I wasn’t basing it so much on marketing as I thought I saw other people who said they were using the Atom stack with the XS and working well. So when I was able to get a used Atom+ stack for $140 I thought that would work well.
I.e on another thread someone said;
“ I’m using a JDS Labs Atom + DAC-amp stack. $210 new combined. Works well. Clean power that won’t color the sound.”
I guess a little bummed that it sounds like I need to spend $400 (Magnius/Modius) or $500-600 (Jot 2 with a DAC module) to actually get proper performance from the XS.
But I’d rather invest in whatever it is that I need to to actually get good performance
It does seem like the need for such expensive Amp/DACs does change value proposition of the XS a bit to me. Especially if I could keep my Atom stack and spend a bit more to get an Ananda