All-In-One Streamer/DAC/Headphone Amp Recommendations

I used the matrix mini pro3 too to drive my utopia’s … .worked great.

Definitely leaning toward Matrix.

Thanks for the ideas folks!

Cheers,
Robert

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Darko.Audio has been exploring low cost streaming rigs this fall. Visit https://darko.audio/ and poke around.

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Team Chord Mojo (Poly). Fantastic so far. And very portable too. And half the Prize of the Matrix.

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Good to hear from someone saying positive things about the Poly! :slight_smile:

Love my mojo poly. Great with an SD card too.

What do you mean? It’s not a battery wonder, but works fine for me since two years now.

Exactly what i wrote! Most times i have read about the Poly it has been complaints of bad software, instability, lack of support for 5Ghz WLAN etc…
So, it was good to hear from someone who is happy with the device! :slight_smile:

I had the same question and chose a Hugo 2/2go for a nightstand rig. Being transportable, it’s also my home office/kitchen table/sofa/back porch rig :slightly_smiling_face:

The 2go streamer does wifi or ethernet and it’s battery powered or USB micro so it’s easy to move from one room to another. Sounds great and will drive about any headphones.

Mojo/poly is probably a better choice if you want to leave the house with it.

Bryston BR20. Amazing!

I appreciate the input folks, but the thread has clearly strayed from the requirements significantly. Please read the original post.

Suggestions of multibox solutions, DIY and full sized preamplifiers are off the table, literally.

What wasn’t included in the original post was that there is also zero need for portability, so on-the-go DACs and the like are not interesting.

One smallish streamer/DAC (Roon compatible) that is also a quality headphone amp, capable of driving a wide variety of headphones, not IEMs.

Anyway, I’m pretty much looking only at the Gold Note and the Matrix offerings, everything else appears unsuitable either to task or to my taste.

Cheers,
Robert

I have a Teac NT-505 and I love it. They come in two tastes now, with AKM and ESS chipsets. What I particularly like is that it automatically switches input to bluetooth when my kids point their Spotify-apps at them. In daily use it is set to my Roon library via ethernet.

I believe this is a direct reply to TS as requested. The NT-505 is also a capable headphone amp and pre-amp. And it is small.

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Waversa WminiHPA MK2
Kopfhörerverstärker, Vorverstärker, D/A-Wandler und Streamer

Lautstärkegeregelte Analogausgänge
Symmetrischer 2,5-mm-Kopfhörerausgang
Je ein 3,5-mm- und 6,3-mm-Kopfhörerausgang
Roon Ready, DLNA, AirPlay, MQA, WNDR
Streaming über LAN
NAS-Funktion mit USB-Speicher
WAP (Waversa Audio Processor)
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Take a look at the brand new Rose unit . Pretty neat .

Which brand new Hifi Rose product do you mean?
Headphone amps included in the RS150 and RS250 aren’t very powerful and also I don’t know what the output impedance is.
For serious headphone listening, you need (I’m owning also a RS250) an external headphone amp.

As per my post over on this thread: “Headphones thread (show us yer cans)! [2021-01]”, there is a minimalist champ in town. Namely the Focal Bathys headphones. As you can see from the picture below all that is needed to stream from Roon is an iPhone, the iPhone USB camera adapter and a USB-A to USB-C cable. The Bathys have a built in DAC and when connected as shown in the photo below the iPhone will output digital audio up to 192kHz and 24bit into the Bathys.
Sure this arrangement limits one to these devices, however the Bathys are really quite nice sounding and like I stated earlier this is truly the most minimal setup available.

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Esoteric N05XD. There are good deals online even though it is brand new.

Absolutely love this. Would be an interesting replacement for my AirPods Max.

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I’m on the look out for an all in one solution and wondered what other options are available now.

It’s been tricky as some dad/headphone amps are listed as Roon compatible but it just means the DAC.

I have a pair of Denon 9200 and I’m already up and running on Roon with a Fiio M11S which is a great portable DAP that can use Roon; I guess I could run that into a headphone amp dac….

I have found a used DS10 for £1k and a Matrix Mini i3 pro for £750 which both look like good options.

Maybe I’m best to get something like a Burston and and run the Fiio into it?

Ruled out the Naim Headphone Uniti at the moment on price grounds and being less fussed by Naim of late.

Doesn’t look too elegant, but I made my own with a Raspberry Pi 4, 10,000 man battery and an iFi micro iDSD Black Label :slight_smile: .


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