Help for a beginner

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

The only thing you may want to consider buying up front is a good audio grade USB cable.  You'll use it later even if you swap out gear in your signal chain.

 

You may also want to try some other streaming services to see how they compare to Tidal.  Trials are usually free for 30 days.  Invest in a few hi-res album downloads while you are at it of your favorite material.  Study and learn how they sound on your gear as it's currently setup.  Listen for how streaming and local playback vary. 

 

Each change you make from this point forward should always make that material sound better than it does now.  You need to know where you are now if you expect to wind up where you want to be.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

Trust me, not a cable guy.  $20 usb cables are very hit or miss on connector quality, and use low grade conductors that aren't durable in my experience.  Belkin isn't bulletproof, and I've had some of their connectors fail prematurely on me.  Fine for a printer that never moves, but that's all I'd ever use them for.  I'd like high quality connectors if i'm going to be experimenting a lot and removing the cable a lot.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

Those Rokit 8's are great monitors.  I've had a pair of V1's since 2005 and love them. 

 

Your current setup sounds very much like how I started out.  If it were me, I'd continue to use the Steinberg for now, it's a decent audio interface with good specs.  I'm still using a M-audio audiophile 192 PCI card in one of my squeezelite nodes and it works great.

 

If you are set on Tidal for lossless, you won't get full benefits of tidal Hi-res though, you would need a DAC capable of decoding MQA.  Try Qobuz for free for 30 days, with Qobuz you don't need MQA capable hardware to get full Hi-res capability.  Your Steinberg is 24/192 and can handle even their highest resolutions with ease.  Without buying new hardware.  You can get portable MQA DACS for below $200 if you stay Tidal.  Ifi makes good stuff in that price range.

 

I'd hold off on buying any amp, you don't need it.  Steinberg has a head amp built in already.  My KRK's are internally biamped with plenty of power, unless yours are different you don't need an amp at all, you already have clean power ready to go.

 

Long story short...If you stay with Tidal, i'd get a MQA DAC.  If you try Qobuz and like it, you may not need new hardware right now.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

Forgot he had the desktop app.  My brain is stuck in free Linux land where in a lot of cases MQA breaks GPL and you can't get the first unfold. 

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

That's plenty, bigger than my budget when I started.

 

Go Schiit Jotunheim with multibit upgrade, $599 shipped.  You will not be disappointed.  Has plenty of power to drive your existing cans no problem.  Also has balanced outputs that will work well with your Rokit 8's.  And if you get balanced headphones later on you are all set.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

33 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

On MQA:

 

1)  MQA is not hi res  - quite the opposite, it's a lossy and proprietary "super" MP3

2)  Because of MQA's eccentric digital filtering scheme, if you want the "full benefits" of Hi Res (rather from Tidal, Qobuz, or your own downloads) you will need a DAC that does not have MQA, or if it does, it is fully defeatable in such a way that it is end user verifiable that the DAC is not applying MQA's filtering scheme to standard PCM.

 

Since MQA is a dead end proprietary encoding, all around it's best to avoid it.

 

 

I ran away from it recently myself once Qobuz became available in US.  I tried an iFi nano iDSD BL,but wound up sending it back, just to see what MQA was all about.  Some like, some don't.  Wasn't for me, heard no real benefits and was paying extra for things I didn't need. 

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

I'm currently shopping for a balanced output DAC too, and it's down to Jotunheim or RME ADI-2 for me.  I've always been a big RME fan because of their Linux support.  If you can wait and save up just a little bit more, or look around used, the ADI-2 might be a good option for you.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

Balanced outs are nice but another option like said is the Pro-ject, it has great specs and people seem to really like them.  Could go that way and maybe get an LPS or start saving for one with what is left over.  The LPS could be used later on even if the Pro-ject gets upgraded.  A combo like that would be great and probably give better overall performance than going all DAC with the budget.

 

RME may be a stretch at this budget.  They'll pop up used but just above the OP's price point.