It would be very cool if you could post a pic of that beastly desk setup you have…if you don’t feel like it all good.
Do you have any speaker setups as well? Or just 
?
I haven’t really posted any pictures on here for privacy reasons coupled along with that my setup is not the cleanest looking anyways (function over form lol)
Yes, a few, I have some outlined on that diagram in my profile (although that will be changing soon and getting much smaller lol)
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Yooo finally terminator ii and gaia came in, will be getting those connected and starting the warmup/burn in process, curious to see how those fare. Although also got another dac a few days ago (along with selling others of course) and I don’t know if I have much interest listening to the terminator right now anyways because of it lol
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The Gaia is going to give the Terminator a leg up! Would like to hear your feed back on that as well.
Yeah, although I think it’s likely that either my totaldac reclocker or streamers might be able to best the gaia, but who knows until I get that tried lol (but the gaia can be used to further reclock aes/spdif/i2s coming from a streamer, so further benefit likely if I put that in chain). But high hopes for it, as so far out of the box it seems like a pretty nice piece of kit for the money in terms of features, will be looking to see what it does sound wise
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I remember someone we trust citing research that showed that having more than one reclocker in a signal path can have benefits.
Well on the note of reclockers, the gaia is pulling it’s weight very well. It has a pretty neutral and defined presentation compared to the terminator without the clock (will comment more on the terminator later). Added more accurate spatial recreation (wider stage, more depth, better separation between instruments), more convincing attack and decay, more texture, and more overall low level resolution. Also added a bit of smoothness to the midrange and treble as well that was pleasing. I did notice a bit of a reduction in slam and impact, and also a bit of reduction in tonal density compared to just the terminator via usb. Also the terminator became more forward with the gaia. Overall to quickly sum up the thoughts on the term ii vs term ii + gaia clock synced, the gaia imo was a pretty welcome improvement even despite it’s a bit reduction in thickness and impact (and being a bit more forward), I think the improved technicalities without sacrificing organicness was worthwhile (and the term is still a more fun leaning dac regardless imo)
But haven’t yet tried the term with other ddc/streamers, and also haven’t yet tried the gaia with other dacs. But so far for the money the gaia seems pretty worthwhile if you have a term, curious to see how it compares to other ddc/streamers I have and how it works with other dacs when I get the chance
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What streamers do you use and what is your streamer of choice.
A dcs network bridge at my desk, and an auralic aries g2.1 + leo GX.1 clock for my living room. I personally have liked the auralic streamers the most in terms of sound, features, and simplicity. The dcs is good in sound for example, but it’s interface for controlling it is meh and not as refined (reliable but basic, lacking some sorting/finding features that can make it slow to navigate through), the auralic user experience is just much better in that regard. I do think that with the clock, sq wise the auralic is a better sounding streamer, but without the clock I’d say the dcs and auralic are evenly matched in most regards sq wise. (I would have gotten a different 2ndary streamer than the dcs but a friend was selling one at a price that was real good, so I picked it up for my desk).
Also have an allo usbridge signature somewhere that is pretty good for the price if you need a good usb streamer on a budget. Otherwise if you don’t want usb go for a pi2aes
And no I don’t use roon since I bet this would also be another question that would get asked lol
Edit: ah also have a logitech squeezebox touch, but no fucking clue where that is
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What if I acted rashly - even considering recent conversations and said F it - and dropped on a Sonnet Morpheus now, without waiting for reviews…
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Well I don’t think that would be a bad thing, although the paring with the v281 is good but not great to me personally (although I think you could be fine with it, I’d just worry about getting a bit too soft and relaxed, but reasonably it wouldn’t be going overboard imo)
There’s a fair bit of other info out there besides here lol
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You can always take advantage of the return policy…probably depends on where you’re buying it tho.
They have an Aries Altair and Vega in their
Product lineup. Is the Aries the streamer to target?
So imo yes, because the aries is the most optimized one for sending data off to another dac being a purely digital outputting streamer, the vega is more focused on being a dac itself with streaming built in, and the altair aims to be an everything box more like a server, streamer, and dac
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Do you think this would be adequate to pair with a spring KTE via I2S? I inderstsnd it’s not as good as your g1 just wondering if passable.
I mean if you are looking for a good streamer then yes I think that would be a nice pairing with the spring. A don’t know about current software support though (so I don’t know how controlling it would go). Also not sure if that’s a good price or not, I don’t know pricing on it
Does the Holo stuff use a specific type of I2S connection?
I remember finding out the Holo stuff is not compatible with something like a Pi2AES via I2S somewhere…or is it the other way around?
I2S over HDMI, don’t know the pin out of it since I don’t use i2s on any of my dacs
Not sure, you would need to check the pinouts of the streamer and the dac to see if it’s compatible, one of them has the channels swapped I think
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There is no “standard” for Audio over I2S, some manufacturers do use the same protocol over HDMI.
I have no idea whether the Holo DAC’s are compatible with pi2AES, you’d have to ask someone who has tried it.
This is some of the different I2S implementations, note the PSAudio spec seems common and that’s likely what the Pi2AES uses.
Note this is not a complete list Aqua’s have I2S over RJ45 but it’s proprietary and isn’t documented.
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I had a Holo connected via HDMI I2S with a L.K.A S100 clock so find out whatever that uses and it will work.
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