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Streamer vs Directstream Memory Player

Interesting discovery this weekend, we built a new home close to 8 years ago and within the home is a dedicated listening room/theater. I had the assistance of Bob Hodas and Bob Cardas designing the room, all electrical was done to audiophile standards as was treatment and equipment placement.

I’ve been at this for the better part of 40 years but had never set up a space such as this before.

I open with this preamble as I’d like to try to avoid some of the comments that are not relevant to what this post is about.

Recently, or about the past 18 months, I have felt that my streamer is not sounding as good as I would like it to. I use Tidal and Roon into a Directstream DAC and Bridge II. One of my local dealers has loaned me some state of the art components to help my journey of finding what I believe to be best in class streaming sound.

Now to where I am going with this, I bought a Directstream Memory Player 3 years ago but I never got around to unboxing my CD’s. Well, I bought some CD racking and organized them all on Friday night and Saturday AM. I warmed up my system for 2 hours Saturday afternoon and all I can tell you is that in every case, over 20 CD’s listened to, the Memory Player blew away anything that was streamed, wasn’t even a close fight. Still not as good as my analog setup but better than any streamer used in my home including separate DAC’s. 

I can assure you that there is no puffery in my findings, simply the best digital I have ever heard. My system has a retail value of close to $200k USD and one of the streamers that was loaned to me was close to $50k CDN (I live in Vancouver).

I would encourage any of you to hear these two matched components together, it was one of those positive startling situations I have experienced in our hobby.

Good listening all.
 

 

 

gnaudio
sns
3,455 posts
 

Very early days into streaming, I had the choice between cd's with Memory transport, cd rips and streams, cd rips preferred over Memory transport and streams. Cd rips remained my favored digital format for some time. Streaming setup improved over the years to the point where I cannot distinguish a difference between streams and rips.

 

Delving more into Memory player, that wasn't close to best sound quality I experienced playing cd's, that would have been my Mark Levinson No.37 transport.  The Phillips CD Pro mechanism in that far superior to the generic mechanism in Memory player or transport.

 

Audiophiles are increasingly choosing streaming over playing cd's, audiophiles concern themselves with sound quality first.

ghdprentice
7,323 posts
 

Thank you for sharing your story. But I am somewhat puzzled that you are not sharing photos of your system and components. I assume since you state that you are one that does not believe that digital cannot sound as good as analog you proffer this account as proof of this thesis.   We  really cannot  learn anything from this post without understanding your system.  It would be really helpful if you would disclosing your system... as many of us have. That is why there is the Virtual Systems section.

gnaudio OP
57 posts
 

@ghdprentice thank you but my post is not a thesis that needs validation or proving out. It was simply what I experienced. My system is now in my virtual system.

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,440 posts
 

Awesome system @gnaudio 

enjoy!

audiotroy's avatar
audiotroy
3,853 posts
 

op the quality of the streamer matters tremendously, we have found that a really good server can outperform a cd transport, 

 

to date we have tested Auraylic , Aurender, Baetis, Innous, Sotm and now he 432evo servers, 

 

the 432evo servers sound more analog like then any of the others 

in a direct shootout vs a 27k Innous statement next gen we found the aeon to sound literally as good as the three times more expensive Innous 

we are also a Bricasti dealer and the network card doesn't sound as good either

the Bricasti M3 aeon combo is extraordinarily good and the server elevates the M3 to a level closer to a 20 dac then a 5k one

 

Dave and Troy

audio Intellect N

432evo Bricasti dealers

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