Hi Friends - I am using a headless MacMini with Audirvana playing into a Mytek Brooklyn DAC. Largely use it for TIDAL and my ripped CD collection. Sounds great except for the occasional jitter when some internal process takes over in the Mac - which I can live with. Have been using this for the last 7 years or so without any trouble. I also have an external LPS for the DAC.
From time to time the upgrade bug bites me and I wonder if I will gain anything significant from a dedicated streamer/DAC or a streamer playing into my existing DAC. Any decent move in this direction will cost a reasonable amount of money and so I have never pulled the trigger. I want to be really sure.
Any thoughts from my friends here? Thanks
Hi
I've used different components to stream via coax or usb over the years. I started with a metrum ambre, then shifted to bluetooth, then a Cambridge audio 851N and finally a Lumin streamer. I found a dedicated streamer to be a very worthwhile improvement. Really showed the capabilities of the dac in the best possible light.
Having said that, since you are using a Mac mini via usb, a usb cleaner like an Intona 7055-C will be a big improvement. The Intona is among the best out there currently. Next step will be to try a dedicated streamer, however when streaming over usb, the only benefit of a streamer is that it outputs a cleaner and less noisy usb stream. Which the Intona will do too. And there is no timing information in USB, so there is no role for any clocks to play here.
The benefits of streamers and DDC's are when using coax or aes ebu or I2S inputs. Where the better clocks in the Streamer or the DDC come into play, especially over I2S, followed by Aes-ebu.
So you need to give it a long and hard look and consider which all Dac inputs you will need, then choose a streamer accordingly. As many of them are usb output only, except the Innuous pulse series, Auralic aries series and Lumin U series.
Ideally since you are in bangalore, maybe you can reach out to fellow FM's from there, and maybe invite them over with their streamers to try out in your system. And you alone can judge if the improvement is worth the outlay.
