pbphoto

You would tell the "Roon Core" the path to the music files on your NAS. The "Roon Core" runs on a MAC or Windows PC and is the central clearing house for all music sources and endpoints. Roon leaves your music files alone- it simply scans them and imports their meta data into its own DB/interface. You would then tell Roon to stream music files directly to your Oppo which becomes just a DAC-endpoint within Roon. In other words, you would not use the Oppo's NAS browser at all. In my case, I never touch my DSjr - all streaming/browsing is controlled via Roon. Hope this helps.

Cliff notes to avoid the DAC rabbit hole: 1. Try Roon - it sounds like a good fit for you given your TBs of ripped music and multiple streaming end-points (Sonos plus a new DAC) 2. Compare the list of Roon tested DACs with the Darko DAC index to find one or two that meets your needs. 3. Read/watch a few more reviews of the DACs on your shortlist. (DAC reviews and reviewers are usually very annoying.) 4. Go with Roon plus a Roon tested DAC and be done. I've been using Roon to stream directly to a PSAudio Directstream Jr for 2 years now - awesomely simple. I own two other DACs in the $500 range - Schitt Bifrost and a Channel Islands VDA2 - that sound great as well. The DSjr is definitely better than them but there is a steep law of diminishing returns with DACs. I choose the DSjr because it was reported to have a relaxed analog quality (it does), it supports Roon, and it is based on an FPGA chip which means I get free code upgrades once a year or so that usually improve SQ. Good luck.

I've never seen a carousel cassette player - very cool. But I'm still out.

There are few activities in life that burn more time than making a mix tape.

Which one?

I've been called worse by better people than him.

Somehow, no I don't think he does... 😁

I'm pretty happy with Redbook quality and up, and I think the quality of the mastering is much more important than the format of the music file. However, I think it's good to know your DAC and what it does with incoming streams, if you can find any data on it (some manufacturers keep it a secret.) My DAC converts everything to DSD internally so I figure I might as well try and send it a DSF file to keep things simple and keep the processing power down on the DAC. I do this with Roon. But I'm perfectly happy with a well-mastered PCM file too. I think it's also important to know the provenance of the DSF file. Companies that care about this will be very upfront about how the file was created - venue, microphones, cables, recording format, mixing etc... I agree with the above comments that most DSF files have been converted to PCM (or were created from a PCM source) which defeats some of the purpose. I'm seeing a lot of DSF files that were processed in "DXD" format which is basically very-hi-res-PCM. The marketing says this doesn't affect quality but I don't know enough about it.

Congrats on your speakers and welcome. Carpet on the floor. Speakers centered on the wall (not sure if it is the 10' or 15' wall), spaced about as far apart as they are from your listening position (equilateral triangle), toed-in pointed at your listening position, 2-10" away from the back wall. Play around with the spacing-width and toe-in to suit your tastes and room. Enjoy. In my case, I have an isosceles triangle with my speakers closer together than they are to my listening position.

To answer your second question, yes the front grill is held on by magnets. Use a plastic credit card or something similar to slide between the top middle edge of the speaker and behind the grill and pry it off. In order to replace the tweeter however, you will need to remove the back of the top-hat which is held in-place by a bunch of wood screws.

Why do audio reviewers want to force us to listen to some obscure unlistenable track from a 1993 Dead Can Dance album, and then tell us 1) what a great track that is, and 2) how great the speakers sound?

The clarity tab is probably not what you are looking for. The SPL/phase tab, uncheck phase for now, and then under the "graph" menu drop-down, select psychoacoustic smoothing. Use the limits button in the upper right to set the graph x/y axis range.

I keep 3. The primary copy is on a NAS device with mirrored hard disks. Then I have two rotating USB drives that backup the primary NAS copy - one at my house and a 2nd one offsite. I try to rotate them every couple of months.

57 million views on YouTube from sullen preteens who don't spend any money on music unfortunately, and who's attention will be focused on the newest shiny sensation next year. "Royals" by Lorde (remember her?) has 794M views on youtube - how's she doing now? And she made music you could listen to IMHO. In fact I'm listening to her 2017 Melodrama album now. PS - haven't the Grammy's been rigged for a long time? Isn't that why everyone makes a corny Christmas album every year? They list everyone, including the janitor, at the studio as contributing on the album and then they get to vote? Or is this just one of those internet stories?

Is she letting you turn the living room into a dedicated HT room? From your description it sounds like it will still be a living room too. That's a lot of speakers in a 13'x12' foot living room IMHO - not to mention projector, screen, furniture...

Deliberate distortion on the track. Sounds much better on mute.

Do they master it this way on purpose - to pump up her voice on headphones for example? She's got some top engineers on her albums but I always thought many of her tracks had a lot of ssss'ss and sshhh'sshhs. Certainly they can hear this?

There is a lot of sibilance in that live recording. "Ssscchweeet Carolina..." It's not your gear.

why did this scene just pop into my head 🙂

Ouch- that sounds horrible. Something is wrong with your pressing.

I played that track from Qobuz. It's early here so I can't really crank it up but it sounds great. I don't hear any distortion but the right channel has a funky-bass-finger-pluck thing going on. I wonder if it is bouncing your cart around - i.e. a hot groove. Sounds great BTW - not too familiar with their music. edit: Qobuz has the remastered hi-res version from 2012, so the other possibility is that any distortion in your version was fixed in the Qobuz version.

That would work with the normal L/R channels but I don't think that would work with the LFE channel found in movies.

Yes I see what you mean. It looks like you can set, under speaker config, the mains to large and subwoofer to none. I'm assuming, since it forces you to have the mains set to large when subwoofer is set to none, that it will send the LFE channel to the mains but I don't know for sure. I thought Yamaha AVR manuals were confusing.

Your Denon AVR should have a configuration setting that tells it to send all the LFE sounds to the front L/R speaker pre-outs. Basically you are telling the AVR that there is no subwoofer and your front L/R speakers are "large" to handle full-range sounds plus the LFE channel. Then you can slice-n-dice it however you want using your digital crossover.

I would use a y-RCA to break out the single sub-out from the MA252 to use both the L+R inputs on the sub. I'm sure using just the left would work but many subs, including yours, double the gain by using both the L+R inputs. Here's the section from your sub's manual: 1. Low-Level Inputs (Left/Right) RCA style jacks that will accept standard line level inputs from a pre-amp level source. They will accept a stereo signal and inter- nally combine it into mono. (Note: Both left and right input jacks must be connected to the source in order to drive the amplifier to full output).