New audiophile looking for good starter system advice

[davide256]

I've been into audio (and a wanna be audiophile) since around 10. I am also a home theater buff and at 46 I am finally fulfilling a long time dream. I am building a dedicated theater room and would also like it to have good two channel capabilities for music only listening.

 

To that end I have purchased a pair of GoldenEar Triton Three+ speakers with the SuperCenter XL as my center channel. They may not be world beaters but sound awesome to my ear. Without a doubt the finest speakers I have ever owned. The rest of My system is a Marantz 7702mkII prepro with a Emotiva UMA7 amp.

 

In a couple weeks the system will move to the new room and I would like to have a good system feeding music to it. I am looking to put together a basic but fairly high quality system to do this. My music is stored on a NAS and I am thinking about a NUC with a DAC going to the Marantz. I want to run Roon (already have a 1 year subscription) and would like to have it's GUI displayed on my projector at times while listening.

 

Looking for some advice on some good ways to achieve this without getting too crazy. Overall budget is about $1000.

Sounds like you need a Renderer and a DAC

 

Sonore Micro Rendu $690 + Chord Mojo ($498 at Moon Audio) should be your best audiophile bang for the buck near the desired price point

[davide256]

You only mention SPDIF from the NUC to the Marantz but not HDMI. Why? Isn't that also a digital pathway to the Marantz and (theoretically) wouldn't it sound every bit the same as SPDIF to the Marantz? While SPDIF on a computer is much harder to find, pretty much every computer has HDMI nowadays. Is there something inferior about HDMI?

 

Like I said, I'm new to this and still don;t understand quite a bit so that's why I am asking.

Asynch USB source to DAC is the dominant tech today for audiophiles. HDMI is a surround sound play, with not a lot of audiophile gear in market, mostly mid-fi gear