MSB Discrete DAC - Roon endpoint Renderer vs Lumin Streamer

Unless you’re pursuing used MSB, your dealer should be able to demo Discrete DAC with or without Roon endpoint. Personally, I would pair MSB DAC with external streamer. I highly recommend Innuos and depending on your timeline, Aurender N200 or N20 would make a formidable pairing as they are working on Roon integration. Aurender also offers exclusive integration of MSB’s Master clock via its Conductor app. 

@lalitk 

Thank you!  that master clock integration sounds good!

I used the Innuos Zen mkiii streamer with the Discrete with excellent results.  

@cosmic_charlie 

Will the Innuos Zen mkiii rip SACDs onto a drive?  

Looking at the inside of it online....looks like a small PC with an outboard power supply and a CD drive.....is this really that much better than an m2 mac mini with a custom power supply?

@chauncey 

 No, the Zen streamers can only rip regular CD’s.  My source is 100% streaming, so this was not an issue for me.

I can’t comment on what’s under the hood of the Mk3 vs. the m2 Mac mini, and have not heard the Mac mini.  You have a good question and I can only answer generally that the Mk3 is built, engineered, and optimized for one purpose only:  to stream music.  My experience is that in most cases, high end audio gear produces better results than electronics manufactured to serve many functions and uses.  I suspect you would hear the difference, but again, that’s only an opinion.

I assume they all have some sort of computer in them.  It's not like these small companies can afford to build custom chips.  Maybe custom FPGAs like the company Analogue which makes custom video game consoles.  

I do like the ones which have a clock BNC connection out or the i2s HDMI.  I assume getting the clocks synced would help out. 

@cosmic_charlie 

Do any of these players/streamers import/rip SACDs?

when i use my msb analog dac i use the built in streamer card (i am a roon user)... it works flawlessly and sounds wonderful

i compared against a couple nice outboard streamers feeding the msb through its quadrate usb card, did not hear any difference