Ron Scubadiver

@mitchco you are definitely the one who knows all about these advanced audio software packages.

Congrats.

It rhymes.

All that for 1k... Is technology finally bringing true Hi-Fi to the masses? I hope so because the prices on most of this stuff are absurd.

My listening room is in a similar finished attic 18x14 plus other stuff with a ceiling 9' in the center. However, I have LS50 speakers placed along the long wall and listen mid field with bass reinforced by a Martin Logan 1000W sub.

With streaming you don't know if it will be there tomorrow. Contracts with the labels are not perpetual.

Yes, but someone else replied to me earlier and he did not seem to see it that way.

A turntable is an analogue source, so there is no alternative but to convert it to digital at some point and in a speaker with a built in DAC using it is the most direct approach. I was thinking about a digital source like a computer could skip a separate DAC and let the electronics in the speaker do all the work.

Definitely a cutting edge product that flies in the face of the mix and match philosophy. I suspect it will work best in the streaming mode if the source is digital as it avoids extra AD and DA conversions.

There's one born every minute.

I view this as an example of how bias shapes opinions. While there may be a provable improvement in 24/96 over Redbook, it isn't so great as to make Redbook unlistenable.

I am judging it by it's price. It's not my money. Anyone around here is free to throw as much money at GAS as they like.

Seems like a lot of money for a DAC with the 9038Q2M chip.

In the pro audio sector the most used DAC chips are from CS and AKM. It may be because these companies make ADC chips too. ESS seems to be the most popular in the audiophile sector. The D30 uses an CS4398. At the high end there are a lot of proprietary FPGA based DAC's.

Topping D30. It tests great and sounds neutral. Separate power supply eliminates problems with noisy motherboards. Only $120 and it has the SBAF seal of disapproval. Check threads at Audio Science Review, Reddit and Head-Fi.