Naim NDS / 555PS DR Update - The Three Week Itch

If you remember back to early March 2014, I posted an article on the Linn Klimax DS/1 vs the Naim NDS / 555PS DR streamers, in a mainly Naim system with Kudos speakers.  Here's the link to that story.

Most electronics (and pretty much every pair of speakers) seem to benefit from something referred to as "burn-in".  This is the idea that the components are not working at their ideal when brand new, and some usage allows them to settle down and reach their optimum operating parameters.  Some say that's rubbish (probably based on some theory or skepticism rather than actual experience, or maybe their experience has been with components that don't benefit), some say its essential.  Cyrus electronics have a large print message on the inside of the box lid saying that users should expect the components to burn-in and change their sound quality over the first few weeks of use.  I've heard this with Naim electronics too - certainly Richard's NDX improved over time.

The first NDS listen was a comparison against the Linn on a busy evening on the night before the Scalford show and we were listening to the NDS that had been used as the demo unit for the Naim Statement amplifier at the Bristol Sound & Vision show - so it had about 3 days solid use under its belt.  The 555PS DR was at least 6 months old and has been powering the NDX during that time.

And so, to pick up where the story left off, we had a Linn DS sounding very controlled and considered against an NDS that just wanted to get on with the job, leaving me less than involved because things were too pushy and edgy - I couldn't relax into the emotion or flow of the music.  Great with female vocals though - more texture and colour (not colouration) than the Linn.  And Richard (who has the Naim / Kudos system and the NDS on demo) wondering if it was going to be right for him.

Now we're three weeks on and the NDS is a permanent fixture in Richard's system.  So he's either forgotten the Porsche or the NDS has settled in somewhat.

Using the usual mix of artists such as Eagle Eye Cherry, Blues Company, Ana Brun etc., we had a bottle of Budvar in hand and listening commenced (there was red wine last time, so the alcohol relaxation factor was pretty much balanced across the 2 listening sessions...).  Richard had warned me that things would not be all they seemed last time.  And this was proven to be true.  At first I was very quiet, listening intently, making sure I could take in what was going on.  Subtle this ain't.  And this time I don't mean the way the Naim attacks the music, I mean the change in that 3 week period.  This box has really matured in that time, and maybe there is more to come.  That Naim enthusiasm is still there in spades but the stridency has all but disappeared - the edginess does still happen, but it seems much more related to the quality of the recording being played - its not there as part of the standard mix of attributes.  Imaging has a touch more depth too - not just width now, although from memory I still think the Linn is better in this area.  Another thing that's changed is the clarity of vocals in the mix - male or female singers are now more distinct - less swamped - although, to be fair I hadn't really noted this in the earlier listen, perhaps the other more significant challenges in the sound were overpowering more subtle observations.  There seems to be more subtle details across all the range of music and instruments - there's definitely more layers of detail under detail to be heard.  The system even seems to get some deeper notes than on my own system, which was a suprise given the compact dimensions of those Kudos Super 20 floorstanders.

We come to a concensus - the NDS is a very different beast to 3 weeks previous.  It seems a bit bizarre that the "burn-in" should be so significant.  A replay of the Linn vs Naim bake-off is something we should go back to now, perferrably in my system to try and give us some balance.

There's also concensus on how we should describe the differences between the Linn and Naim streamers.  There's probably little, if anything, to choose between them in terms of detail retreival, but their characters are very different.  We're listening to some studio recordings and the Naim is delivering them much more as though the artists were performing live.  And that's a key part of its character - a live sound, an enthusiastic sound.  By contrast, on those same studio recordings the Linn doesn't add a "live" character to the music, rather it presents a studio session where the musicians seem to have put in that extra couple of rehearsals, as though they are striving for that extra bit of accuracy, more craftsmanship in the way they are playing.  I love that "attention to detail" kind of presentation - as though the musicians care about what they're doing and how it will emotionally impact on the listener.  The Naim, well that's keen to let you know there are human beings involved in producing the music, and it should sound live!

Makes you wonder why Naim would use a brand new out of the box NDS to demo their Statement amp, it could've sounded so much better.  As I said at the time in the Bristol Show report, the Naim Statement room would impress you if you liked to listen to hifi.  If they'd burnt in their streamer, I might've been reporting that it would impress you if you liked listening to live music!

Hell Freezes Over?

There's a follow up posting to this story, 3 weeks later here.  Read this post first then check out the follow-up.

As a starter for a weekend of hifi, I guess this is one of the more exotic ways to kick off. 

After the usual week of work, everything was planned and ready to go for the Wigwam hifi show at Scalford with travelling on Saturday and the show itself on Sunday.  Friday evening was supposed to be time at home before disappearing off for a weekend of sonic indulgence and maybe the occasional glass of beer.  But "Richard Is My Naim", my local Naimist and co-conspirator at Scalford dropped a killer call at knocking-off time on Friday evening.  Another black box had arrived.  It needed setting up.  It needed listening to.  Now.  An NDS had landed.

Back Story

In 2 parallel universes, somewhere in North Wales, 2 journeys from CD to streaming have been played out.  Myself predominantly with Linn,  Richard consistently with Naim.

My starting point:  Meridian CD508.20 / Meridian 541 Pre / Rotel power amps / Active Linn Keilidhs.  Via Squeezebox, CA and Cyrus DACs, Cyrus and older Linn power amps, Linn AV5103 pre etc., at the end of 2013 I was at Linn Akurate DS/0/1, Linn Akurate Kontrol/0/D, Linn Majik Dynamik amps and active Majik 140 speakers.  And very happy was I.  Until a "friendly" Linn forum member let me hear a KDSM versus the Klimax Renew (KRDS) streamers.  With the advent of Linn Exakt, a good few Klimax DS/1s (KDS/1) came on the market, the prices fell, and, at the beginning of 2014, a black KDS/1 stepped in to my system and completely re-wrote the rule books.  I could almost see the cogs whirring in Richard's head when he heard how profound a change the KDS/1 brought to my music.

Richard's starting point: Naim CDX2, XPS power supply, NAC252 pre with HiCap PS, NAP180 power and Wilson Benesch Arc standmount speakers.  Then, via the second version of the CDX2, and improved XPS2, NAP250 power amp, NDX with XPS2, he has ended up with NDX / 555PS DR streamer, NAC282 / HiCap pre-amp, NAP250 power amp and Kudos C20 Super floorstanding speakers.  He was also very happy.

So here we have 2 very different ways of getting to a decent quality streaming solution.  And they sound very different too.  Both have bags of detail, but the Linn system is very precise and instruments are really well separated whereas the Naim system sounds more like it wants to get on with everything (like there's not enough time in the day), it has a particularly expansive soundstage and, for me, can occasionally sound a bit strident.  Guess what?  We both think we have the correct answer, but we also seem to respect what the other is enjoying, if that makes sense.

Why Is Hell Freezing Over?

This is a reference to a couple of things.  First, the live album by The Eagles - when they originally split up, one of the band was quoted as saying they would only get back together, "when Hell freezes over", yet there they were, playing live again together.  The second reference is to the relationship between Linn and Naim as companies.  Back in the 1970s, when Linn started out with the LP12 turntable and Naim started out making simple but well engineered amplifiers, the two companies had very similar outlooks - they were out to challenge the establishment and did so very effectively.  When Linn added speakers to their range, and Naim expanded their line of amplifiers, all was well.  The components worked well together and became the "established" route for UK audiophiles.  But when Linn added amplifiers to their range (rumour has it that the Naim MD used one as an office doorstop), then Naim produced a tonearm for the LP12, it all started to go a bit off-kilter.

Despite that, many dealers and customers still work with and enjoy combining the 2 manufacturers' equipment today.

So perhaps this isn't Hell freezing over, but putting the top of the range (almost - more later) Naim streamer on the same rack as the top of the range Linn streamer is probably not something that happens too often.

Naim NDS on a shelf above the Linn KDS/1

Richard's usual streamer solution is Naim NDX with the 555PS DR power supply.  The most recent upgrade step was to swap out the XPS2 for the 555PS DR power supply a good few months ago, and we were both stunned by the improvement this brought in terms of imaging, leading edge attack and more atmosphere to the music.  In source terms, there's only one place its possible to go from there, and that would be to swap out the NDX streamer for Naim's current top of the range NDS streamer.  The NDS can use a single 555PS DR power supply - the one Richard currently uses with his NDX - so its a straight swap, NDX out, NDS in.

Having packed up the KDS/1 into its Linn box, I was round to Richard's house fairly sharpish.  Down to business - get all this stuff up and running to allow us to make the comparison.

A bit untidy with Ethernet and power cables. Left hand rack consists of Naim NAC282 pre-amp, Naim NDX, Naim HiCap PS for the 282, Naim 555PS DR for the NDS, Naim NAP250 power amp.  In the foreground the Kudos C20 Super (in cherry veneer).  Racks are by Quadraspire.

Get Set, Before Go

An unmanaged switch was connected into the Devolo Ethernet over mains plug to allow 2 x Ethernet connections.  The KDS/1 was hooked up to the network, and with the wifi password sorted out, was pointed at the correct UPnP database from my Android phone (using BubbleDS control point) and that was sorted.  Linn Silver interconnects into the back of the NAC282 (actual phono sockets!) and that was ready to go.

The Naim is a little more complex as it needs two very large ("bundy") cables connecting - both of these are intended to be connected to the 555PS DR power supply.  It took us a while to work out which is which cable - apart from the different arrangement of pins in the plugs, there's not much to go on.  Until we worked out that one cable had a single white band at one end with the other having 2 white bands.  Turns out that this correlates to input 1 and input 2 on the back of the NDS.  Easy when you know how!  One more cable to carry the signal to the NAC282 pre-amp and we're good to go.  The NDS pops up on the iPad and music is available from both sources.

Where Did That Come From?

The previous weekend I'd been at the Bristol show organised by Audio-T and WHF magazine.  Naim had been there, with their first European public demo of the Statement amplifier which you can read about here.  Turns out that what we had there in front of us right now was the NDS streamer that Naim had used in that demo in Bristol.  Surprisingly, they seemed to have used a brand new unit that weekend, so perhaps it got better over the weekend and those who heard the system on Sunday may have heard something more enjoyable than the demo I was lucky to get into, first thing on the Friday.  So it had some burn-in time, but not a great deal.  My KDS/1 has about 15 months use, so no chance of any burn-in issues there.

Worth pointing out, at this point, that the KDS/1 and the NDS with a single 555PS DR are pretty much on a par, price wise.  The KDS/1 is the top of the Linn range at the moment (of the conventional streamers that is, excluding the Klimax Exakt DSM which is a different kettle of deep fried fish in technology approach), but the Naim NDS can be upgraded further by the addition of a second 555 PS DR power supply.  Apparently one serves the analogue circuits, the other the digital circuits, hence separating stuff even further.

Listen Up

Testing my memory a bit now, but I think this is what we listened to:

Steely Dan - Any Major Dude

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours (24 bit)

Ane Brun - Worship

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

James Taylor - Gaia

Eagles - Hotel California (Live)

Eagle Eye Cherry - Shooting Up In Vain

Some Radiohead, which I choose not to remember, and some other stuff I can't remember due to advancing age (probably).  Maybe Richard will be along soon to provide an update - although he is one year older than me, so maybe that's unlikely  ;-)

Strangely, for us, Blues Company didn't feature at all.

So What?

Well, that's a very good question.  So what?

I like my Linn system.  Richard likes his (almost all, but thank goodness there are no Ovators in the area) Naim system.  Can you guess where this is going?

I've suggested a "Part 2" where we put the NDS into my Linn system.  The NDS is on demo at the moment, so we're not sure if we'll find a mutually available time to give that a go.  If it happens, you'll read about it here.

Interestingly (maybe?), this bake-off fitted with the Scalford Hifi Wigwam show weekend very well.  How so?  Did it sound like vinyl, played through valves and a set of extreme home made horns?  No.  No.  Not at all.  The alignment is this - Scalford is about variety and variety, with some added variety.  For example, when exhibiting with my budget system and playing a Yello DVD (with a projector too), we had some people who walked out in less than 30 seconds (I think 3 minutes would be a fairer time to decide, but hey, I'm kind of known for being unreasonably reasonable, sometimes), and some who watched the whole video end to end - 40 minutes.  Equally, I like to give every room a try, but some I stay in, others I find 3-5 minutes with a couple of different tracks and I want to move on.  There is a theme with the Wam - there are some systems that do lots of things very well, but there are many systems that do one or two things exceptionally well, but don't do all the other things well at all.  And that's what it seems to be about - enthusiasts playing what they think is right, whether you, dear visitor, like it or not.

Variety.  See?

And whilst I wouldn't accuse either the Linn, nor the Naim, of doggedly pursuing a very narrow set of goals, you can very much hear a house sound from both devices, even in a predominantly Naim system (hence my suggestion we do this again in a Linn system at some point, to get some balance, maybe).

How is it that 2 expensive, highly engineered solutions, using exactly the same source material across exactly the same network, create such a different feel?  What's happening to those bits and, further down the chain, those analogue waves that crunches them out so differently, and yet with some commonality?

What's common?  Detail, layers upon layers of intricate detail.  Tiny nuances in voices, subtle touches of cymbals which are normally hidden underneath other cymbals or percussion on lesser components.    Bass lines that aren't one instrument, but are 2 or 3 that play tunes that intertwine with each other.  That extra level of control that is only stunningly apparent when its there, and then when you step back to a lesser component and notice that the looseness is back.  It amazes me that what sounds great on a system is suddenly put into a perspective of inadequacy when you hear it done "right".  What is "right" anyway?  I wasn't there at the recording so I don't really know, and yet its somehow obvious.  A bit like colour in a photograph - its often obvious what's been changed in Photoshop (other programs are available), yet you weren't there to see the real thing - you just instinctively know its not right, not natural. And rhythm.  Both of these players time superbly.  Tap tap go the toes - its involuntary, its pretty much inevitable.

What's different?  Everything else. 

The Linn sounds so much like its fully in control.  The music will do what the Linn tells it to do.  The instruments are carefully "placed".  The imaging is immaculately controlled.  You can imagine the subtlety with which a string is plucked, a cymbal brushed, a sigh is delivered.  Its precise.  And yet, it flows so smoothly.  There's something about the Linn that makes the music feel crafted by hand with skill and attention by musicians who care. Not lacking in attack, but instrument attack is precisely delivered - starts and stops are there to be heard.  Decay is beautifully extended yet the instruments don't blur together.  Clearly this works brilliantly on material such as James Taylor, the Eagles and Eagle Eye Cherry.  Does this make Nirvana and Radiohead polite and lacking in bite?  No, strangely not, the bite and anger is there, the emotion flows through.

The Naim is clearly a Naim component.  There's very little chance that you would mix up the 2.  It punches, it attacks the music, there's no doubt whatsoever that it means to get on with the job, to tell you that this is the way the music is, get on and enjoy it, or get out of my way.  Its a much more raw experience than the Linn, and I think that's what Richard enjoys - he takes this as being more emotional, more like real life.  For me it gets too much at times - pushing my limits of enjoyment, getting close to the point of aggression and boarding on harsh.  Its not my cup of tea, but I can absolutely hear the appeal.  The Naim has a tiny more expression in the vocals, especially female vocals - just a bit more texture, if you like.  It also has a wider soundstage, filling the room more from left to right, but not quite so much front to back - delivering this as a counterpoint to the precision of the Linn.  Sometimes the decay of instruments is lost a little in the mix, in comparison with the Linn - perhaps that's something that contributes to the need to move on, to deliver the next bit of excitement.

So there it is.  Not much of a conclusion really, is it?  Guess what?  I'm very happy to have chosen the Linn, but that's not a slight at the Naim which I fully respect for what it does and what it achieves.  Put the Naim in a Naim system and you get exactly what you might expect, just more of it, to a finer level of detail and with that extra bit of passion.  I suspect that Richard will also choose the Naim.  He's leaving it playing during the week, so maybe a bit more time on the NDS will change it further.

But I'm left with a bit of a nagging doubt, and we discuss it a number of times over the weekend at Scalford.  Is the NDS worth the asking price over and above the NDX?  On the basis of this session, upgrading the NDX / XPS2 to NDX / 555PS DR delivered a bigger step.  Yes the NDS is better than the NDX, but it hasn't delivered as much as the power supply change.  Seems counter intuitive really doesn't it?  Surely a different DAC, analogue output stage and improved physical isolation makes a bigger change than a better, beefier, tighter power supply change?  Not on this showing it doesn't.

Lets see what the week's extra burn-in brings.  For this test I come away happy with the KDS/1, Richard comes away wondering about that 10 year old Porsche Boxster...

There's a follow up posting to this story, 3 weeks later here.

Bristol Show 2014 - Focal and Naim

It must be said, I haven't really had good experiences with Focals to date.  The likes of the Diablo always sound too aggressive and waaaay too bright, topping off a very "technical" sound that doesn't seem to offer much in the way of music.

However, today, these are the best I've heard Focals (and that includes the ones used in the Naim Statement demo) the floorstanding Aria 900 being far less bright than their usual offerings. 
Mid range Naim electronics (NDX / XPS and SuperNait / HiCap) feeding streamed music into these really bounced along with deep and reasonably controlled bass lines.  Still a touch on the bright side, but without the aggression and it wasn't overpowering.  They let you play your own music in this room too, and this was popular - had to wait in the queue of 4 other tracks on USB sticks before we got to the Malia / Boris Blank I brought along.  Yet another example of how much better Naim can sound when not using Ovators...

Heard The New Naim NDS Today

Naim are touring their NDS at the moment in the UK.

Heard this playing at Acoustica in Chester. System as follows:

252 pre-amp with Supercap power supply
NAP300 power amp with its dedicated power supply
NAC speaker cable
Naim Ovator S-600 speakers

Streamers (all include an on-board DAC):
NDX (£3k)
NDX with 555PS power supply (£9k)
NDS with 555PS power supply (£11k)

First, I really do not like Naim speakers, so this needs to be borne in mind. Having said that, today was the first time (in 4 attempts) that the S-600s actually were tolerable. They have this strange "cardboard" quality to some sounds such as snare and fingers rapping on a guitar body. They also harden up quite quickly, which doesn't complement the immdediacy of the Naim electronics at all.

We heard the NDX stand alone (just OK), the NDX with the 555PS (note that the PS is about 50% more expensive than the streamer) which works very well, and then the NDS with 555PS which was clearly the better sounding streamer, but not such a big improvement as adding the power supply to the NDX.

Within the constraints of the speakers (I know, this is very much a personal thing), each step brought greater clarity, more depth, improved image width etc. etc. But, joy of joys, apart from the stand alone NDX, there was none of that Naim shoutyness that, IMHO, is very tiring and somewhat irritating. Until they played XTC's Making Plans For Nigel on the NDX / 555PS, which was just about excrutiatingly painful.

Would love to hear the electronics with some of the larger B&W speakers in the shop. Maybe we can drop back in again soon when the Naim guy's gone home!

Is the NDS / 555PS a Linn Klimax DS rival? Difficult to say as I've only heard them in the context of their own make systems. But I suspect it will be, as anything that can make a pair of Naim speakers sound tolerable is a major achievement in my book.

Naim Take Streaming Waaaay Up Market

Naim are going whole heartedly for the world of streaming.  Not content with their recently launched entry level (ahem) £2k ND5 XS nor the £3k NDX they've just announced the top of the range NDS at £6250.  Gulp.  But you can't even plug it in for that as you'll need to add at least one of their range of power supplies to get it up and running.  So if you thought Linn's £11k Klimax DS was expensive, just wait until you work out what an NDS and 2 of Naim's top end power supplies adds up to.  The lowest price power supply is £2900, but you can drive the NDS with 2 of the top end NAPS555 which means a whopping £10k.  A streamer from Naim could now set you back over £16k.  Better be good.

I'm really keen to see what kind of reviews this gets and how much existing owners of Naim's top end CD players make of it.  I feel another one of those times rather like the CD vs Vinyl debates of 20 years ago coming to several forums near you soon.  Only this time its bit-perfect digital versus spinny-roundy error prone and noise inducing digital.

Get yer hair-shirts out for this one.  If you'd invested £16k+ in a CD player, are you duty bound to believe that a £12k+ network streamer can't possibly be as good?!?

What Hifi News Page

http://www.naimaudio.com/

Streamers and DACs from Linn, Cyrus, Logitech, Rega and Naim

Spent an interesting couple of hours in the hifi shop this afternoon with Naim enthusiast Richard trying some streaming / DAC combinations.  The excuse was created from having to pick up my newly serviced Cyrus DAC-X.

Objective - is it the streaming or the DAC that makes the difference?

Kit tested:

Linn Majik DS (as streamer and with internal DAC)
Logitech Squeezebox Touch (as streamer and with internal DAC)
Naim NDX (only as a combined unit)
Cyrus DAC-X (no PSX-R)
Cyrus Stream XP (as streamer and with internal DAC)
Rega DAC

System consisted of Cyrus 8 XPdQX integrated amp and a pair of Cabasse Artis Baltic Evolutions with their subwoofer.  Not sure what the speaker cables were, but the interconnects were from Atlas.  For the comparisons we used 16 bit CD rips in FLAC from Florence & The Machine and Elbow.

Lets get the speakers out of the way first.  I would describe them as an acquired taste, but its not a taste I acquired in the 2 hours in the shop.  They're too high, leading to a rather distant and detached soundstage and the subwoofer isn't well integrated with a somewhat underwhelming bass that lacks any real weight or slam - that could be down to how well they were set up of course.  They do have an excellent mid-range though, producing some really stunning female vocals.  The top end is ultra detailed, but can lead to some brittleness, particularly with some of the combinations we heard this afternoon.  They were, however, quite capable of showing the differences between the source components - the notes below refer to subjective differences and personal opinion - its not about absolutes.

So we kicked off with the Touch / DAC-X which I normally listen to at home, albeit it normally has a PSX-R playing along.  The sound was good, within what I think are fairly compromising limits of the speakers with some confusion on complex passages.

Next up is the Linn as streamer and DAC and here we get a decent step up in performance - more detail, much more space around the instruments and better playing of the tune.  The complex passages are better resolved too.

So which is making the biggest difference - the streaming bit or the DAC?  We hook up the Linn as a streamer into the DAC-X and find that this makes the music somewhere between the Touch / DAC-X and the complete Linn solution.  So its true, the streaming 0s and 1s bit really does make a difference and the Linn as a streamer is a worthwhile upgrade over the Touch as a streamer.

What next? We went back to the Touch and used its internal DAC.  Its very polite, a little muddled and dynamically a little flat.  Let's try that Stream XP with its internal DAC and see how Cyrus's latest performs.  Well, its better than the Touch, and gives a good account of itsself, but its not as big an upgrade as you would expect for £1400 extra investment.  So we go back to Touch / DAC-X for a while and then to the Stream XP as streamer only feeding the DAC-X and we find that the Stream XP is a better streamer than the Touch and the DAC-X is significantly better than the DAC inside the Stream XP.  This is a good sounding combination, but at £2600 (I'm allowing for the DAC-X's list price when it was new, rather than what I paid for it) it's not competing with the £1880 Linn.

The Stream XP was a bit of a disappointment as a complete streamer / DAC, but performed well as a streamer into the DAC-X and equalled the Linn /  DAC-X but not the Linn as a complete unit.

So in comes the NDX.  And here we have the typical Naim sound - very detailed (probably a very small amount of detail more than the Linn) and very pacey.  But we agreed it was all a bit too much and rather aggressive - going back to the Linn was a joy - much more musical and the music has time to flow much more than it does on the Naim.  Even Naim fan Richard agreed that the Linn was producing the best sounds we'd heard.

So that was the main session that we'd planned to go through.  Richard's interested in a DAC for his second system that currently uses a Touch only so we gave the Touch / Rega combination a try.  This is a good DAC - very refined and smooth but I was hoping for more, having seen the reviews and forum recommendations.  Keeping the Touch as a streamer we compared the Rega and DAC-X DACs, finding that the DAC-X is a better sounding piece of kit in this particular system - being more detailed and more dynamic without being overpowering.

We finished with some more tracks on the Linn including some 24 bit stuff.  Interestingly the difference between a 16 bit CD rip and a 24 bit version of the same track brings a much bigger difference on the Linn than you can differentiate on the Touch.  Some great music playing here, within what I think are some pretty severe limitations in the speakers.  Still need to hear it in my own system of course.

So here's our conclusion for you to pick apart!  Best to least best with prices just to add a bit more interest:

Linn Majik DS streamer and DAC    £1880
Linn Majik DS streamer and Cyrus DAC-X     £2880
Cyrus Stream XP as streamer and Cyrus DAC-X     £2600
Naim NDX streamer and DAC     £3000
Touch streamer and Cyrus DAC-X     £1200
Cyrus Stream XP as streamer and DAC £1400
Touch streamer and Rega DAC     £700
Touch streamer and DAC     £200

We didn't try the Cyrus Stream XP / Rega DAC combination.

More Cyrus Details

More information on the Cyrus streamer was announced at the Bristol show.  I should've said streamers rather than streamer, as its actually a bit of a family of products.

Lots of connectivity - USB (asychronous or not is not yet clear), iPod dedicated USB, wired Ethernet, WiFi, uPnP and DLNA.  Plus they plays the most important FLAC and WAV file formats up to 24 / 96.

Most impressively, Cyrus have got it right and produced all the main possible combinations for this device:

£1600 Streamline that is streamer / DAC / pre-amp / power amp as an all-in-one mini system (compare Naim UnitiQute)
£1400 Stream X which is the streamer only with digital outputs - so the main "source" component for those of us interested in selecting the best avaible device for each element in the sound reproduction chain (compare Naim NDX)
£2000 Stream XP which is the streamer / DAC / pre-amp version (perhaps compare Musical Fidelity?)

All work with a remote that includes a screen and controls the devices over the network.  Can't see anything in the news (no rear panel photos either) that indicate compatibility with the PSX-R power supply.

Brilliant!  I'm hoping these devices will sound as good or better than the company's existing DAC products (more soon on this topic) but Cyrus have to be absolutely congratulated and encouraged to continue with this excellent approach to covering all the bases.

Cyrus Announcement

What HiFi News Link