As a recent, and very happy, owner of a pair of M700’s I’ve been contemplating what other sound quality gains I can get out of my living room AV setup. I have a 2.0 system with all my source cables running directly into the TV and a TOSLINK audio return from the TV to my receiver. (Onkyo 805 receiver is pre-4K/HDR so it is on audio processing duty only). My TV will pass DD 5.1 from multi-channel sources and I cannot force it downmix to stereo. Will the gain cell dac downmix a 5.1 signal into proper 2.0? The 2.0 A/V market seems completely overlooked, or maybe I’m the only person looking for this type setup… I don’t want to pay for a 7.1 or 11.2 processor to “only” use 2 channels. I would love to have something as simple, small, and sound quality focused as the GCD handle my audio downmixing and DAC processing but I’m not sure such a product exists.
Thank you for the information and suggestions! My current primary sources are a AppleTV 4K and a Xbox One, digging into the settings of each, both can force stereo only ouput. So with that issue out of the way onto bigger and better questions…
What are everyone’s thoughts on the advantages of a Directstream Jr. streaming Tidal vs. a Blusound Node 2 into a SGCD? The stellar gain cell DAC option is only $2200 vs. $4000 for the Directstream Jr. I’ve spent my whole life around quality audio, however, I’ve never been able to compare DACs directly so I’m not aware of what kind of advantages the Jr. would provide over the SGCD & Node 2 combo?
My stereo rig is in the living room and therefore not a dedicated listening space. I’m using M700’s to power JTR 212RT speakers, which is an incredibly powerful and resolving combo by the way, and I’m looking to be able to stream Tidal and my digital music library (no analog sources) without having to use the AppleTV or some other video dependent source.
I will attest that DSD in the SGCD is in another league altogether.
I have basically found how to maximize SQ from the SGCD and its basically emulating to a small degree what is going on in the DS. I use computer software to use a pretty good low latency linear phase hpf to remove the aliasing and then upsample using extremely gently linear filters, then go to DSD128 and force the ultrasonic noise as high as possible. There are clearly differences between my implementation and the DS but I feel I might have pushed the SGCD up a significant notch closer.
The Bluesound is not going to have a good power supply and that’s gonna be suboptimal.
Ultrarendu is a good option for $850 but then you need an Sbooster power supply to run it $300.
Try to save $ and put in 2 dedicated 20A circuits in!