Mola Mola Tambaqui Roon vs Separate Streamers

ken your auralic is running wifi (not wired ethernet) yes?

@fastfreight 

i recall auralic was one of the few streamer specialists that favored wifi 

https://support.auralic.com/hc/en-us/articles/205863078-What-is-the-preferred-network-connection-

https://us.auralic.com/pages/wifi-or-ethernet

i tried an auralic streamer fairly early in my streaming journey, iirc, they prefer wifi for noise reduction purposes, but of course this assumes that the signal is strong and stable (which for many it is decidedly NOT)... back then i had not run the hardwire lan into the listening room and the auralic worked very well for me over my wifi

the optical rendu is legit (excellent at doing what they say it does)... as is the swenson uptone ether-regen (and the network acoustics passive stuff)... allows users to achieve a superb level of cleanliness and clarity in the digital feed into a streamer or dac for a (fairly) modest cost ... etherregen has an added benefit of allowing an outboard 10mhz clock to further solidify the signal

some upper tier integrated streamer/dac makers build in some of these capabilities into their units these days, making the abovementioned pieces potentially duplicative... but i have felt on the integrated units it is somewhat hard to tell what is doing what as you can only hear the end result processed through the combination of built in ’stages’

yet another reminder that one person's 'aggressive top end' is another person's 'it's just right' 

which is why one must at some point stop reading others' comments and make the effort to try a target component in ones' own system at length

room, setup, ancillaries, not to mention how each person hears the music determines the outcome and happiness