Difficult situation...raspberry pi3 vs auralic aries g1

[jventer]

@Flyman

I think you need to look at 2 things:

1. The Streamer/Renderer 
2. The Dac

The Raspberry and the Auralic Aries/G1 etc. are streamers/renderers. Your Hegel is an amp with a dac as well as a streamer.

 

I don't understand why you are not using the Streaming capabilities of your Hegel, but putting that aside you are using a RPi as a streamer.

 

Regarding your questions re streamers. I had an Allo Digione which was really good for the price. The microRendu however was better and then an Auralic Aries with special power supply was even better. From what I read in reviews I doubt that a RPi with whatever improvements can outperform the G1.

 

By adding a hat etc to the RPi you are changing the connection to your dac - it may make a small difference, but wont outperform a significant more expensive or better product. My recommendation would be to see what you can do to listen to the streaming capability of your Hegel before throwing more money at it. If you do need to add something look at microRendu/ultraRendu the SOtM and Auralic.

 

The second thing is the dac - again you can add that to the RPi, but will it be better than the dac in the Hegel? I unfortunately dont know.

 

All the best.