I am thinking of buying a factory refurbished dCS Scarlatti DAC and there are some options I have with different possible configurations and I am looking for some guidance on what would be best.
I have nearly all my music stored on NAS in either red-book flac rips or, increasingly, high-definition downloads. I have no SACD’s – which I would like to be able to play but its not a high priority. I am using the JRiver media centre on an NUC PC running Ubuntu. I like this setup as there is a good remote control for JRiver and it supports software up-sampling which I have found to be beneficial. It also has awesome cataloging capabilities. However I do think it can be improved by building a better quality PC around the SOtM tX-USBexp USB card.
Currently this feeds a Chord 2-cute DAC through a KT88 based class-A PP amplifier into a pair of Tannoy Kensington’s. The amplifier may get upgraded at some point but atm I think the source is the weak link.
I have identified some options around a refurbished dCS Scarlatti within my budget:
(1) Scarlatti DAC + Master Clock. Retain current media server connected asynchronously via USB to the master clock. Upsampling continues to be done in software by Jriver.
(2) Scarlatti DAC + Up-sampler. Retain current media server connected asynchronously via USB to the up-sampler with the up-sampler (or the DAC?) being used as the master clock.
(3) dCS Network bridge and Scarlatti DAC. No up-sampling except via Roon and the DAC acting as the master clock. This feels expensive for a media server which I can build cheaper and remain in control of. However I am sure that this would be a very high quality streamer.
(4) Something else?
Music is mainly classical with some Jazz and I value the way I can organize that in JRiver. For options (1) or (2) I would probably eventually build the new media server myself anyway and power the USB card with a battery.
Any thoughts on which would be the best option greatly appreciated.
I am thinking of buying a factory refurbished dCS Scarlatti DAC and there are some options I have with different possible configurations and I am looking for some guidance on what would be best.
I have nearly all my music stored on NAS in either red-book flac rips or, increasingly, high-definition downloads. I have no SACD’s – which I would like to be able to play but its not a high priority. I am using the JRiver media centre on an NUC PC running Ubuntu. I like this setup as there is a good remote control for JRiver and it supports software up-sampling which I have found to be beneficial. It also has awesome cataloging capabilities. However I do think it can be improved by building a better quality PC around the SOtM tX-USBexp USB card.
Currently this feeds a Chord 2-cute DAC through a KT88 based class-A PP amplifier into a pair of Tannoy Kensington’s. The amplifier may get upgraded at some point but atm I think the source is the weak link.
I have identified some options around a refurbished dCS Scarlatti within my budget:
(1) Scarlatti DAC + Master Clock. Retain current media server connected asynchronously via USB to the master clock. Upsampling continues to be done in software by Jriver.
(2) Scarlatti DAC + Up-sampler. Retain current media server connected asynchronously via USB to the up-sampler with the up-sampler (or the DAC?) being used as the master clock.
(3) dCS Network bridge and Scarlatti DAC. No up-sampling except via Roon and the DAC acting as the master clock. This feels expensive for a media server which I can build cheaper and remain in control of. However I am sure that this would be a very high quality streamer.
(4) Something else?
Music is mainly classical with some Jazz and I value the way I can organize that in JRiver. For options (1) or (2) I would probably eventually build the new media server myself anyway and power the USB card with a battery.
Any thoughts on which would be the best option greatly appreciated.