Post by MartinT on Sept 28, 2022 7:40:01 GMT
Summary, now that my system design is finished for now:
Streamer: the Sonore Signature Rendu SE has been one of my outstanding purchases in recent years, completely justifying its high price. This streamer is an evolution of the ultraRendu with built-in power supply and huge attention to noise with lots of RFI shielding. It's a substantial monolith and combines the best streaming sound quality I've ever heard with rock-solid stability on a level that no previous setup of mine quite achieved. Used in DLNA mode from my Android tablet, this makes hi-res streaming from Qobuz Studio and a few files I keep in Google Drive very straightforward and an enjoyable experience.
Cables: the Mad Scientist Black Magic Ultra USB between Rendu and DDC has proven to be a significant upgrade from the original Black Magic, with the same lively vivid feeling but a little more tonally neutral and a lot more detailed. The Supra Cat8 between router and EtherREGEN made less of a difference, but I still heard an improvement over the stock ethernet cable. The Coherent BDM powering the P10 regenerator, with the BD swapping to P3 duties, have helped to reduce overall system noise, which is the bête noire of digital playback. I hear this as a significant improvement, particularly in soundstage width and depth, and note decay which is now officially awesome!
Fuses: in order to standardise and set a high quality level throughout the system, I rationalised all my fuses to SR Purple for the core three digital components, SR Orange for all other mains fuses, and HiFi Tuning Supreme for internal DC fuses. Combined, they have certainly made a noticeable difference with a reduction in glare and harshness and an increase in insight and fine detail.
Grounding boxes: no changes to the grounding boxes, but I switched to using the AliExpress silver plated grounding cables throughout. These inexpensive cables surprised me in their performance, helping the grounding boxes to suck more noise away from component ground planes. I also changed the connections for the EtherREGEN and Rendu to grounding the SFP optical modules direct by clipping crocodile clips directly to their metal cases.
DDC: having had Tony of Coherent breath his magic over the Gustard U18, including his very special 'K' caps, all I can say is that his work always results in a significant uplift in sound quality and it was no different here. Connected up to the AfterDark Emperor Triple Crown clock, and sending I2S via a short Blue Jeans FE cable, this pre-processor feeds ultra low noise I2S direct to the DAC's dual ES9038 Pro chipset.
DAC filter: I tried all three digital filter settings in the X26 Pro many times over and remain convinced that 'Gentle' (which is minimum phase) sounds better than 'Vivid' (which is linear phase). I think Gustard's naming is a bit silly as there is nothing gentle about it, it just seems to render a more natural soundstage with better ambience and helps with that incredible note decay.
Streamer: the Sonore Signature Rendu SE has been one of my outstanding purchases in recent years, completely justifying its high price. This streamer is an evolution of the ultraRendu with built-in power supply and huge attention to noise with lots of RFI shielding. It's a substantial monolith and combines the best streaming sound quality I've ever heard with rock-solid stability on a level that no previous setup of mine quite achieved. Used in DLNA mode from my Android tablet, this makes hi-res streaming from Qobuz Studio and a few files I keep in Google Drive very straightforward and an enjoyable experience.
Cables: the Mad Scientist Black Magic Ultra USB between Rendu and DDC has proven to be a significant upgrade from the original Black Magic, with the same lively vivid feeling but a little more tonally neutral and a lot more detailed. The Supra Cat8 between router and EtherREGEN made less of a difference, but I still heard an improvement over the stock ethernet cable. The Coherent BDM powering the P10 regenerator, with the BD swapping to P3 duties, have helped to reduce overall system noise, which is the bête noire of digital playback. I hear this as a significant improvement, particularly in soundstage width and depth, and note decay which is now officially awesome!
Fuses: in order to standardise and set a high quality level throughout the system, I rationalised all my fuses to SR Purple for the core three digital components, SR Orange for all other mains fuses, and HiFi Tuning Supreme for internal DC fuses. Combined, they have certainly made a noticeable difference with a reduction in glare and harshness and an increase in insight and fine detail.
Grounding boxes: no changes to the grounding boxes, but I switched to using the AliExpress silver plated grounding cables throughout. These inexpensive cables surprised me in their performance, helping the grounding boxes to suck more noise away from component ground planes. I also changed the connections for the EtherREGEN and Rendu to grounding the SFP optical modules direct by clipping crocodile clips directly to their metal cases.
DDC: having had Tony of Coherent breath his magic over the Gustard U18, including his very special 'K' caps, all I can say is that his work always results in a significant uplift in sound quality and it was no different here. Connected up to the AfterDark Emperor Triple Crown clock, and sending I2S via a short Blue Jeans FE cable, this pre-processor feeds ultra low noise I2S direct to the DAC's dual ES9038 Pro chipset.
DAC filter: I tried all three digital filter settings in the X26 Pro many times over and remain convinced that 'Gentle' (which is minimum phase) sounds better than 'Vivid' (which is linear phase). I think Gustard's naming is a bit silly as there is nothing gentle about it, it just seems to render a more natural soundstage with better ambience and helps with that incredible note decay.
