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I found one very cool thing about running my main system off of a $35 Pi - It is easily replaceable! I accidentally fed it 9V. Don't feed your Pi 9V. It makes one distinct pop noise and then starts to smell really funny. Oh crap, I blew up the centerpiece of my stereo! Another $35 and back in business. Very good article and a nice counter to the Extreme Week server. Going for maximum bang for the buck can be very satisfying, and get you a significant chunk of the big-dollar sound for relative peanuts.

Hi Everyone, I have been playing with a Rotel Michi preamp. Sounds good, built like a tank. When I use Roon to upsample to DSD, Roon has different HF cutoff filters: Conservative: 24KHz LPF Recommended: 30KHz LPF Permissive: 50KHz LPF Unfiltered: Use with caution The differences between them are clearly audible. I don't believe these 56 year old amateur drummer's ears are hearing actual changes above 30-50KHz. What am I hearing? Why the difference? Any ideas? Does DSD have aliasing that is in the audible range etc? Thanks, Mike

Really? Not significant differences in the sound between different filter types? Seriously?

Ahh, the old "If you think you think a cable or power supply made a difference then that proves that your equipment is poorly designed or malfunctioning..." It must get old someday, hopefully soon. Sorry for the OT...

Another vote for the A2's. The treble is somewhat soft to me in my system, which is just fine for PC speakers - The opposite of bright and fatiguing. But I really like my HD6s if you swing it. See if integrated Bluetooth is important to you. I probably wouldn't use either pair as studio monitors but for pleasing listening, I like 'em.

The gear I have experienced that was uniformly head and shoulders above the competition that I was familiar with are the Class D amplifiers from The Digital Amp Company (DAC - not the best acronym!) (disclaimer - I am close personal friends with the owner/designer Tommy O'Brian, so ignore this if you wish, I understand). These class D amps are 100% designed by Tommy and do not rely on commercially available modules. If I understand correctly the modulators run at several times the frequency of competing Class D amps and this may play a role in their relative SQ. They usually feature massive linear transformers to achieve huge wattage. I had a VAC PA100/100 amp until I heard my first DAC amp. I was shocked to hear how much information was simply not leaving the tube amp. The VAC went up for sale immediately, so relatively poor was the SQ. Read the many pro and consumer reviews on these amps - Shocking speed yet liquid with no harshness. Incredible bass from massive linear transformers. Designed and made in the USA if that matters. Edit - Tommy and I are both drummers and are keenly aware of cymbal sounds, which a lot of Class D does not get right. DAC amps do, IMO. I honestly believe that the vast majority of audiophiles, if given the chance to audition in their home, would be shocked at how different these amps sound vs. their existing amps. You will be shocked at the amount of info that never leaves your amps. It is really stunning to hear. The sound is different but not "weird different" or "interesting different" but different exactly up the middle towards that elusive goal that we seek. In my experience when people hear them they buy them. There was one fellow on AudioCircle who wanted to shut Tommy up as Tommy is very confident in his engineering abilities, so he bought some amps with the hope of being able to say "Meh, not so great" but then was stunned at how good they are, told a friend about then who now swears by them. On and on, again and again it happens. I have heard them strapped to Zu speakers - Forget the "It'll fill the room with 2 tube watts" BS, the Zu absolutely came to life and sounded fabulous with several hundred watts of DAC Class D power. Chris, how I would LOVE to hear your impression of these amps driving your Wilsons!! (Let me know, I'll talk to Tommy, wink wink) I now have a DAC amp pumping into Maggie 3.6s and they just love it. -Mike

Where is the need? For you to save me from making a voluntary purchase of a good that I desire? For you to demonstrate your superior state of audio knowledge? Where is the need indeed.

To some extent are we discussing the different digital filtering that the software does? Last I looked at JRiver I did not see how to get it off of a linear phase filter. So it sounded really hard and sterile. Can the digital filters be changed in JRiver? IMO it is difficult to dissect differences between players when the pink elephant of digital filtering is hiding behind the speaker.

So if I understand your point- A company rolls out a technology with the intent of forcing music lovers across the globe to pay them money each time they listen to music, when that company's product is of a lower quality than what the consumer knows to exist and wants to purchase. And the leading audiophile publication in the world feels that this does not require any analysis, any investigation? No, we just simply mention when it is available on a product. If this is the extent of information that TAS is able to provide to a reader then fine, I can anticipate that there will be not much need to open the pages. New top of the line amp!! OMG!! It takes in a signal and puts out a louder one!! Has speaker connection terminals! State of the art turntable - Record goes around and then stops when you turn it off. You seem to say that it is a good thing that TAS simply lists features without consideration of their merit. I hope for much more. If Car and Driver ignored the driving performance and societal impact of electric cars and self-driving technology and simply reported if a car contained them or not, I would consider it poor journalism.

A few days after adding some switches around the house I notice that the system was not sounding normal. I then re-routed the switches so that the switch at my stereo system was fed directly from the PC used for audio, and then I ran the rest of the lines from that audio switch. Bang, sound quality restored to where I remembered it. Of course, many who have never heard my system and were not present at the time know better than I that this did not happen.🙄 None of these are audiophile switches, just whatever $20 thing I picked up.

We have seen in this recent political era that folks who think they have been ordained (word not chosen loosely) to help others are willing to go very far. Funny joke about Hillary's pedophile ring in the pizzeria until someone showed up with an automatic weapon to "investigate"

Why audio sites? Are sneaker, handbag, guitar, drum, sailing, gunsmith, woodworker, fishing, model airplane, watch, car, bicycle, home decorating etc. sites literally being torn apart by fanatics who are out to save hobbyists from themselves by telling people that it is simply not possible that you had the experience you that you claim? And now death threats because Uptone give a money-back guarantee if you don't like the product?

Call the FBI. Seriously.

But clearly different gear has different soundstaging characteristics. Or, switch among the different digital filtering options in a dac - soundstage is clearly one parameter that is affected. What are the measurable differences in these filters that cause the shift in soundstage presentation?

For the gold CD, maybe the ones and zeroes are the same but there's is a difference in the amount of effort the player needs to replay the file. So, if the original CD, being stamped as cheaply as possible by the millions, is difficult to read and loaded with jitter yet the gold cd, being stamped on ultra-high quality archival quality blanks, burned one at a time over many minutes, presents a much easier job to the transport. It takes just a few dollars to buy silver and gold blanks. With my Marantz CD player the differences were obvious, You should try, the effects of the different media and creation process (original vs. burned) are easy to hear.