Crumbum

At UK prices anyway. The standard SB costs £200, but upgrading the clock and PSU courtesy of Fidelity Audio takes it to £650. Which could be a neat way of buying a great DAC in stage payments. I wonder how it compares to products in the $1000 bracket? I should probably ask in the SB forum.

The whole system has gone. I did describe it as 'late lamented'. The budget is fluid! I don't want to buy things that I'll need to upgrade too soon. Does the Squeezebox approach reference standards when it has the Fidelity Audio upgrade(s)? It might be a good way of spreading the expenditure.

Thanks Eloise, much food for thought. I don't have my reference system any more - it was a pre-recession luxury. But I hope to get back to that level. Do you include the Musical Fidelity V-DAC in your list of posh kit? Or were you thinking of the M1?

Hello everyone, I'm another confused noob starting from scratch. I have a couple of laptops and a bunch of FLACs. Most are CD rips, some are 24/96. As I try to understand how to build a system which will eventually match my late lamented Mark Levinson CD player with ATC 100 active speakers, I'm running into lots of questions. Here are my thoughts so far. I would really, really appreciate it if somebody could point out my mistakes. Q. What's a good affordable DAC that won't need upgrading if/when I eventually get a reference amp and speakers? A. The Squeezebox Touch has a hi-fi quality DAC which gets rave reviews from seriously snobby reviewers, and its vendor and customers will ensure it gets better and better firmware. Q. What about 24/96? A lot of affordable DACs don't support it. A. The Squeezebox Touch does! Q. Do I need a really fancy optical link between my laptop and my DAC to get a good enough connection for 24/96 files? And does my laptop even have the right outputs? A. Forget about it! The Squeezebox does it wirelessly! Q. Will I need a remote? A. No. Just run the free Logitech app on the laptop. Q. Do I need a specialised super-expensive disk? A. No. Just plug an ordinary disk into the Squeezebox. Anything with its own power supply will do. Your comments please. I really need help from you guys. I can barely spell 24/96/.