Does anyone have a digital system that is as involving as their analogue front end?


I have a good analogue front end. Not stratuspherically good but good enough for this comparison. VPI Prime Signature 21 turntable, Pass Labs XP-25 pono preamp, Pass Labs XP-30 preamp and Hovland Radia amp. It has a lovely, very involving sound. On the right recording, I just drop everythng and am drawn in to listen.

My streamer, on the other hand, is decent but not spectacular. It is better than my CD player, but it is not jaw-dropping like my analogue front-end. My question is this: does anyone have a high-end, tier-one streamer (dCS Bartok Apex, Lumin X2, or something like them) that can rival a good analogue system?

audio-b-dog

No I don’t have this issue. Can you provide more details?

Is this with qobuz? Are you using same exact connection method for the Meitner that you used with Moon? Have you rebooted your network?

@audphile1 

I am using Jplay with Qobuz. I had an issue with my Moon stopping for a few seconds from time to time, but it was fare more rare than with the Meitner. Also, when the Moon recovered, it continued on the same track rather than jumping to the next track. I think that the Meitner might demand more of the network and that rebooting is a good idea. We have had some trouble with the network slowing. So, I'll work on that first and see what happens. I have heard that the Meitner's buffer can be enlarged, but it sounds like a difficult process. Rebooting the network sounds a lot easier. Thank you for your input.

Reboot the network. 
what you’re describing is two different ways to handle the same problem between jplay and moon. 
jplay tells the streamer what file to go get from qobuz. When it loses connection and is out of buffer it skips to next track. Not Meitner fault. Just how it’s handled by jplay. 

moon probably retries and has different buffer capabilities. I wouldn’t worry about it. Just make certain your network is up to the task. 

@audphile1 

We have two different network names and the one Jplay was on is a weaker network. I changed it to the stronger network and rebooted the network. Hopefully that will take care of it. Thanks.

@audio-b-dog , sounds like you may have solved your problem by making sure the Meitner and JPlay are all on the stronger network, and I don’t know your network topology (obviously), but let me ask if you have an extender (as opposed to a full Access Point/Mesh unit) in your network?  

I was having similar problems with TIDAL and Qobuz (via Roon) to what you report and after much trial and error and tech help from Innuos, Roon and BlueSound, it seems that my problem was being caused by a WiFi extender unit (WiFi 6) where all my WiFi Access Points are WiFi 7 (all components in the network are Ubiquiti). I was told that extender units are known for causing problems with data transmission and renderer connectivity (in your case the Meitner). So, if you have an extender you might want to replace it with a real AP/mesh component of the same generation as your WiFi router.  (I replaced my WiFi 6 extender with a WiFi 7 AP and all the problems went away. 

(BTW, It turns out the extender was also causing the problem that i posted about a week or so ago about my Innuos Stream1 not being discoverable on my iPad via the Sense app or directly via its IP address, even though my iPhone never had any issue discovering and controlling the Stream1.)