Have a look at Kef LS50 Wireless. I have them and they play beautifully with Roon and sound fabulous.
This is starting to make sense, and I think a plan is coming together. Thank you all again for the awesome feedback!
I’m thinking about the following, so please tell me if there’s anything wrong with this:
Using PC Laptop* as Core
Chromecast Audio as endpoints into a variety of speakers:
- NAD T750 into Monitor Audio speakers
- NAD T760 into Monitor Audio speakers
- PW 600s
- PW 800s
- iHome IP1
It’s probably irrelevant for the Roon side of things, but I’m planning on getting PW Links for the NAD stuff to make the whole system also speak Play-Fi in the event I want to stream something non-RAAT (i.e. Netflix, Amazon Prime video, or Pandora).
Besides “does the above look reasonable?,” I’m wondering a couple extra things:
- Do I need external DACs for the ChromeCast into NAD stuff? Those NADs are old school analog receivers. I see they make 3.5mm to optical cables, and 3.5mm to stereo RCA cables - couldn’t I just get one of those? Or use 3.5mm input on the NADs?
- Can I plug the Chromecast Audio into the PW Link and have PW Link act as DAC?
- Are there other DACs I should consider (If I do indeed need 2 for the NADs). The Auralic Aries Mini is out of my price range. By a lot.
*PC Laptop = Dell Precision with 500 GB SSD, 3 TB spinning HD… happy to dedicate it since it’s just in a briefcase, dying alone. Sounds like it’s the easiest way for me to get a dedicated Core, and easy since the big HD is linked, allowing me to use that as a NAS (if the 500 GB SSD isn’t enough?), and dbpoweramp rip all CDs on that machine.
I did that (3.5 to stereo RCA adapter cable) and I’m perfectly happy with it. If you’re OK with the DAC in the CCA, there’s no need to get an outboard one. On the other hand, if you’re not, you may want to scrap the whole idea of CCAs and use a different streamer, like a HiFiBerry or IQaudio Pi+DAC setup.
If I get an external DAC to use with the CCA, does the CCA know not to to the DAC’ing? And how does it know?
I haven’t used Windows as my main OS in many years but used to use EAC to rip CD’s. Is dbpoweramp better nowadays?
I like it. I use it on an iMac i5 desktop along with the Perfect Tunes add-on.
I ripped a lot of my collection “back when” using an old version of JRMC (on a PC). dBpowerAmp is much easier IMO. Haven’t used EAC, so can’t offer a meaningful comparison there.
Ah yes, I remember ‘back when’ too, when running 2 instances of EAC on my NT4 system & ripping from 2 Plextor SCSI CDROM drives at the same time.
The good ol’ days.
My collection wasn’t too bad. I only have about 1,000 redbook CDs and a few dozen DVD-A and DVD-Vs I had to rip (via DVD Audio Extractor). Sent my 50 SACDs to Golden Ear Digital in Colorado to rip, since I didn’t have the equipment to rip DSD. I’m using streaming services now for new music (both Qobuz and Tidal).
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The NAS sounds like it’s a ‘fixed cost’ since you’re going to rip your CD collection & need someplace to store the files, so choose a NAS that fits your needs (QNAP & Synology are good places to start).
You could do this very inexpensively (~$100) & without much complication & hair loss depending on if you can make a few ‘sacrifices’ that might not end up being sacrifices at all.
Yes. If you use the little 3.5 mm optical cable it will pass the signal to your dac and bypass its internal dac. It only does dac if you use a 3.5mm audio cable. How does it know? Magic!
P.S. Based on the setup and type of listening you mentioned you would likely be happy with the built-in dac. I would try that first and save lots of money to get started. Then, maybe try a separate dac on your main system to see if it makes any difference. Go from there.
There is a glitch playing 24/96 audio out the optical port on the cca which can cause dropouts.
Is that the nice way of saying “you’re not the most demanding listener, so a crappy DAC should not be noticeable for you.”? No offense taken 
I am going to use an optical cable from CCA to NAD T760 just because I can (T750 is analog input only IIRC). Will be interested to see if there’s a significant difference between the T750 + bookshelf MAs (analog) vs. the T760 + tower MAs (optical).
I guess worst case scenario (after reading Rubgy’s post) is that I will be forced to use CCA DAC if the optical output is glitchy.
If you want to use your DAC with the CCA’s optical output and have problems at higher resolutions you can tell Roon to send everything to the CCA at 24/48.
Tim
Well it’s all set up. I am quite happy with the SQ from the CCA hooked into Roon. And Roon is a fun interface - not quite as immersive of an experience as I was hoping for, but still the best I’ve seen, so no regrets. I will definitely pay for a subscription once the trial runs out.
With most of my CD library on my Roon Core now (been ripping every day with dbpoweramp), there’s just so much easily accessible through a variety of devices that are real-time synced - it’s pretty amazing.
I have unfortunately found that I’m not happy with the Paradigm speakers. They’re not bad by any means (and ARC helps for SURE), but I’ve been comparing a pair of the PW600s to a pair of Monitor Audio GS10s powered by NAD T760, and the difference is too big to ignore. I would rather spend the money on another NAD receiver and pair of bookshelves (or just an amp + center channel) than the PW speakers. I don’t really care about the Play-Fi thing now that it is all is so easily accessible through Roon (Tidal CD collection), and I just don’t trust the PW Amp to be as good. The PW stuff is kinda tinny, has more noise, and less definition across the frequency spectrum. I’d rather trust what I know to be good, and that’s NAD + MA. I’m learning that I don’t care about having all the systems streamable if the Roon system allows me to access the music I want to listen to without any identified limitation thus far. Plus, with everything CCA, I do have access to Amazon Prime Music, Deezer, Spotify, Pandora, and YouTube Music if desired.
Oh, and I don’t think I have the high-res audio thing quite figured out. I have my CD collection ripped FLAC (16/44?). It sounds fine to me. Should I try the high-res thing with Tidal? Or another way to get high-res? dbpoweramp tells me that the unadulterated rate for a CD is 16/44, and states that 24/96 is for DVDs? So where are y’all getting this higher-res audio?
The more you use it the more immersive it becomes. Can also start to take a lot of your time to. Hours just disappear as you go on a musical journey.
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HDtracks.com, ProStudoMasters.com, Us.7Digital.com are good sources. You can download a couple and see if you hear any improvement. May want to research the provenance, though. There have been some upsampled 44.1/16 files, but I think this has been mostly weeded out.
The biggest thing is the mastering. A good mastering sounds good at all resolutions, and a bad master just sounds bad. And some of the “remastered” hi-rez offerings sound worse than the original CD releases. Another reason to check the provenance.
P.S. forgot to mention the store at Qobuz.com.