Hi, if I only intend to use Nucleus to stream Tidal to my DAC, and do Upsampling to only one zone at a time, should I get a Nucleus or Nucleus+? I do not have any permanently downloaded music. Thank you.
Bottom line is DSD processing requires more horsepower and the plus model. Modest collections (under 100,000 tracks) streaming PCM should be fine with the base model.
In case you are wondering about sound quality differences, there are none. Under “stress” (multiple zones, heavy DSP usage, very large libraries) the Nucleus will falter sooner.
I’d compare the capacities of each with where you think your library will be, say, three years from now. Then buy accordingly.
Given a starting point of zero, sounds like the base model is more than adequate. Then, when it starts to disappoint (sluggish screen draws, stuttering sound, and/or silence) trade up. My guess is there will be an active market in used Nuclei.
Let us know what you decide, and good luck!
The i3 Nucleus (base model) has a good amount of power. It is not under the same load as i3 chips in a laptop–the laptop CPU has all sorts of other tasks to manage. In the Nucleus the i3 chip has just a few narrow jobs. I have been using the Nucleus for about 3 weeks. I use it for Tidal streaming, high resolution PCM 384 and DSD 256 playback. I also use DSP for remote volume control, but not upsampling. I recommend looking into a linear power supply (Keces, Sbooster, HDPlex, MCRU, or equal) rather than getting more processing power, until (as a previous commenter noted) you need more processing power. I had a similar concern about the i3 Nucleus being powerful enough - but so far the i3 Nucleus has been more than adequate for any playback processing, and my linear power supply shows no more than 1.0 amp of power draw with an external 2TB spinning hard drive.
I agree with @bill_c.
My Nucleus plays anything I throw at it, with a 131k tap convolution, and the power indication of 20X.
It even does DSD upsampling without stress.
Multiple zones, or upsampling to DSD256, might stress it, I don’t know.
Thank you everyone for your help! I will probably get the Nucleus, as I will at most only do upsampling of Tidal to DSD, with all other DSP features disabled.
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