Differences in sound: DAC vs. DAC + Pre-amplifier

[beerandmusic]

On 6/7/2020 at 7:39 AM, barrows said:

I must admit I am not aware of a Lumin Renderer available here in the US in 2012.  Can you educate me with some of Lumins' history?

i have been using sony blu-ray players to stream dsd since 2013 and i think the Teac NT503 network dac came out in 2014?

[beerandmusic]

10 hours ago, Summit said:

 

Can you show me evidence (measurements or listing evaluations) to support that Ethernet Renderer is better than SOTA server like Innuos Zenith se, Innuos Statement or Extreme?

 

Technical evidence I don’t know, but one principle I consider to be of great importance is that it’s better to attempt to NOT let the noise “come in” than to clean it up later down streams.

I asked Barrows the same question comparing to the Teac Nt503 about 4 years ago and he couldn't answer and the teac was only about $1k if i remember.   I am not convinced it would sound any better than just streaming to a marantz nd8006....put your money in speakers.

[beerandmusic]

15 minutes ago, matthias said:

 

The interplay between server and DAC and server, endpoint and DAC is very complex. 

Surely it can not be understood with something like "noise" only.

Reading the Extreme thread on WBF helped me a lot to gain a better understanding.

 

Matt

 

before the dac all that exists is digital music and noise....and the digital music is received perfectly, so nothing left to compensate for besides noise.