I’m interested in trying out HQP and am interested in your advice about how to change my playback chain to do that. Currently this is Roon Core on Synology DS418play > LAN WiFi > SoTM sms-200 with WiFi dongle > USB > M Scaler > Wave Storm dual coax cables > TT2 > HD800S. I’ve got a used Dave arriving in a week to replace the TT2, so I’ll be up for tweaking and testing for a while to make the most of the new arrival.
First I need to introduce something to run HQP. I have a spare Mac mini (Late 2014 i5 2.6GHZ 8GB) that I guess is up to the job of handling upscaling to 768kHz, and DSD512 too subsequently if that’s likely to be even better?
I could simply substitute the Mac mini for the sms-200 for testing, but should I also introduce another spare bit of kit I have, a fanless PC (ACEPC Mini PC Windows 10 Pro Intel Atom x5-Z8350 Processor 4GB) to run the NAA? I understand from a post on another thread that a Window 10 device would be needed to get to DSD 512 from 128, but there may be other pros and cons as well (in addition to adding in another bit of kit that could go wrong!)
Finally, this is some way off, but if I like what I hear, then the M Scaler becomes redundant for upscaling. But simply removing it and the Wave Storm cables to plug directly into the DAC USB would reintroduce the RF noise problems, and maybe some others. I’d like to understand what options might be recommended. Thanks