Upgrading from Holo Red, need i2s, external clock input & HQplayer NAA

Danny Richie from GR Research is suppose to do a series about streaming.  He just mentioned it in a previous video.  From what he mentioned some friends of his went down a rabbit hole and compared a bunch of less expensive equipment with some more expensive equipment and found some ways to get great sound inexpensively.

You are headed down the same path I am.  I was deciding between the Red and the NT-1.  Currently using the streamer/NAA in the Gustard R30 in the interim from my M4 via Ethernet.  Will be following this thread to see what you end up with.  Have you looked at the Eversolo T10?  I've not had a chance to deep dive on it yet.  

@greatdivide71 I have decided not to risk the eversolo route, I’ve heard it has a great app, but every other aspect of sound and build components are cheaper. I’m going to save for the Matrix NT-1. I’m very invested in externally clocked components, and i2s, so this is the most logical no-brainer. It’s a wonder to me how the Red performs so well, over i2s without any ext clock. Is this FPGA black magic? Anyhow that’s a great DAC, and there may be a sound increase from you having less cable paths.? But Paul from PS Audio is clear that the Mac is phenomenal with a program like HQP or Bitperfect. He personally used one for years. Now I just need to see if the update from HQPlayer 5 -> 6, that was just released (I’ve only done one session of testing) is going to fix the connection and drop out issues. 
Running the Mac mini headless, with a HDMI ghost display port adapter, I still have to pull out a keyboard and mouse 1/3 of the times I choose to start playing music, cuz Roon and HQP have some sort of connection problem or another. Both are hard wired Ethernet to my AfterDark NetONE switch

@jbuddha882 Good point on the simpler signal path going directly to the R30 and it also uses the R30's clock.  I am interested in the improvement of I2S & USB over my current signal path (if any).  For I2S I was definitely leaning towards the NT-1 over the Red for multiple reasons.  

My M4 is headless as well with an HDMI ghost display adapter and I use screen sharing from my MacBook to log in when needed.  It has been fairly stable.  Maybe because Roon is on he same M4?  The only issue I've had is with the R30 struggling with DSD512.  I get a loud hiss even with DSD Direct/NOS.  So I use DSD256 and that works great for me.  With DSD upsampling and some of the filters I was using, processing was running around 1x for 24-bit/48 kHz tracks which caused issues so another reason for me to use DSD256.  I just downloaded 6 but not sure there is anything helpful for the M4 based on what I've read.  Hopefully it helps with stability for you.

I don’t use hqplayer, but i do run Roon on Apple silicon Mac mini going Ethernet to a streamer that its function in life is to galvanize the incoming Ethernet to the I2S output to my dac, all running roon upsampled to DSD256. 

I used to run the same setup using Roon upsampled and it didn’t sound as good, so I ran Roon on a trash can Mac Pro running Linux and this combo sounded better than running Roon on the Mac mini. Even Qobuz Connect sounded better than both these upsampled configurations. But the upsampled Roon config sounds the best now.

BTW, I had the Cinnamon Ethernet in my system and then upgraded to the Vodka Ethernet cable, sounds better, more than 2x the price and 3x thicker cable. As for the I2S cable, I tried a few cables and ended up with the $1000 Revelation Audio Labs cable