Hi! Well, I'm very pleased with my SB3. For the price, it is unbeatable. However, I would have loved an SB3 "audiophile version" which could be slaved to a word clock and with balanced digital output (AES-EBU). The PSU could possibly be upgraded but that is not as critical as long as we are still in the digital domain and if we have clock sync to the rest of the system. Obviously I don't care about the DAC - an audiophile version SB could be completely without DAC.
I have a dCS system (Verdi transport, Delius DAC and a Purcell upsampler) and I have found myself using the SB3 (via upsampling) about 95% of the time. The difference is rather small compared to a CD from the Verdi (but then again, loading it with an SACD is a pretty large difference so I can't get rid of the transport yet). Anyway - I don't think Slim Devices will ever cater for the audiophiles (any further). They have done a good job for the mass market and it is even borderline high-end quality. So - I've just started a project with a media server PC. I've just bought a Lynx Two soundcard (which has word clock, AES-EBU in/out etc). Unfortunately that means I need something to put it in - i.e. a computer next to the stereo. So I found the Zalman TNN300 (Totally No Noise) - a fanless PC chassis. I will simply design a PC with this and the soundcard as a base. I was delighted to find that you could simply synchronise 2 SqueezeBoxes, so I can slave a SoftSqueeze to the physical SB3. That means I can still use the SB3 and the remote to control the music - but in fact it is the SoftSqueeze and the professional sound card that will be connected to the hifi, SB3 will only be the interface. By "servicing" the SoftSqueeze (i.e. using one of many programs to convert SoftSqueeze into a windows service) I can get it to start automatically so I never need to log on to the media server (don't like Windows here, but the Lynx hasn't got Linux drivers). This will cost around $2000-3000 to implement and that is basically the cost of getting a word clock and balanced interconnection to the SB3. OK, I'll get the spin-off of using the same server for video to our TV so it isn't too bad. It is all much cheaper than a high end transport anyway so I don't complain. It's just a pity they couldn't put the right gear into the SB3 from scratch, that would cost only a fraction of this. But I accept the mass market thing...SB3 is still the neatest interface I've seen and I will use it as that (only). -- CarlOtto ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CarlOtto's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3581 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=17948 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
