bring two different cartridge designs in to uniformity of output from the same groove. It's an electro-mechanical device, and making tiny mechanical things with various connected parts vibrate identically enough to be undistinguishable in sound output is more trying. I have seen some double blind tests that showed there are some cartridge designs that people struggled to tell apart, while others were successfully distinguished. |
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