Gear you wish existed

I wish Schiit could be stood up vertically w/o running into heating issues so I'd have more desk space.

 

A laptop generating very clean usb signals..

 

I love Yggdrasil with speakers, but my comment was tongue-in-cheek. I haven't heard a good analog rig, but the attributes you described are there in spades compared to other digital I've heard on my speaker/headphone rigs (both were Sabre-based).

 

Harbeth? Especially the M40.2's.

Louis Chochos of Omega will build you stuff like that for 3k. You can even get a custom build if you contact him, with say the 6.5" Alnico + 12" deepOmega, 95dB/W. (although that 'sub' is amp'd, you can ask him to leave it out.)

 

IEMs which 'suck up' that occlusion effect without losing isolation. I'm tired of tip-toeing..

 

I'd like an appliance that can bridge between my NAS and DAC and remove my PC from the path. It doesn't need to have a DAC, I like my mine. It does need to support browsing by directory structure. I've built a directory structure that I like and have no interest in tagging 650G in FLAC files. No spinning things of any variety, they all make noise. Is a UI that doesn't suck to much to ask?

Wife friendly would be nice. It would be a whole lot easier to justify if she could operate it, too.

Seems that Roon added directory functionality with the last release. Lack of directory support was a show stopper last time I looked.

 

Pretty much any DLNA/UPnP solution will do that. Depending on your NAS, the server software may be able to run on that directly. Otherwise there are myriad server solutions, some of which are free, none of which are expensive, and there are a variety of clients available. Most of them will do directory browsing, as well as all the usual indexed meta-data - the better ones have very good interfaces.

Sonore SonicOrbiter SE, Aries and Aries Mini, any number of RPi-based setups, etc.

 

Sounds like you could use a Raspberry Pi 3 and Volumio. Pretty cheap too. The case options are cheap and relatively attractive also:

https://www.amazon.com/Official-Ras...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=SSN2ZA3J18P0EPM27EWV

 

A compact (Parasound Zamp-sized) integrated DAC-amp that combined:
1) DSP bass management and bandwidth-limited room correction (so as to actually correct for room modes rather than equalizing speakers) for loudspeakers,
2) Low noise headphone amp with adjustable gain, crossfeed and, if not fully adjustable PEQ. at least a couple brightness filters,
3) Loudness compensation, and
4) AirPlay

Such a component could replace wires and 3 boxes on or under my desk: miniDSP DDRC-22D for room correction, miniDSP PWR-ICE125 for mains amplification, HeadRoom Desktop Amp for headphones.

 

Anthem and NAD have integrated amps that can do all you want except probably a headphone section. The problem is thry will be all employing class D amplification, sounds a bit sterile. Although I understand that's the future.

 

First, the headphone section is important because that's what gets me from two audio boxes on my desk to one.

Second, unfortunately Anthem/Paradigm botched the PW Amp by using PlayFi instead of AirPlay, and then compounded the error by failing to include a wired digital input for desktop use. Anthem would be a great company to make the box I want. ARC is superb room correction, and Anthem started as the budget line for Sonic Frontiers. The classic Sonic Frontiers tube preamps actually licensed HeadRoom's crossfeed circuit for their headphone amp.

Third, I'm not aware of a desktop-sized integrated DAC-amp from NAD with bass management and room correction. Link?

As an aside, this "Class D sounds sterile" business is silly. Good class D - i.e. low noise floor and load-invariant frequency response - does not have a sonic signature. I wouldn't call bad class D "sterile" necessarily either. If anything, bad class D sounds more like tubes, because it has the same objective flaw as many tubes: frequency response that changes with the impedance curve of the speaker it drives.

 

I thought the NAD Master series has built-in room correction, my bad, doesn't look like they do.

I tried a Devialet unit with my system for a while, they are Class A + D. Sounded sterile to me, although that's compared to my First Watt amp which has a "tubey" quality associated with it. Don't have experience with HyoeX Ncore, those are supposed to be better. I am sure I will eventually switch to Class D, a lot more practical and "green".

 

Hypex, Pascal, Anaview etc make SOTA class D modules.

 

I'd like to see an ultrasonic record cleaning machine that is built, all sorted out (including reliability) and about $500.

 

According to Schiit, Bifrost, Jotun and Lyr2 can at least. Gotta protect the tubes though obviously. Email them and ask if you want.

 

Oh, come on... while we're dreaming, make that five-zero dollars!

But when I was checking out small ultrasonic baths for jewellery etc, I noticed that cheap ones have bad reviews for reliability/longevity, so I suppose the 500 would be good.

 

Would 14-zero dollars do it for you? It comes with a promise...

 

The bottom right symbol above "AA3905431" is weird though... But that printed cow

 

Oh yeah... first the good news about your dollars. Then the bad news: they are Zimbabwean.

 

Pretty sure we brought back a 100 trillion note, but I think the wife took it.
Anybody want to trade this for a Modi Multibit/Vali2 stack?