Peachtree and Nucleus

Hi,
Anyone out there have experience with a Nucleus directly usb’ed to a Peachtree Nova 150/300 amp, ie, a 2 box setup. Any linux compatability issues etc.

Could an external dac be introduced between the two if wanted in the future without issues, eg a Chord Qutest or Mytek Brooklyn?

Thanks in advance
James

FWIW, I had a Nova150 driven by a Raspberry Pi3 as a Roon streamer–>coax, and it worked great. Since the Nova (I think) converts analog inputs to digital internally, there’s probably not much reason to use an external DAC.

Thanks Andrew,
is the Raspberry Pi3 linux based like the nucleus. Wouldn’t the nucleus be sending digital inputs to the Peachtree? Sorry for my ignorance.

So I have a Roon Server (like Nucleus) running elsewhere, and that server and the Pi are connected to an Ethernet network. The Pi serves as a (very inexpensive but perfect performance) bridge from the network to the Nova150. It would be a possible solution for you if you wanted the Nucleus to be in a different room from the Nova.

As for your question about using USB directly, I bet that’d work fine–the Nova is a standard “Class 2” USB audio device and works fine with Linux, generally–and there’s no good reason to put a separate DAC in between the two.

Thanks Andrew, that’s great info. The only reason I mentioned the external dac was I have heard the Peachtree has a fairly “warm” sound. I read that as it is not overly bright in the trebles which is something I actually like, ( the brightness, clarity, that is). If I actually found that to be the case , my thinking was, an (expensive), option may be to use another dac which may give a different sound. I could be way off in this thinking.

Before you even think about additional equipment–which I’m not sure would make a difference with the Nova, anyway–try the EQ and other DSP features built into Roon.

Thanks again Andrew. I’m just back from auditioning both the Nova’s, 150 and 300 hooked up to Nucleus. Seemed to work fine and sounded very good. I think I will go for the 300 even though I have fairly efficient Goldenear Triton 5 speakers.
I have never dabbled with the DSP functions in roon but it’s good to know I could tweak the sound if needed.