matt4541

Thanks, I had not seen that option. Is it worth getting the battery power supply to go with it? Other than the CAPS/Mac option, the only other thing I have seen quite a bit is the Auralic Aries. Is the Aries worth the money over the SMS-100?

I am looking for the best sounding audio streamer. I know and have seen many other posts talking about the same topic but my only concern is getting the best sound. My current setup: Synology DS1812+>Custom PC>Mcintosh C50 via USB(has DAC built in)>Dynaudio C1 I want to replace the PC. I am open to just about every option, just looking for the best sound. I want to eventually play DSD but don't need to do any transcoding. I have looked into CAPS/Mac Mini but I am going to use my current custom PC for all other streaming video etc. This device will be for audio only. Trying to keep it around $1-2,000. thanks

$1,350 Shipped

1,450 Shipped

I will definitely try this tonight. This sounds way easier than the time spent messing with all the EQ. What is the ideal distance from the wall?

Yea, I recently moved and my old listening room was a good bit smaller. Also, with the new house, the bonus room doesn't have much furniture. Mainly just a couch and ottoman on the listening side of the room. There is actually a tall plant in front of the window already, I guess it's nice when things work out. I will eventually add more furniture, but it won't be anytime soon. I guess this will be about as good as it will get with what I have now. Thanks again for all the advice.

I did some EQ tweaking last night on J river and on my sub and greatly improved the sound. It still seems to be lacking dynamics and a little dull.

Last night I was able to get actual dimensions and distances. The room dimensions are 22x17, the walls go up 5' the take the pitch of the roof. The ceiling is 11' high. The speakers are 6.5' apart and are 12.3' from me. The speakers are 2' from the wall. My seat is about 3.2' from the back wall. The speakers are pretty much pointed straight at me, maybe a bit out. I was also able to re-tune the eq and I messed with the frequency of the sub and it helped tremendously. Changing the sub frequency definately tightened up the bass and it much better, but I plan to get a dedicated sub for my stereo system when I can. I still just used my iPhone to tune the EQ, what type of mic and RTA would you recommend?

Well my room is quite strange, it is a bonus room over a garage. It is 20x15, the walls go up about 5' then take the pitch of the roof to about 15' high. Also on the left wall of the speakers there is a large double window with elliptical window above it. It does have carpet.

Thanks, I will look at that article. I am hoping the problem is in the eq. I plugged up my home theater sub and it does exactly what you said, completely drowns out the main channels unless I turn it almost all the way down. I'll check on the crossover point on the sub and I will try to reset the eq. From reading ecwl's post, even though I have eq on my preamp I'm going to bypass it and set the eq on J River. For now all I have is my iPhone and audio tools but eventually I would like to look into a real audio analyzer and do some room correction. Hopefully I'll have better results tonight, thanks again

Getting passed the fact of having two PC's. I have done some looking and I have found that it was better to have the music at a different location than the listening computer. Is this not the case? I used to use a NAS but my other media tasks were CPU intensive for it. I use this server client setup because I have another smaller stereo setup in a different part of the house.

I actually have bought his book and arranged the speakers. The placement greatly helped the stereo imaging but where I feel it lacking is a level of warmth or depth. I also took Jim's opinion in tuning the EQ. I played pink noise and used my iPhone with the audio tools app. I tried tuning the best I could but I couldnt get it completely flat. I have tried using my home theater subwoofer but it doesn't sound that well with the C1's.

The first PC is a server with all of my media for the whole house.

thanks, I'm open to suggestions. Yes, the first PC is setup as a media server. It's a J river server and plex video server.

My current setup which I am trying to slowly upgrade. Custom pc running a J River server then to another custom pc playing the music (all wired connections). Then going to a McIntosh C50 through a generic USB cable which I plan to upgrade soon. Currently I am between stereo amps and am using 2 extra channels from my Lexicon RX-7 home theater amp. Then Dynaudio Confidence C1 Signature's using transparent super speaker cables and XLR cables to the amp. The sound still seems like its lacking. I've been looking searching around the site and I'm not sure if its the amplifier or maybe room correction. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks