Comments on Profile Post by Inoculator

Interesting. Say more. How would you set that up with AV receiver? Wouldn't a pass through via preamp mean you could use the receiver's ARC?

I have to say that a really intriguing box I played around with the Anthem STR preamp. After driving myself nuts trying to blend a pair of subs manually, I tried the ARC in the STR, and not only was it less than a twenty-minute job, it was much better in almost every aspect.

I don't think the DAC in the STR is amazing or anything, but the much superior mains-sub integration made far more difference than I think any higher end DAC would have.

Eventually, I need to figure out how the hell to incorporate an HT receiver and surrounds into a 2ch system with the Enleum and Klipsch. Probably not using the STR.

@wbass that is the challenge, the primary way to integrate is AVR but many of their DACs leave a lot to be desired. I initially got a taste of how nice HDMI ARC is when I was using a NAD M33 in the living room.

When I switched to the Enleum I paired a Hifi Rose 150B due to having ARC, and am using it as a streamer/DAC/pre, but it is only a digital pre. So few options out there. I have a NAD M66 on order because I miss some of the functionality I had with the M33 and it has a proper resister based volume control/pre rather than just digital attenuation.

All that being said, I was thinking about this today because the Emotiva XDA-3 came on my radar which is a DAC with preamp and ARC input all for only $699. More folks should be rolling this into their DACs IMO

I just use ARC through my modded Oppo BDP-103D blu-ray player and send that to my Yggdrasil. Otherwise I'd just use an optical cable. HDMI sucks and the standards change all the time. Never again will I combine so many functions into one box like a streamer/DAC/pre. Keep the analog stuff separate at least!

Ha, I think we've got our acronyms crossed. I was thinking of Active Room Correction, but I think you mean Audio Return Channel. My bad. I had an interesting system going where I ran the Anthem STR pre/DAC/processor main outs into HT bypass inputs of an ARC (Audio Research Corporation, ha!) tube pre and the STR's sub outs to a pair of 15in subs.

That way I could have an all-analog, all-tube chain for vinyl, and an a digital, DSP-room-correct very full-range chain for streaming. I thought it worked great. (But all of this maybe less relevant to your post. Apologies.)