Streamers - Auralic, Aurender, Lumin, others...

System matching is more important than the individual components.

Holo Audio Red sounds fantastic thru I2S to Holo Audio Cyan 2

Denafrips ARCAS sounds fantastic thru I2S to Pontus 15th

Lumin sounds best with DACs that have optimized their USB input.

Lumin sounds better with Roon, Holo Audio sounds better with Tidal Connect....

I love R-2R DACs but have actually bumped my Lumin U1 out of my main stereo system because the Aurender A1000 (all in one) sounds so good into my Fezz Libra 300B amp (single ended optimized).

There are no correct answers other than do not discount a good all in one unit. They are the most optimized (streamer section and DAC section designed to work together) and eliminate a lot of unnecessary circuitry (USB to internal I2S etc)

@gkelly 

aaah!  I just didn’t understand your prior post.  So you’re saying that no dealer would ever try to sell you something more expensive if it wasn’t demonstrably “better” than a cheaper product?  Well I do have a different view on that.  And I’ve also met many dealers who know substantially less than I do about the technology and science of streamers.  And btw, it’s not that I’m that smart, I just have a great deal of intellectual curiosity about it, and know how to do basic research.  (Some dealers do, some don’t.  It’s the same with any sales person.). I also have over 20 years of experience with streamers in my own systems.   Finally, I also believe that a lot of dealers believe what they’re telling you, but that doesn’t make it true.  So I’m quite sure your Innuos kicks butt.  I just think you probably didn’t need to spend as much $ as you did to get that quality of sound.  Not a criticism, just an observation.

How did unscrupulous dealers get into the conversation. It is about going out and doing your research and finding someone you can trust. How hard is that.

@gkelly 

?  You brought up dealers, and specifically asked me a question.  I answered your question.  And I did not accuse any dealer of being unscrupulous, though certainly there are some out there.  They are human after all.  I actually think most dealers want to sell their brands - obviously - so that’s what they know.  They get literature rom the distributor, and that’s what they use to sell to us.  This seems to be pretty noncontroversial, unless you just want to argue for the sake of it.  Don’t you just love the internet?

Having used, auditioned and built multiple streamers and Roon cores over the last few years, I have to comprehensively disagree with the sneering negativity I’ve seen from some towards the Mac Mini: my experience is that it’s a solid, well designed and high quality source/streamer. My empirical playout chain (keeping Ockham’s Razor in mind) has an M1 Mini powered via an Isotek Sigmas, and feeding my DAC over Ethernet, through an Etherregen switch.  Both the power supply and the network connection do make a difference though - I recently had to temporarily move the Mini from the hifi rack to my server cabinet, where the power comes from a basic UPS, and that has definitely degraded the SQ.

I’ve yet to find any streamer whose imposition between the Mac & DAC improves things, but happy to continue, in the spirit of sceptical curiosity.

The only scenario where I’d consider an alternative architecture would be if I were still using HQPlayer downstream of Roon: HQP is better optimised for X64 instruction sets than for ARM-based systems. As it is, HQP makes no difference to the current DAC.