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

@mdalton thank you!

@jpan 

My pleasure.  Btw, checked your system, and it’s very unusual, and really cool.  Re digital, I’m an analog guy at heart as well, so I wouldn’t spend a ton initially if I were you.  You can get way closer to a state of the art digital front end on the cheap than you can on the analog side.  Also, can you share how you ended up with the channel d phono pre, and how you feel about it?

@mdalton thank you…

The Channel D was a recommendation from J.R. Boslaire, of Wally Tools. He set up my table and DBA. Over time we’ve become friends and since he knew my system, I went with it. It’s fantastic. I love it’s simplicity and design as well.

Not meaning to derail the digital track, what would you recommend someone like me to get into digital on a reasonable level of price/performance? I would love a Mojo but that’s a bit pricey right now for me. Definitely my kind of gear though.

@jpan 

So many choices, but I can only describe my decisions.  I have cheap  ( a Topping and an iFi), modest (an Okto), and moderately expensive (Gold Note). I did a dac shootout with a friend in his highly resolving system of my Okto, his Mytek Brooklyn, my Goldnote DS10, and his dcs Bartok,  To my ears, I ranked the DS10 best, followed by the dcs (which was over $10k), then the Okto, then the Mytek.  My friend preferred his dcs over the DS10.

The DS10 is about $5k if you also get the optional power supply.  I bought the dac first for about $3.5k, and subsequently added the power supply.  It definitely made a difference - I had previously done a two way shootout with same friend betw the dcs and ds10, and I preferred the dcs that time.  Do the power supply made a material difference.

@mdalton many thanks! The DS10 might be the perfect fit in my system.