Meitner MA3i DAC Review

@yyzsantabarbara yep. You heard what I heard. Slightly more energy up top. I like it in remastered rock albums where they killed the top end air. Example - Led Zeppelin 2. Sounds better with Q Connect. Not surprised you like the MA3i. It’s a world class DAC. 

@audphile1 no. The buffer is small. Usually 30sec to a minute. It isn’t local playback.

Trying to square this. My streamer has a 30 second buffer, so if Internet or it’s local connection is lost I still hear music for a max 30 seconds. 

If the connection is down and it’s still playing, and the data is not local.... Where is it?

My desktop I use JRiver and have 1Gb of buffer going to RME> Genelec 8331a So the amplification is built in. So theoretically I can queue up entire PCM 16/44.1 albums without a network connection. 

PSAudio (I think) had a network player which copied the entire song into memory before playing it. 

@habaneromonk I pulled the cable from my Aurender N200 once as an experiment (I no longer have this streamer) after I kicked off a pretty long playlist. It played all the way thru. Yes you lose controller options as it’s no longer connected to network but the 256gb was cool. 
To me local playback means music files stored within your local network. Buffer is a temporary storage. Not really local. But if you want to call it that I’m not gonna stop you. 

@audphile1 To me local playback means music files stored within your local network. Buffer is a temporary storage. Not really local. But if you want to call it that I’m not gonna stop you. 

Understood but it doesn't change the fact one iota that no matter what you are indeed playing 'on premise'. 

SSD, HDD, RAM. Somewhere there is your music. It's 100% local. It's a copy. Your Aurender had enough to copy the entire playlist, my streamer has enough to copy 30 seconds at a time.

My computer has enough for a full CD worth and it can do it in about 1.5 seconds. Just because it's RAM buffer set aside doesn't mean it's not local.