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To the OP, thank you very much for posting the link to Darko's article. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd certainly enjoy attending an audio show like he describes. As a white guy in my mid-40s who has neither the free time nor the money to devote to the pursuit of audiophile nirvana, I could relate to at least some of what Darko described. I do not have a dedicated listening room, and I never will. It would be a waste of a room for me. As much as I love music, I listen to it while I am doing other things. My primary audio setup surrounds my main desktop computer and is used only while I am using the computer. It is far from audiophile grade, but I'm fairly content with it for the time being. I recently bought into the Sonos ecosystem by picking up a couple of Play:1 speakers (one for the kitchen and one for the bedroom). Although they sound better than I expected them to, the best part is that I am listening to music more than I was before I picked them up.

I have not heard either of these, but I think you are correct that they both seem to be very well reviewed and should pair well. You might consider visiting the Emotiva forums to see if anyone there has used the LSR308s with a DC-1. The DC-1 has been on my short list for some time, but I'm now waiting to see what the upcoming ELAC actives are like before I make a decision.

I've obtained high-res and Redbook versions of a handful of my favorite albums, making sure that they were using the same masters (i.e., trying not to compare a new remastered version against one using an older master). In listening carefully and trying my best to hear any differences between them, I have generally been unable to do so. The few instances where I thought I might be able to pick out which was the high-res version, the differences between it and the Redbook version were far too small to justify the added expense associated with the high-res version. I guess for me it comes down to two main questions: 1. Can I reliably identify the difference between high-res and Redbook? 2. If so, is the difference great enough to justify the added cost of high-res? At least so far, the answers to both questions have been "no." That means that high-res appears to be a bad idea for me.

I'll be interested to see someone compare this with the Bifrost Multibit. If I understand the marketing materials correctly, the primary advantages of the Bifrost are the fact that it is upgradeable while the Modi is not and that it has a better power supply than the Modi. Assuming that one can live with not being able to upgrade the Modi, I'm curious how much of a difference the power supply makes in sound quality.

I have not heard any Peachtree products, so I can't help with that part of your question. Your Airmotiv speakers are powered and have an amp built in. That means that you do not need a separate amp. You don't even need a preamp; a DAC would be enough. As to whether your speakers are good enough that a DAC would make a difference, I would think that they should be.

I'm running the current version of A+ and El Capitan on a Mac Mini. While I haven't had any crashes, I have had a few unexplained audio drops where the song playing stops and then resumes after a couple seconds.

I have long been under the impression that the optical connections on Macs (i.e., the headphone jack) were limited to 24/96 and that if I wanted anything higher than that, I'd need to use USB. Using the optical connection of my 2008 iMac, this 24/96 limitation appeared to be accurate. I'm now using Audirvana Plus 2.5.3 on my new Mac Mini (2014) and have connected to my old Musical Fidelity V-DAC using the optical connection. If I enable "maximum rate upsampling" in Audirvana, the Audirvana window shows 24/192 but I get no sound at all. If I enable "power of 2 oversampling only," the Aurirvana window shows 24/176.4, and I have audio output. I'm not sure what to make of this since I thought optical wouldn't do higher than 24/96, and I am fairly sure that this old V-DAC maxes out at 24/96. Is this a bug with Audirvana Plus or do the optical connections on the newer Macs work differently from the old ones?

Mini arrived today, and setup was easy even though I haven't set one up before. From what I can tell so far, 8GB is going to be more than sufficient for everything I want to do. It lets me allocate 5GB to Audirvana for pre-buffering, which is more than I really need.

Thanks again for the help, everybody. I ordered the 2.6GHz i5 with 8GB of RAM and the 256GB flash drive.

Thanks for the input. Even if a SSD doesn't sound better in this application, I was thinking that it might make sense due to the increased longevity, reduced power usage, and added speed. It sounds like 8GB of RAM might be enough, and it would be nice to save some money. The only thing I worry about is whether 8GB will still be enough in a few years. But I guess there's no way to know that.

My mid-2008 iMac just died, leaving me without computer audio for the first time in a long time. My music library is stored on an external drive that was connected to this iMac, and I use Audirvana Plus to feed speakers through my DAC. It was a very simple setup that I have enjoyed for many years. Now I need to replace the source, and I am thinking that a Mac Mini probably makes the most sense. I’m already heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem, and I have little interest in streaming at this point in time. The plan would be to setup a headless Mini that will be used only for computer audio (mostly redbook, some 24/96 but no DSD). I plan to keep my music library on an external hard drive. In this scenario, is there anything you’d suggest changing about the following before I place the order: 2.6GHz Processor (I’m not sure if a faster processor would make a noticeable difference in audio quality, but I’d guess not) 16GB RAM (since it is not user replaceable, I figured it would be smart to get more than I probably need) 1TB hard drive (or should I consider a 256GB SSD for the operating system instead even though the music files will be on an external drive?) Thanks for your input.

I have all my music on an external hard drive at the moment, but I have been considering buying a NAS and moving it there. I'm still trying to learn about the differences. My thought is that having a NAS might make music streaming easier. I currently use an Airport Express to stream, and it has been far from reliable. I have to restart iTunes from my Mac almost every time I use it, which means I don't use it as much as I'd like. I've been thinking of moving to something like Sonos, but it occurs to me that a NAS might be helpful here too.

Thanks for this! I've been in the overwhelmed-by-all-the-options stage for a long time, and you have given me some good ideas here. The part about being honest about the type of music one will listen to has been a hang-up since I'm mostly into hard rock and metal, and this appears to put me at odds with those who write professional equipment reviews. I'm never going to listen to jazz or classical, so most reviews don't end up seeming terribly relevant. Floorstanding speakers are out for me due to space and furniture constraints, so I'll need to go with a bookshelf and subwoofer combo instead. So many speaker options! And while I do like the idea of an integrated DAC/amp, I'm inclined to go with separates so the DAC can be upgraded as technology changes without having to replace the amp.

I have been considering those KEF LS50s for awhile too for a similarly sized room. They certainly do get glowing reviews, don't they? From what I've read, it sounds like they might be a good fit for you. I haven't had the chance to hear them yet (and probably won't unless I buy them), but they are supposed to shine on vocals and be ideal for jazz. I would think they might be easier to position and more flexible in that way than the Maggies. Since my musical tastes lean more toward hard rock and metal, I'm not yet convinced that they make sense for me. I also keep seeing mention that they require pricey amplification to sound their best, and I'm still trying to sort out my budget and allocation. I'm also interested in the B&W 685 S2s and Ascend's Sierra line as possibilities. It would be great to have so many options if I had the chance to listen to them first!

Yes, I had been playing with the settings on my own without knowing what I was doing and I had forgotten what the default settings were. I think I ended up with the steepness way off of where it probably should be. This way I'll know how to get back to the default settings if I do any more experimenting. The Jud 2 & Superdad settings were a big improvement over what I had been trying on my own, but I seem to like the defaults even better.