Hi. Interested in the thoughts of forum members.
My system consists of Cambridge CXN V1 running in digital preamp mode to Plinius Dual Mono Power amp then on to PMC Twenty5.21 bookshelf speakers and REL T7/i sub. Good quality interconnects.
The CXN auto upsamples using a proprietary Cambridge interpolation algorithm.
I have been using an old exclusively repurposed MacBook Pro (mid 2010) with new internal SSD to run Audirvana based hi-res and ripped CD music via a Supra Cat8+ Ethernet cable. Wireless into the CXN didn’t always cope with 24/192 files and USB direct sounded unbalanced.
Sound using Audirvana plus and 3.5 is good but I have come to the conclusion that, assuming I don’t use Audirvana to upsample (since the CXN is doing it anyway), using a bus powered SSD directly into the CXN (Instead of the MacBook Pro) also negates any of Audirvana’s direct mode/exclusive benefits since there is no computer noise.
This sounds just as good, can be controlled by the Stream Magic IOS app, and negates a lot of hardware and software mucking round in between.
Am I missing something?
King regards,
Peter
That’s a reasonable conclusion. There is no reason why Audirvana should sound better in this context.
You could still benefit from Audirvana though. If you care about MQA, Audirvana could do the first unfold of MQA files even though CA doesn’t support it. You also get a nice interface.
Thanks for your thoughts, Alex. I appreciate them.
The Stream Magic IOS app isn’t great but it does work.
I haven’t been able to get pause/stop to work on the Audirvana IOS app or desktop version running 3.5.* into my CXN (Plus works fine…), despite a number of forum requests, so its much nicer interface is offset by functionality issues.
I will continue to use Audirvana in my home studio Mac Mini setup.
MQA is not really something I aspire to. I tried the free TIDAL offer but didn’t really find I gravitated towards using it. I’m still in the process of ripping 400 CD’s using dBpoweramp. My 300 records are another story…
Regards, Peter.
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