Do you have a perfect digital marriage?


Please share with others if you have a perfect digital marriage. 

Do you have a streamer (brand and Model) that you have paired with a DAC (brand and model) that has created a blissful marriage creating the best harmony you have heard?

What are the aspects of the sound you really like?

For example  HiFi Rose RX RS130 streamer fed by fiber optic ethernet connected I2S to Denafrips Pontus II, 12th Anniversary DAC.

Organic, clean, musical, great separation of instruments, dynamic

How's you marriage going?

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I had my MM Tambaqui for a bit before it was courted by the beautiful and capable Grimm MU1.  A perfect match.  But many friends upstream contribute to the marriage; A JCAT M12 Switch powered by a Sean Jacobs PS, A GTT DeJitterit Switch and Clean Modem are next, with quality ethernet cabling and a Muon Pro Ethernet Filter were all on the honeymoon.

I have a Emotiva TA1 DAC/amp driven from my desktop via Toslink to the Dac and that is driving a pair of Ohm 2000 Walsh omnis along with a pair of PC2000 SVS subs. Very happy with the overall sound, though the Ohm's need a bit more power than the lightweight amp in the dac provides. That's the next upgrade...planning on trying a Hypex class D amp with 500 wpc. I have reason to believe it will be a nice upgrade.


Win11 PC using Audirvana Studio reading Flac files and sent via USB to
 Pontus 2-12th-1 DAC,, XLR out to Schitt Freya S ( non tube )  Pre-Amp has
Two RCA outs, one to  Decware Torii Jr V2 and the other to older Velodyne Sub,
Torii Jr V2 out to fully updated  1987  La Scala/s  via braided cables

 

Great sound stage - Dac and Pre-Amp made significant differences. Audirvana Studio has many software adjustments which can help tune your resulting sound. I believe the Decware amp likes gain and therefore does better with the pre-amp. I believe in system synergy , your components need to match up in more ways than just connecting cables. The mini pc does not give out any identifiable noise in my system and remember all pro streamers are PC's or  or single board computers  ( think Raspberry Pi ) underneath the metal box.

Antipodes K50 G4 --> Jorma AES/EBU --> EMM DV2 DAC. The sound is the best I've had in my system. 

The network is optimized as well; Paul Pang Quad Switch --> Reiki SuperSwitch Master Pro. 

The factors affecting the sound of my digital front end probably go beyond just the "digital marriage" between my streamer and DAC but, that said, immediately upon adding the Sonore Signature Rendu SE Deluxe (optical) streamer the sound of my system became more natural and enjoyable to listen to, IMO.  The effects are similar regardless of the DAC I am using, although different DACs also affect the sound in different ways.  Some of the noticeable gains I perceived from the Sonore streamer were improvements in dimensionality (more 3-dimensional, think stereo vs. a transistor radio), smoothness/fluidity, "meat on the bone" (i.e., density and impact), and realness (i.e., greater perception of inflections of vocals and nuance of instruments). 

As I have mentioned in other threads here, while I perceived improvements from the Sonore streamer, I have discerned no reliably perceptible differences in the servers I have used to store and access digital music files and to operate Roon core (Antipodes, Mojo Audio, and SGC sonicTransporter currently).

My digital front end consists of:

  • SGC sonicTransporter i9 (Gen 4) - connected to my home network in a room that is separate from my main system room
  • Sonore Signature Rendu SE Deluxe (optical)
  • Singxer SU-6 DDC - connected by USB to the streamer and then used to allow other connection types to multiple DACs
  • Mojo Audio Mystique X SE NCZ DAC - connected by either S/PDIF or AES/EBU through the DDC, or directly by USB from the streamer (which may sound a little bit better: btw, Mojo uses the  JL Sounds USB input module)
  • Additional:
    • Cable internet (typically measured at about 400 Mbps)
    • Digital signal equipment (i.e., modem, router, Bonn switch, Sonore optical converter, and i9 server) located in a separate room and powered by a dedicated 20A power line
    • All peripheral equipment listed above powered by LPSs
    • Fiber optic isolation (TP-Link) between router and sever/switch
    • Fiber optic (45-feet) from converter to streamer
    • Network Acoustics muon USB cable from streamer to either DDC or directly into the DAC (current set-up without DDC)
    • Oyaide DB-510 from DDC to DAC (when using the DDC and not a direct streamer-DAC USB connection)