Streamers, as always. Tarun is just one example. There are other reviewers saying the same thing. I had the A6 before, and the Nano clearly outperforms it — again, on digital out, in my rig. I never take built-in DACs seriously. To be frank, I even prefer Nano over ES T8.
Clock is just one component in streamer and SQ depends on, for example, power supply design, noise isolation and output stage engineering. I assume you know about this. Mentioning this to you might be an insult, isn’t it?
no offense taken - good we are talking about the bluesound units as streamers feeding downstream dacs...
i agree that the eversolos are somewhat shrill sounding, not a preferred option
while i comment on the bluesound units, it isn’t that i am a fanboy.... i had been just curious to know how much the lps upgrade impacts sound quality, so I did various experiments on the several units I had around the house piping music into various rooms... what i found was the lps upgrade materially helps the s-q by reducing noise and providing the unit a purer power feed... whether it be from it’s usb or spdif outputs, the unit sounded better as a streamer - how much better depends of course on the capability (clock, jitter rejection, noise rejection) of the downstream unit but there was a noticeable difference small or large in every case
this all said, folks can do a lot worse than using a lps'd node or nano to feed their DACs... you have to spend double the cost or more to beat it... also worth mentioning that the icon cannot be easily upgraded with lps like its 'lesser' stable mates though
