linuxprophet

Perhaps Sir, we could make separate but open and unvarnished reviews of the cans and revert to our esteemed forum. I'm away from home at the moment, but should be back at the end of the month. I have 6 desktop DACs now, mainly for comparison and will use them as a part of the review of the Solitaire P, with the HA200 as reference - it's in my bedroom! I will have a review made by the end of the first week of February 2024, but despite being good with many tools, I sincerely doubt if I could ever be competent enough to offer such an in depth analysis as you do. I can only provide my tuppence worth. Best Regards.

I have both the Solitaire-P/HA200 Combo, and the Meze Elite, and I swear, in this life, I could not do justice to a review as @austinpop has done here!😁 Very well done. My range of audio for testing the same gear (for anyone who may be interested), is as follows: Private Life - Grace Jones Arpegiateur (Live) - Jean-Michel Jarre Watch Your Step - Darshan Ambient Mover - Darshan Ambient Slow Drum - Darshan Ambient Crystal Curfew - Tangerine Dream Till Tomorrow - Yello Love - Art of Noise Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' - Michael Jackson Essence - Justin Bieber/Wizkid Battlestar Galactica Main Theme - Bear McCreary Thanks to You - Boz Scaggs Uretan - Alos Quartet Your Love - So Good, I can Taste it (Part 1) - Barry White Mellow Mood Parts 1 & 2 - Barry White All Because of You - Barry White An Ending - Brian Eno Abisko - Ström Grey Sea - Darshan Ambient Summer Breeze - Steely M Allegretto Movement - Beethoven's 7th Symphony, Conducted by Herbert von Karajan (Deutsche Grammophon) 3rd Movement, Symphony #9 in D Minor, Op. 125 "Adagio molto e cantabile" - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan (Deutsche Grammophon)

The journey: I picked up my Aurender N30SA today, and had my first unboxing experience in 3 months (the last being the unboxing of the Magnetar UDP900 BluRay/SACD player). It's paired with my ever-so-awesome T+A DAC200. I tested with all ranges of DSD from DSD64 to DSD1024. Because the TA DAC200 sees the Aurender as a Linux source, it plays the DSD1024 FLAWLESSLY. The Amp setup is 2x T+A M200 (lows), 1x T+A A200. Speakers are the Sonus Faber Olympica Nova IIIs. I traded in the Hifi Rose RS180B for the Aurender (had to add a few coins though! Aurender ain't cheap!). Early comments: I love the warmth of the Aurender and compared certain tracks on Tidal to the T+A MP200 as source. The latter is brighter, but the Aurender, definitely more matured. I connected an external USB-C based 8TB NVMe DataCenter Drive to copy files to the unit (alas, the N30SA only supports SATA SSD/Spindle drives - not U.2 NVMe! Pity) Early days yet. Will allow for 72 hours burn-in then will be back.

@OE333I actually never thought of 4 x M200s! Great idea. I have 2xM200 for lows and 1 x A200 for the Mids/High. When I am rich, win the lottery, or a satellite falls on my BMW i7, I might be able to afford another pair of M200s

@Hydrology You most certainly won't regret it. I first purchased the DAC200, and a pair of M200s last November. In January I added the MP200. The manual was so tempting, that I purchased a single A200 for the Highs/Mid for my Sonus Faber Olympica Nova IIIs and the M200s for the Lows. The HA200 is in a separate room for private listening with the Solitaire P. Be prepared! Your favourite music will sound 'unlocked'. I can't say more about the quality of dedication by the T+A team to excellence. now, if only I could afford the Aurender N30... A guy can only dream!

Now why didn't I think of that 🤥? @OE333 I am grateful.

Many, many thanks indeed. Most appreciated.

I am an avid fan of Calm Radio, especially the sleep channels. I'd love to add some favourite URLs to the MP200 but am at a loss as to how. If there is also a method for the HiFi Rose RS 180B, that would be most appreciated.

How I can connect a SVS Powered sub with the Sonus Faber Olympica Nova IIIs to the M200s? Any thoughts @OE333? Thanks.

Unboxing generally, is a kind of a personal high. I don't know if it's the same for other esteemed members here. For me personally, Unboxing experience for the T+A gear was special. I can't say if it was because of the packaging or the sheer feel of the aluminum kit therein. The only other comparison I had was probably unboxing the Oppo PM-1s when they came out a few years ago. Then you connect it all, and spend hours tweaking, listening to various material, comparing with similar gear, and generally behaving like a 5 year old with a new Lego set. Kudos to the design teams, the quality of the equipment and the ability to use tools like HQP with them.

@Nkam I have used the HA200 with OVS set to NOS2 with HQP in Ubuntu LTS 22.04 to sample DSD1024, DSD512 and various DXD and PCM files up to 768k with no issues. I would presume the DAC 200 should perform the same. Totally lost with the ΣΔ though

Wow! This is excellent information, which only an insider can provide. There are RS232 D-SUB to RJ45 cables available (like the ones used for CISCO Routers). Or D_SUB to USB as stated earlier. I think a step-by-step guide for those who may not be too familiar with the cables or process might be handy. Thank you OE333.

Wow! Allan. That wasn't a very nice brief! He ought to have been magnanimous and won you over. Perchance you could purchase the cable as you suggest and try the upgrade yourself. IMHO - I wouldn't buy stuff from that fellow. He obviously lacks business acumen and a spirit to win over a new customer. I wish you the very best friend.

Just my thoughts on the subject. I usually treat any firmware updates with great caution, given some past bad experiences over the years. It's only a personal opinion and not a professional one of which I'm no authority.

I concur... Updating firmware via PCs is a dodgy enterprise at best. Anything could go wrong, from sudden power drops, to missed connections, to Cylons sucking the power dry at the worst moment. Even using the MP200, I had to run the process a couple of times for each of the DAC200 and HA200, but the MP200 is very well designed, and best suited to carry out the job where a failure occurs. As @jonniema suggested, if you don't own an MP200, please find a dealer who does, and take your prized device there for an update. I especially would not attempt this update with any version of MS Windows... IMHO!