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JRiver Synapse -- Would you consider a $395 Audiophile DLNA Renderer?

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oldzorki:

--- Quote from: GreggP on April 06, 2014, 11:42:34 pm ---HDMI and S/PDIF aren't ideal for DACs. Both have problems with clocking (and jitter). If you are looking for a high quality, well engineered audio solution, you need an interface that has the master clock on the DAC.

--- End quote ---
I2S probbaly will be ideal out for some high-end DACs.

davide256:
I don't see a value at that price point... the Oppo 103 is only $100 more and plays discs as well as being a DLNA controller and renderer.

Samson:
Something along the lines of a Brix pro would be interesting, admitedly more of a server. My undestanding (rightly or wrongly) is that you can not acquire boards with crystal well HD5200 Gt3e Iris Pro integrated graphics. I gather they are soldered onto the board and sold as "trays" to OEM vendors. If JRiver qualified as a vendor it could produce a low powered NUC or small HTPC based on one of these Haswell/crystal wells. The unit could come with MC preinstalled on windows or mac. This would cover most (not all) video needs without the need for a large, noisy, power consuming video card.Optional USB host card could be added for audiophiles.

Mark Powell:

--- Quote from: Samson on April 16, 2014, 07:22:21 am ---Ouch ! You can get a bit perfect DAC for around $395 ....only audiophile Dacs cost $12k ;-)

--- End quote ---

I know. But I try to do my 'audiophile' stuff in the right places  :)

And that starts at the DAC as you can't do better than 'bit perfect' from the source. Which is why some of these 'unapproved' JRiver plug ins are a waste of money, mentioning no names. Then speakers. Amplifiers (I use Naim) don't matter too much as any half-decent amp will distort much less than the DAC or speakers (the speakers distort most of all). After 35 years in the computer industry I know how computers work, unlike so many 'experts' I see on one particular forum. If they knew how they worked too we would not see all this nonsense about trigger reference level voltage, leading edge slope, linear power supplies, and stuff. Maybe  jitter and clocking is nonsense  too. A decent DAC can deal with all that,  most of which does not occur anyway. The 'experts' all seem to forget that the 0 or the 1 is detected in the middle of the pulse, both vertically and horizontally, so such things don't matter at all.  Such people are not 'experts' in any way. For example 'leading edge slope' doesn't happen on USB as many  of the pulses don't have leading edges anyway due to the NRZI coding USB uses. You don't need a fancy high priced source.

The one thing I won't buy is a DAC that needs the +5 volts from the source for its USB connection. That can inject noise straight into the DAC. Not even my earlier $300 Cambridge Audo Dacmagic needed that but amazingly some of the expensive ones still do.  But my dCS doesn't.

So JRiver's simple box would do me fine  :).  JRiver Media Centre is as good as any other software player, maybe better than most, and hopefully this little box will be the same.

Beamer:

--- Quote from: oldzorki on April 16, 2014, 04:10:47 pm ---I2S probbaly will be ideal out for some high-end DACs.

--- End quote ---

Why build something that most members of this forum know how to build themselves of for that matter buy in a fan less case?

The NUC loaded with JRiver is easy to build, be it Windows or Linux. The more specialised job in HARDWARE is getting the audio cleanly to the DAC or converted to analogue within the 'box'.  Since we are reaching for audiophile quality IMHO a high end USB/SPDIF bridge would be needed unless you go the whole hog and include a high end DAC.

Given enough demand ~$400 could might be enough to cover the bridge option!

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