DAC - Aqua Formula or Aqua La Scala

Mi4 I think we've talked before,

We sell all of your gear including the STR preamp, and the Persona 9H and we have both the Formula and the Lascala.

We agree that the STR preamp will be a bottleneck as it is a digital preamp in order to run the room correction.

So you would be digitizing the wonderful analog sound of the Aqua. 

The Str is wonderful for the price but with the 9H's resolving quality a good tube preamp would be our recommendation then party on with the Aqua gear.

If you have any questions you know where to find us.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Anthem, Paradigm, Aqua Hif dealers

audiotroy - What Tube pre-amps are you using with your 9h set-up?

We are loving the Manly 300b preamp gigantic soundstage, great tonallity,  super organic, just extra ordinary the magic of a 300b vacumm tubes in a preamp


Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Manly Labs dealers

forego the LaScala and STR combo.  Get a Chord HugoTT2 and Mscaler.  DAC direct to a 9H is leaps beyond anything you've heard.  The 7 watts from the TT2 will play the 9H to screaming loud. 

Dmance,  we would adamantly disagree with that concept. 

The Chord digital is uber clean, which is not what the Persona 9H need they need a bit of additonal warmth. We had Chord Digital for years, clean, fast, articulate but not on the warmer side of the spectrum, the Aqua Lascala or Formula are both much warmer analog sounding dacs, not as clean as the Chord Dave sound but much more analog like. 

Also the Mscaler can be duplicated with an Innous Zenith which through Roon can also upconvert as well as cross convert to DSD if your dac can handle DSD decoding, and then you will get an awesome Roon Core for the same money as the Mscaler.

We would recommend the STR going it is a great $4k Dac/preamp but not really up to the class of matching product that should be played with a speaker like the 9H. 

MI4 is using the Anthem STR power amp which is pretty good, adding a good tube preamp and then even better digital will make that system really jump up and perform.

We actually have MI4 same system Anthem gear and the Personas. we can setup any major combination.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous, Anthem, Paradigm Persona, Aqua Dealers