Hi,
I am looking for a one-box solution, roon ready streamer, DAC, and headphones Amp built in.
The headphones jack need to be Balanced (TRS or XLR 4-pin).
Does this exist?
Thank you
Only no balanced headphone output.
Thanks. But that no balanced headphone jack is a deal breaker for me.
Anything else? I don’t think there are that many choices here.
Perhaps Mytek Manhattan II with the optional Roon Ready Ethernet card?
Anything else?
ApplePi sitting on a RPi
I thought that but if the OP wants preamp functionality then it might not fly. I was thinking at best a 2 box solution consisting of Pi with the Apple Pi HAT together with the headphone amp of your choice. It frees you up to look at the whole market and not just that which might have the right blend of attributes. So Pi in a case, USB in to the head amp or HAT into the balanced inputs avoiding the use of USB.
I appreciate this, but I am looking for something other / better than Pi. I have some cash that is burning in my pockets 
What about a Project Prebox?
http://www.box-designs.com/main.php?prod=preboxrsdigital&cat=source&lang=en
Mine was spent on the headphone amp. Getting Roon to it is the easy part. Finding the amp itself was the tough bit but I get where you are coming from!
Which Amp did you get? And what did you buy to get Roon to it? (streamer, DAC, power supplies, or combination of the above)
Interesting.
But lack of balanced headphone jack is a turn off.
Plus I would need a Roon Ready streamer for this, with its own power supply, USB connection, etc.
I’m using the Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital with an Aune X7s balanced class A amplifier.
Good SQ for a reasonable budget (< € 600,00). I added the Aune XP1 Linear Power Supply.
Headphones are MrSpeakers ETHER C Flow with a custom Cardas 4 x 23.5 AWG shielded Corpse Cable GraveDigger cable with 4-pin XLR.
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Very interesting!
I also noticed this:
http://mall.auneaudio.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=59
Anybody used this?
The S6 has no MQA decoding, but with Roon 1.5 that may be a minor issue now.
What about the Auralic Vega G2? But you should check whether it‘s double TRS headphone outputs can be operated in balanced mode.
Very nice! I will check on balanced headphones jack thing… Thank you
A Violectric V281. Room in the back for a SBC and a HAT or plonk it on top.
Nope. this would not work. Directly from Auralic:
Thanks for reaching out. The VEGA G2 is mainly a DAC with streaming function so it’s not designed for headphone usage. The headphone jack are both single ended for monitoring purpose.
The classic dilemma of convenience vs. quality. I was looking for the same thing myself, given I’m in a temporary home for another 4 months.
Everything I found – mostly mentioned here – was either: a) a compromise, b) way out of my budget, or c) not ready or well tested yet.
I ended up giving up on that and went for an amazing Roon-compatible streamer + DAC (Lumin D2) with an amazing headphone amp (Schiit Jotunheim) with balanced output for my Focal Elear headphones. Schiit sells these really short XLR interconnects so the solution is simple and just works, all for a reasonable budget < $3,000 for the two boxes. I guess it’s a similar discussion to having a receiver vs. separates. Ultimately, mixing and matching what you want will give you a better result, in spite of the inconvenience…
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I’m using a Questyle CMA600i , great dac and a great symmetrical headphone amp with 4-pin XLR output.
Very good build quality, but no streaming, so it needs to be connected to a raspberry pi or something similar.