Sam Leach

I love them! I've got into them via PMC, then Adams and now ME Geithain. The last are not cheap, but I love the sound. I've also heard quite a few and if I didn't have Geithain I'd be looking at Quested. At the more affordable end, along with Adam I am a fan of Eve monitors which share some of the technology with Adam. It is a less laid back sound than passive floorstanders, but much more precise for equivalent price. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I feel like I must be extremely fickle, reading this because it is less than 12 months for all of the above for me - apart from speakers are a bit over 12 months . But I feel like I have been climbing a steep slope. I haven't really had the means to invest in serious hifi up until about 5 or so years ago. So I've done a lot of experimenting and learning. I have tended to buy things to try as I'm not really experienced enough to judge from a quick audition. Now I feel my system is getting close to something I want to live with for a longer time. Hopefully I will some day join the ranks of the zen like masters above who can get decades of satisfaction from quality components. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Cable quality makes a difference but it's relatively marginal. There are at least 1 million pages of opinions about cables out there so you can have a lot of fun reading that! Personally I Have found good value/performance from Supra and LHlabs lightspeed 1g. Best to buy cables second hand to try them out if you can. If you find an audiophile quality card with optical out, let me know! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It sounds to me like you need a usb converter rather than a DAC here. I have a somewhat similar scenario with one of my systems. I use an Ifi Ilink. It will do hd music up to 24/192. Do the AVI's also have spdif coaxial input? If so there are even more options for converters than if it only has optical. The AVI's are supposed to pretty good, although I haven't heard them myself. Best of luck! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Please forgive me if this is not a good question. I am fairly new at audio with PC, having previously used a Antipodes Dx server. I have just bought a second system with devialet Phantom speakers. These take optical input, or else stream via special Devialet app (which I personally don't really like). So I wonder about building or buying a good server with optical output - is there something like the SotM USB card but for toslink? Thanks

"But the DAW has big disadvantages for home playback: it's expensive, it's very complex, and it's not the greatest in managing a library with thousands of tracks." Hi Bob, I know this is going back some years for you now! But this post is very helpful!! I am just beginning to change my system around and I am going to be using digital crossovers: the speakers I have are Martion Bullfrogs, and they are "active" versions. In practice this means they do not have crossovers on board, but shipped with some fairly prosaic electronics to drive them: a minidsp and a fairly modest modified pro-amplifier. I have some decent amps I can hook up and I have bought a Lynx Hilo to work as the multichannel DAC. Anyway...on the subject of digital crossovers: I like to play some music from soundcloud and other streaming services from time to time when I am searching out new music. Puremusic seems like a great system, but if I use it to implement my crossover, I don't think I will be able to play my streaming media with it, will I? So I am looking at your Jackrouter/Pogue Bidule option, I think... And do you have any more wisdom acquired in the subsequent years that you could share? Thanks Sam