Nyce - what is your server? Think I got the rest of the chain, just not what the server is, and so what may have been involved in moving it to the other room.
Wow after reading all the posts in this thread there is so much to learn about streaming players/transports. I’ve read most the posts and what I’m taking from them so far is get the ethernet cables, computers and cores as far from the preamp and dac as possible. So the solution that most have success with is Sonore fiber and Auralic WiFi options. I personally am working with a $2000-3000 streaming budget. I still have to learn more about the Sonore products but the Auralic G1 is looking like a great option with WiFi.
Right now I use a nucleus as my core/streamer connected to a matrix Spdif to the DirectStream. I thought the jump from a Mac mini to the nucleus was huge so reading about Sonore, Auralic, Lumin etc… has me craving even better sound! I’d love to here what you’d chose for $3k or less?
Initially the server and streamer was an Innuos Zenith Mk 3 running experimental mode. After buying the Sonore Signature Rendu SE Optical the Innuos was demoted to server only duties but the uptick in SQ was large once the Sonore was added to the system. As an experiment I then built a pretty good custom fanless server (Apacer RAM, Optane, LPS, all the good stuff) running Euphony and AB’d that with the Innuos, both doing server only duties in the listening room. The Innuos was slightly better which I put down to better isolation.
I then moved both servers to a remote room and AB’d again, this time no difference between Innuos and my custom build but both sounded better in the new location than they had in the listening room. Removed the LPS from my custom build replacing it with a switching DC brick, again, no difference.
At that point I couldn’t justify the Innuos and sold it. For all the AB-ing both a Matrix and Etheregen were in the chain and both servers acted as Roon cores.
I think as a one box server/streamer solution the Innuos is great and if your server has to be in your listening room it does make sense if you don’t mind the spend. However, in my system, moving the server remotely provides the best SQ and saved me a lot of money.
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Caution: grass is always greener on the other side! I strongly recommend you try before you buy.
There is no truth in the question what sounds best, as there is no true answer to the question if a banana tastes better than an apple. Everybody has their own opinion. However, I believe there are a few fundamental which are important for good SQ. The signal at the DAC input should be as clean as possible, without disturbances, and have a correct timing.
So this means that you should avoid long electrical signal cables which acts as antennas, both sending out and receiving disturbances. This is why optical fibre is better electrical cables. You should avoid heavy working processors which generates a lot of noise close to the DAC. You should feed the DAC with as clean power as possible (without disturbances), and the clocking of the signal should be as accurate as possible.
Whoever can handle these parameters best will make the best streamer (and it is probably not a Mac or a Windows PC)
OK - so makes sense if you have separate server and endpoint. As far as cost, the SSRSE ain’t exactly a cheap device, so it’s good you were able to save on the front end.
So is the ER fitted with an SFP, and is it in the other room, or next to the SSRSE?
Very interesting, but did you feed the Lumin, Auralic, etc with fibre optics, or was this with an electrical Ethernet cable?
SSRSE - I like this way better than typing out the silly long name Sonore gave it although I’m going to add an ‘O’ for optical. 
ER is fitted with a single-mode SFP Finisair cage (as is the SSRSEO) and it sits in the listening room running B->A. To my ears single-mode was a tick nicer than multi-mode and the Finisher cages 1.5 ticks better than the others I tried.
I’ve only fed the Sonore with opticals, the Lumin and Auralic offerings don’t have that option, unless you go for an X1 I believe.
I meant if you had an optical link between the server and the streamer as an isolator, and then just a very short electrical cable connecting the optical end point (whatever brand) to the streamer. Maybe it is the optical isolation before the streamer that does all the improvement in SQ, not the streamer itself?
“SSR-SEO, SSR-SEO, SSR-SEO
And Rendu was his name - O”
I’ve never cared for their product names either. Rendu? Sounds like a name from the mind of George Lucas😝
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This statement might be true. It’s a common audiophile refrain. Yet very little effort has been put forth to prove that statement as true. It hasn’t been proved either by measurements nor by blind listening tests on any scale.
Our hobby is riddled with similar unproven beliefs. It’s really not that much different than a Bronze Age creation myth.
I’m not saying our audiophile rituals and belief systems aren’t true, only that they are unproven.
The least reliable person in a criminal trial is the eyewitness. Our minds are notoriously unreliable. This is why science develops methods to see through that unreliability. Measurements are one thing, but also important would be some scientifically designed listening tests, which are almost nonexistent in audiophile land.
Our primary metric seems to be what a bunch of primarily old white guys are willing to spend 
I think adding an optical link (FMC) between the streamer and server would help with isolation etc, others have done this to good effect, but not to the extent of having optical straight into the streamer with no hops, not to mention the complexity of choosing the right power source for the FMCs and choosing the right ethernet cable. Direct optical into the streamer is the route both Lumin and Sonore use for their top models, no doubt after extensive testing (I know this to be true on Sonore’s part).
I agree, fibre directly into the streamer is probably the right way to go. But I didn’t know that Lumin had a product for this. Do you know which one? Are there any other manufacturers who have streamers with an optical Ethernet input?
But music is about taste, like bananas and apples. There is no absolute measurable truth. What sounds good to one person might sound awful to another. It is all about how our senses interpreter our surroundings, and this very subjective. Even though I am an engineer I admit that taste can’t be measured. But even though I can’t prove it I think that it is quite safe to assume that the less distorted a signal is, the closer it comes to the origin. So a signal without disturbances is probably sounding closest to the origin. But that doesn’t say it sounds good, I have heard a lot of music which in my ears sounds awful.
Very true. This is why I want my next stereo to have a “Make It Sound Good To Me” button. Through a process of listening tests and DNA analysis, the stereo will come to know what actually sounds good to me. Then it will analyze all incoming music and determine, what, if anything needs to be done to make it sound good to me. If the original recording is excellent, it will enter into a mode of purifying the signal in order to realize the majesty of the original recording. If the original recording is not to my sonic tastes, the stereo will enter a different mode and use whatever means necessary, more noise, EQ, whatever the aliens that developed this technology recommend, to yield a result that perfectly matches my personal tastes.
And all of this will be accomplished for under $1000.
You describe the Bose effect to a T.
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Hello @badbeef, are you still using the Auralic Aries G1? I’m currently looking at one and my Auralic dealer also has a G2 and G2.1 floor models for sale. The G2 is $500 more and the G2.1 is $1100 more. Just curious on your opinion about the Auralic? Seems like a lot of noise potentially generated by ethernet is eliminated by utilizing the WiFi feature. Thanks
Haha. If the aliens developed Bose, then we need to find a better sort of alien…
I have the Auralic Altair G1 and it sounds great. The cost was about $2500. It was a game changer for me. I have listened to more music in the past seven month since I bought it than I have in a number of years combined. I primarily use it to play all the CDs/SACDs in my collection that I have ripped and I have Qobuz.
If you are interested, Auralic has a forum community like this one too.
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