Nikko1960

HNY to you too, Miguel. Please find attached a screen shot of my settings. Note that I am converting to a DSD stream. I throttle the volume back to -3.4db to prevent clipping. But I leave bits set to auto. Someone told me some time back that the bits setting only matters when you upsample to PCM. All the best Nikko

Agree 100% on the ER. I added a mid-spec AfterDark clock with their matching LPSU. Made a great product significantly better. I suspect we may see a future ER with a premium clock. If in doubt, put your toe in. The water is fine. Nikko

I use HQPlayer with my Baltic3, up sampling to DSD256 from red book and Tidal high Rez formats. Upsampling has a huge positive impact to the sound. Jussi’s ECv2 modulators are simply superb. Although people on the HQP forums rave about the ASDM7ECv2 modulator, I find that the 5th order variant yields the most organic sound from the Baltic3. There are lots of filters to choose from but my current fav is guass-long for red book and the high-Rez variant for Nx. Any Lampizator owners can give HQPlayer a test, since Jussi offers a trial version. I run it on a dedicated Mac Mini M1 & 8GB ram, and it upsamples to DSD256 using the heavy modulators without issue. nikko

LOL - I have run out of room on my rack. And, in any case, I think I would upgrade the clock (again) as the next step.

I actually started out with the Queen (I was a bit of a sceptic and didn't want to splurge on an expensive one). After six months, I contacted Adrian and he was kind enough to offer me 100% trade-in value against the Emperor Crown SE which is what I have now. Another major upgrade. I may end up selling it onto a pal and going for the top of the range. Yes, you need to power it with an LPSU. I have the basic AD unit and it's fine. I told my pal that, IMHO, the ER is simply a vehicle to introduce a really good clock into the digital stream. I couldn't be happier.

In my experience, adding a mid-range AD clock (with AD LPSU and top-of-the-range AD clock cable) made as much improvement as adding the ER in the first place. It is not trivial nor subtle.

That's interesting advice. On Jussi's downloads links, there is only a link to the universal version. Am I missing something?

They are all the same. The nice thing about them is that you can add an external clock at a later date and get another huge uplift to SQ. I bought an Afterdark OCXO clock and matching LPU from Adrian (see his paid forum on this site). I got the Emperor Crown SE version and am really, really happy with it and the ER combo.

Indeed it does. Like you, I was doubtful as to how much a clock could add to an ethernet switch (although the impact of the ER was by then clear to me). Therefore, I bought the entry-level Queen clock and LPS combo to begin with and, wow, nice improvement. So much so that, six months later, I upgraded the clock to the Emperor Crown SE, a move made easier by the 100% refund Adrian kindly offered against returning the Queen. I upgraded to his Black River clock cable at the same time. The improvement was not even subtle. I managed to convince a friend to buy an ER first, and then an Afterdark clock/LPS combo. As I put it to him, the ER is just a vehicle to introduce the magic of a high quality OCXO clock into the reproduction stream.

Maybe I missed something on the cable discussion. But if (like me) you have the AD clock, why not (also like me) buy their top cable? https://www.adark.co/products/afterdark-project-clayx-black-river-carbon-fiber-woven-xlr-cable

Yeah, fully checking the Multi DSP flag is the key here with the M1. I used to have it greyed "let HQP manage core allocation" but after the upgrade to Monterey and 4.15.0, the system would stutter on Nx, 96KHz material, with EVv2 mods and anything other than the -2s modulators. Thanks to your tip, I am back up & running with the filter of my choice and ECv2. Thank you!!

Thanks, but I will try the MacOS upgrade first.

Okay, will give that a try! Thanks

Same here. Anyone know what link to use to download HQP 4.14.0 for ARM Mac Mini please? I just downloaded 4.15.0 and stupidly blew away the old release. Only to find that 4.15.0 crashes on launch every time. TIA!

I can highly recommend the following which has made a huge difference to the music coming out of my Baltic3: EtherRegen, powered by Uptone LPS; AfterDark Emperor Crown SE OCXO clock, powered by AfterDark LPS, with a Black River clock cable to the ER; Sonore UltraRendu. I've had the UltraRendu and EtherRegen for ages and, of course, thought they made a big contribution to the relaxed, detailed sound coming from the Lampi. But the addition of the clock made the most profound difference since I introduced the DAC. This is a *highly* recommended addition. I also use HQPlayer and Jussi's new modulators have also improved things. I've never been happier and this is playing through a power amp (Boulder) and speakers (JM Labs) that are >25 years old.