For me it’s yet another thing to learn, maintain, and inevitably troubleshoot.
I readily admit that I have overcomplicated our house. While it was fun to do, the additive amount of maintenance and troubleshooting has become a bit tedious.
Frankly, I am becoming more and more interested in an integrated rig along with an outboard DAC (with built-in streaming). I would also consider an integrated with an endpoint in it that I could send USB out from it to a DAC and then from the DAC back to the integrated.
Same for years with IT multiple VLANs and routers and SSIDs and all sorts of servers and stuff, then there’s the hifi… fun and a learning / affirming experience! But then the admin becomes a bit tedious and things start breaking.
I seem to be simplifying more now. A bit. My wife would disagree no doubt
You should use what suits you best. Luckily we have choices.
My brother in law and his brother in law had an advertisement desktop publishing company. They used Apple computers because they had the best graphical performance of all systems at that time (Macintosh IIFx) and it was the only Operating System that enabled my brother in laws brother to actually work, due to the fact that nearly everything was controlled by a mouse, right from switching the computer on.
My brother in laws brother had a motorcycle accident when he was very young and the mobility of his fingers and lower part of body was gone. I have never seen somebody with such a will to move on in his life.
Despite the severe limitations that he encountered he amazingly became a painter, a real artist who made the most beautiful paintings and aquarelles. The paintings expressed his emotions during his fight of recovery after the accident. Then he started the desktop publishing and advertisement company with my brother in law. He had afforded himself a Macintosh IIFx and explored the full potential of that system. His artistic skills contributed to the success of the company. He did the Art part of the work and my brother in law the technical part, like 3D images and animations of technical products.
I was 16 when they started and they had fun teaching and demonstrating me their skills. I was allowed to perform the IT service on their system. Sadly about 17 years later my brother in laws brother passed away as his body appeared weaker than his mind. At that time he had left a rich collection of beautiful paintings and marked an important period in my life. Lessons not to forget. Needless to explain my passion for Apple products any further.
Today, my entire sound, computer, communication and light control system is Apple based. My son is senior sales person and technical service person at Apples largest reseller in The Netherlands. My wife and daughter have a total disinterest in technology, and are happy to use that system. My middle son is learning to become an App developer.
They were that successful with their company that they were able to afford one of the most beautiful high end systems I have seen and heard, SONY SACD player, DUAL (The original German made) top of the line turntable, Accuphase amplifiers and Martin Logan Planar speakers. Always fun to listen to.
All I use the iPad for is to control the streamers as I’m not an Apple guy either. Never owned one of their products personally before buying the first Aries and then started out with a gently used iPad Mini which I later gave to our daughter. Because of the strict software control all of the streamer software seems to work with less problems with IOS. Talked to Peter with Lumin, who do offer their software both ways, and he admitted that they have many more support requests with Android due to the number of variations from the original standard. With Roon other than the original setup of the unit don’t even know if the iPad would be necessary after that. I’ve tried other brands of streamers but always go back to Auralic as the main unit. Would like to try one of the new Innuos units but it appears again as with the release of the last Zenith units availability will be an issue for some time. The top of the line Pulsar unit has been delayed again and the Pulse units are hard to get too at least in the US.
I won’t go any further with tech drift other then the Mini I need to purchase for BACCH. I’ll remote control it with a Win11 laptop so no need for an iPad. If I had a choice to use a Win, Redhat, or Ubuntu OS I wouldn’t be buying the Mini. If the Mini becomes a hassle I’ll forego BACCH. I’ve read the BACCH tech is being licensed, so hopefully when that happens there will be a device that meets my needs and I’ll sell the Mini in the Marketplace.
As I said, I have zero interest in another operating system or device type to manage. I have several other interests that I prefer to spend my time on including starting to dedicate a consistent percentage of my time to volunteer work.
Interesting flexibility for those who want to put in the time and effort:
The beauty of the LINK II is that we have allowed for our more advanced users to install certain third party operating systems, if they wish to do so. Although the stackOS has been designed to optimise the performance, allowing our users to install these operating systems lets them get the best of what they want, out of the hardware.
But some of these newer units like the Red, the Zen Stream and others are small enough to hide out of sight. I’ve got a Zen Stream, which is certainly not attractive, sitting on the top shelf of the unit in my Family Room but if it bothered me it’s small enough to get out of sight. It replaced an Aries Mini which fit the “color scheme” but the Zen Stream was so superior that it didn’t matter what it looked like.
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