I am very intrigued by the consistence and persistence of the love given to that ancient, synchronous, correctionless S/PDIF link, throughout those nice systems.
I would have thought that the presence of an improved and more reliable technology would have taken over by now, outside of the specific uses because of legacy equipment.
Well, probably a touchy topic to introduce, knowing the audiophile world… Let’s leave my musing pending and not pollute this show of elegance!
Running Roon Core on my qnap nas station. The nas provides easily my music library for the Logitech Squeezeboxes (5 x Boom) for easy streaming the rooms of the house. For listening to music seriously I route roons audio signal to an audiophile sounding dual music pc system tweaked by must have software tools:
Control PC (WS2012R2, Audiophile Optimizer, Fidelizer Pro, Process Lasso Pro, jplay) --> dedicated LAN Connection --> Audio PC (WS2012R2, Audiophile Optimizer, Fidelizer Pro, Process Lasso Pro, jplay) --> DAC --> Pre Amp --> Mono Amps --> Stereo Speaker
The sanseveria have been moved since I took the picture. Always flowers or plants on the speakers… they like music. Now there’s pots with geraniums. The sound’s better now
The Bluesound stuff offers a neat box of tricks that are of value to me (remote control support, clean source switching, TuneIn radio, highly granular volume control, iOS applets, MQA, decent headphone amp to name just a few) and the Node’s S/PDIF out is good and clean.
Top be fair, I still have one Pi hooked up to the MiniDSP (2B with Allo DigiOne, linear PSU and DietPi/Ropieee) to keep up with developments and to tinker with whenever the mood strikes. It sounds great, but it does not offer the same convenience compared to the Bluesound boxes.
Roon running on Windows 10 Intel NUC, attached at the back of the TV with Velcro . Sharing space with Jriver (videos).
Western Digital 3To NAS in the kitchen under the sink (too noisy…) HAF convolution filters for house curve / time-phase correction / reverb frequency adjustment / X-talk cancellation
Devialet Expert D200 Amp / Ethernet “Air” input.
DIY cable speakers “PTT”.
DIY Atohm EURUS speakers (2-way, 44-30Khz)
DIY subwoofers 20-45 Hz: 2 x Dayton RSS210 in closed box, STA-400D stereo amp, miniDSP 2x4 for Linkwitz transform and filtering
All this gear providing good vibes in my living room