austinpop

Agree +1. I like a lot of Vogt's albums on Ondine. Sadly the 50% sale seems to have ended prematurely, as I do not see any discount on the Chandos site.

Hi Ken, I believe it is $750 for the regular cable, which is 1.2m, and $650 for the “unpowered” version with no VBUS, which is 1m (or is it 0.8m?) At least for me, I needed regular cables on both legs.

Hey Alan, Going even further OT — I didn't put this in my review, but I had the Phoenix when I was transitioning from Lush^2 to Sablon 2020 USB, so I did compare: SE > Lush^2 > Phoenix > Lush^2 > HMS ... with SE > Sablon 2020 USB > Phoenix > Sablon 2020 USB > HMS. Much as I love the Lush^2, there is indeed a "next level" for USB cables, and the Sablon 2020 is my favorite. I know how eager you are to spend even more ££ on cables. 😎

Yes, I hear it now. 😉

I can hear the exchange clearly, but I don’t recognize the brand. Not surprising, as I’m not an expert on bottled waters available in Sweden in 1976! Pray tell.

Removed a couple of OT posts. Please stay on topic. Thanks.

Reminder from OP Hi folks, Your friendly OP here. Several people have PMed me, and I see some posts here as well, that suggests the thread has gotten a bit off track. I will admit that I have been letting the discussion flow, because it has been civil, for which I thank everyone. But I do see now that we have gotten bogged down in a mix of generalities, Extreme-envy, Roon-bashing, and system-building DIY nitty-gritty. Now, I know some will chuckle at the very idea that this massive meandering thread had a track to start with! 😎 But it does. And that is to keep postings focused on direct listening reports. While the scope of this thread is the entire digital streaming chain, let's get our focus back on listening reports, please. Detailed DIY discussion, especially around system builds make more sense in the excellent DIY build threads already out there, like @Nenon's https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/58164-building-a-diy-music-server/ And as for how great the Extreme is — I think it's been said enough times! Further discussion needs to be in the context of listening comparisons, or results of experiments inspired by this fine server. For participants who haven't already, please take a look at the top of the page at the posting guidelines, as well a link to the index, which will help you understand the history and spirit of the thread, as well as help you find already-discussed material.

This is a decent Beethoven 9th, but can’t compete with the giants. What I loved was the Choral Fantasy. I’m buying this album for that alone!

You should!! I'm stuck here with no fiber provider serving my location. Spectrum excitingly raised their top tier to 940 Mbps download, but a criminally low 35 Mbps upload.

Isn't the word "Buffalo" warning enough? 😎

Interesting to hear the original and final versions of one of my favorite violin concertos.

I think the hardest thing to get right is sizing the PSU for both machines. This is complicated by the fact that the actual power demand is so dependent on energy required to: simply POST the machine, given current BIOS settings boot into the OS, given the energy management policy of the OS - e.g. frequency settings and governors in AS and Euphony run the music server workload. We're assuming vanishingly low CPU utilization for native sample-rate playback run other non-music workloads system and application updates library scans Other applications. What my experience showed me is that the 8700K sounded better than the 8700T at the same operating frequency: IF the PSU is big enough to easily energize both CPUs for all the factors above, and when using the performance governor (default) in Euphony that sets and holds the CPU frequency to the max value specified in the settings. Does this prove anything? Nope. And if asking on any other OS than Euphony, without knowing how the OS will control CPU frequency dynamically, I wouldn't be able to say. But certainly for Euphony, my inclination would be to go with the K CPU, if you're confident of your PSU's capacity.

Mea culpa. I should have checked more carefully. There is a Sync button that does what I need. I only use Roon occasionally these days, so I missed this.

Cheap Splurge, You're asking for help, but are you actually listening to the answers being given? I pointed you to an article a few posts back. Did you actually look? If you had, you would have seen that the author has posted his HQPlayer settings for DAVE in 2 screenshots, that I will replicate below to make it easier for you: These same settings should be a great starting point for the TT2. Why not start here, and then once you've gotten more familiar, tweak further? Be aware — there is no single MAGIC setting for anything. Everyone has different ears, and they find their own favorites by tweaking.

OK one more Dad joke... where Daiza will, Daiza way! Glad to hear about your good results, Larry!

You sayin' Daiz'an art to it? Doesn't Emile sell Daiza panzerholtz footers to enable rigid coupling between the component and the Daiza platform? Or did you find ceramic tiles to sound better?

Very enjoyable performance by these legends. Average recording quality. BTW — finally found a Grieg piece I actually enjoyed: the Holberg suite.

Yup, I'm on 0430 too, and Željko confirmed it was the last released feature update. I honestly can't think of much feature-wise that I'm missing in this version, so I'm happy to stay on it.

Rick, I too am having trouble discerning what your question is. Does this recent post of mine, detailing the differences I heard between i7-8700T and i7-8700K, help in any way? Or are you asking a different set of questions? https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/?do=findComment&comment=1044662

@CheapSplurge The TT2 can accept a max PCM rate of 768kHz or DSD512 native when using the Chord ASIO driver on Windows. As for HQPlayer settings, I can't help you, as I use am not an HQPlayer user — I use a Chord M-Scaler — but I know people like @ray-dude are getting excellent results with HQPlayer. As I recall, they are using PCM-to-PCM upsampling to 705.6/768 using the 1M taps Sinc-M filter and 15th order noise shaper (LNS15). You can look at Ray's recent article on the SGM Extreme to get his HQPlayer settings. See https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/reviews/reality-quest-going-to-extremes-with-the-taiko-audio-sgm-extreme-part-3-of-5-r909/

Sold.

Love the binaural recording!

I know, but a kludge at best!

Yeah. Best I can tell, when you add a Qobuz album to Roon library, it gets added to your favorites in Qobuz’s UI... and vice versa. Because Roon is not the only music software I use, I will often browse Music on the Qobuz app, and mark albums as favorites (the heart icon) for later listening - either on Stylus or Roon. The problem is that Roon makes its own decision when to rescan your Qobuz account favorites and add new additions to the library. Note: you can always navigate to your Qobuz favorites in Roon by going to them using the Qobuz section of the UI. The difference is these are not technically in your library yet. Why does this matter? Usually not much, except in searches where you limit the search to library only. So not a showstopper, just wanted to point out a quirk.

I realize people have high expectations of Roon's slick UI, where the inability to auto-detect new music added to an SMB storage source is seen as a failure, but I've just gotten used to doing a "Force Rescan" anytime I add new music, so I have no issue with it. My bigger issue is that you can't force Roon to detect additions to Qobuz favorites and automatically add them to the library. Even a restart of Core doesn't seem to trigger it. Sorry - I know this is OT for QNAP. Apologies.