Along with the Limetree, SoTM and Projects £600 model are all highly thought of Streamers/Bridges.
some of these only have USB outputs - for my purposes a streamer needs to have bit-perfect (no resampling) SPDIF output to give the best musical performance.
and it seems Naim streamers one of the very few that offer BNC connectors on the coax output for usage of 75 ohm cables.
Auralic, DCS and Linn streamers don’t offer BNC connectors.
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So how are you connecting the Auralic to the Mscaler?
That’s an interesting point
The secret to good ‘sounding’ wifi in my experience can be down to the implementation of WMM and whether your devices support. Ubiquiti access points support a fixed implementation of WMM I understand, if you set the DSCP values appropriately in the Ethernet frames.
WMM/802.11e is the implementation of QoS in wifi, where setting the WMM values set the radio slicing prioritisation compared to other traffic, so one can control more accurately inter frame timing consistency.
I have undertaken some home investigation (that I shared with Naim when they were developing the current streamers) that showed inter frame timing consistency could have an effect on the SQ on certain streamers such as the legacy Naim streamers.
The new architecture Naim streamers don’t appear sensitive to this
My experience is purely empirical. The Aries sounds better - the old “less digital hash” chestnut - with wireless.
Xuanqian, Auralic’s JV, puts this down to their implementation and maintains the Aries will sound better with a wireless feed once the signal is strong enough. There is obviously slightly more to it possibly related to what you have posted above as he does recommend some wireless routers but it works for me with one I bought for my daughter’s Erasmus year.
.sjb
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Lumin also include BNC output on their network players. I’ve settled on this output to my DAC using a Silversonic D750 spdif cable.
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the inclusion of a BNC connector is just the start, there’s a lot more engineering needed to bring out the best in a streamer (please refer ND555 white paper)
Otherwise the Allo digione would be a good enough product, which for the money it’s ok, but compared against a Naim streamer, and there’s an audible improvement when using Naim streamer over the Allo digione and an Auralic Aries into a Chord Dave.
I haven’t heard a Lumin, but they priced themselves out of my interest… and impossible to audition at all where I live.
Add the legendary Naim reliability and backup, I can totally understand why Simon uses a NDX2 as a streamer.
It is quite a performer as a streamer and having compared against an Auralic Aries with a linear power supply, I would take the Naim ND5XS 2.
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By Talking of your preference for Naim streamer I presume you mean as renderer, the DAC duties done by Chord.
that’s what I wrote. - into Dave DAC.
SJB, sure. It is interesting about your experiences of hearing Ethernet hash with your device. It’s not necessarily the case that will always be present with Ethernet in all products of course, but is mainly down to the implementation such filtering, PCB tracks, and even the use of LVDS to move Ethernet derived signals around, such as what Naim uses.
Perhaps Auralic puts more focus into designing its wifi interface rather than Ethernet?
I guess doesn’t matter as long as it works well with either if not both.
To use DSCP and WMM you are going to need to set the ethernet frames up appropriately - so you will need a programmed Cisco 2960 or similar unless your media server/proxy assigns the values which i think in the consumer space would be quite unusual.
If anyone is interested and technically able, it is probably best to set media frames heading to the streamer via a WMM compliant wifi access point (Such as Ubiquiti devices) as DSCP values of 56 or 48
I asked because it wasn’t clear if all options your were naming were into Dave, confused by term ‘streamer’.
Not me alas but I am glad that my current setup allows me to avoid all the router / ethernet cable / fibre threads.
.sjb
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Come on SJB - you need to start a thread on the different SQ from the shapes of Wifi antenna 
There has got to be something for people to tweak and fret about…
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Well I run Auralic’s Vega G2 streamer/pre into ATC active speakers and am getting the most enjoyable sound in many decades of hifi ownership (and that includes a 272/XPSDR/250DR). What’s more I (marginally) prefer the Lightning DS control app to the Naim app and have not encountered slow boot up or crashing.
Horses for courses, I guess.
Roger
That’s my impression, too, though I’ve only heard the Aries G2. If one was going to use an Aries with a Vega G2 via Lightning Link, the Aries G2 is the one to go for. With any other DAC, the Aries G1 looks to be more than adequate.
Roger
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Current generation Naim streamers work great with wifi, I’ve got my ND5XS2 on wifi and it sounds terrific.
Yes to clarify I meant as a renderer into chord Dave
All you needed was the 555DR!
Funnily enough, that was planned to be my next move when I still had the 272. Had the 272.2 arrived in time I’d probably have jumped, but the Vega/ATC actives really floated my boat and I couldn’t resist.
Roger
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