Squeezebox Touch and Naim DAC

I have a SBT in my office system. The DAC in it is utter rubbish and sound terrible. I use it with an Arcam rDAC. Much better. A Naim DAC would take it to even higher levels.

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I have a SBT in my office system. The DAC in it is utter rubbish and sound terrible.

That was true with the SB Classic, but imho not so with the SBT!  

My SBT sounds fine to me on it's own, without an external dac.
(the standard, freebee psu-plug is the real culprit here, not the internal dac.
(sure, the nDac is better, but then its price is about 10 times that of the SBT itself!) 

I tried a s/h ndac for a few months and it absolutely does improve the SBT, and I can totally understand someone being utterly happy with this combo! 

It does come at a hefty price though, and to me it acknowledged how good the SBT can sound already on its own.

(edit: I must confess I only tried the nDac when I had a Nait 5i-2 as my amp)

regards,

Alco 

I wonder whether an NDX would sound better than the SBT/nDac? Or, keeping things even simpler, an NDS instead of the 555? 

I stream a lot of high-res (24/96) well-mastered classical music to my SBT. Without an external DAC it sounded terrible, very flat and lifeless, lacking musicality. Even the inexpensive ($250) Arcam rLink DAC brought vast improvement to it.

My SBT is currently the most frequently used source in my system.  I play mine using the stock wall wart, and wired Ethernet, with RCA > BNC into the Naim DAC / 555DR.  I demoed both the NDX and NDS separately and have to say they were very, very good, but not enough better-sounding than my current setup to justify changing my system for SQ alone.  

I might be tempted to suggest that maybe I am a poor judge, or that something is wrong with my setup, except that both of my local dealers have come and approved my setup, and I CAN easily discern that my stock Sonos into the nDAC sounds importantly inferior (IMHO) to every other digital source I have tried -- not broken, merely uninspiring.  (I do not know if my dealers' ears agree with mine as to the rankings, however; they politely leave it to me to form my own opinions.)

I have two dedicated mains circuits plus another non-dedicated circuit in my listening room, and space to isolate potentially noisy bits from sensitive ones, which might explain why I am frequently pleased with surprising combinations.

My experience to date, FWIW.

Nick

Just my two cents worth. Last year I bought a Bryston bda-1 Dac. I needed some kind of streamer so I bought a new sbt. After hooking them up with a very good digital cable I played them through my Naim amps. I was shocked at the sound quality. They blew away my cd player, a very good one. Now when my brother keeps telling me how digital is the greatest threat to hifi since the transister I just nod and smile.

The squeezebox touch (not to be confused with any other model of the squeezebox family) is possibly the best value for money item in the hfi world. It struggles to get full recognition just because the package is not typically hi fi and because it cost less than a power cord (and also because now it's discontinued).

Sloop, please also note that the software of your SBT can be tweaked. Just google squeezebox touch tweak or toolbox. Worth the effort IME (it's free but requires some of your time and attention).

Finally, in my experience the addition of nDAC is worthwhile, and in the context of your system I would say mandatory! 

I can recommend the SBT and nDAC combination. Not only do you get great sound quality, you also have a large screen and great functionality. Why ever were they discontinued?

My worry is what happens when the SBT dies and I have to find a replacement streamer.

SJB,although the dac in the touch is very good esp. for its price,I used mine through a M2Tech Young dac which brought about a marked improvement so It must stand to reason that the ndac would do the same and maybe more so!

I second [or third] the opinion about the desirability of using an outboard dac with the sbt. At this time the music streamers on the market come with their own dacs built in. The quality of these dacs are all over the map. None that I know of rivals the best of the stand alone dacs such as the n-dac. I found the sbts built in dac to be of low quality, but through a good outboard dac with proper cable to produce excellent sound.

i'm in a bit of quandary here as I don't think the "bare" SBT sounds in any way bad or nasty. I suppose it's an itch I may just have to scratch  (made all the more itchy by the XPS2 sitting in my attic!)

I'm not inclined towards a Naim streamer for my experience of Naim streaming with my UniQute. A great piece of kit BUT the following are deal breakers for me

1. Spotify. Such a wonderful way of researching new music. I'm about to settle down to a bit of book-work and I have put on a playlist called summer songs in the background. Spotify has saved me form buying duds and lead me to some great musical discoveries.
2. Track Gain. Playlists, the Valhalla, but on my UniQute Neil Young's Pochahontas followed by Bright Eyes – Haile Selassie just doesn't work. Playlists to work IMHO need to be volume equalised.

Other non-deal breakers would be the difference between iPeng and the n-stream app.

Another reason not to rush headlong is that I still find streaming a trifle flakey. Whether it's rebooting the Squeezebox server on the NAS or having to reboot the UniQute not a month goes by without a press of play not doing as intended and needed some seeing to.

I can't imagine Naim will stand still and I'd imagine in the same way as they managed to include remote control way back when that there will be a way found to give me 1&2 above.

and then of course there is the option to go for a totally different sound signature by going for a non Naim DAC. (has anyone gone this route from a purely SQ perspective?)

SJB

SJB, I agree that the basic SBT is very impressive however once you start with an outboard dac you appreciate how much more you can get out of the SBT. I used a Cambridge Audio DAC Magic for a while and that was a worthwhile upgrade but put an nDAC into the mix and things improve massively (as they should for the cost).

Why don'y you have a listen to the SBT with nDAC and then you can decide if it is worth the outlay.

Re. Non-naim Dac: See tonym's recent move on the 'System Pics' thread. G

The Naim DAC is a natural choice with the 552 -- kind of a "separated at birth reunion" experience, putting them together, esp with your mothballed XPS2.  I love the sound, flexibility, and system integration via RC5 wire and the NARCOM.  I like the DAC bare; PS is all gravy, IMHO.

I finally tried iPeng this morning, thanks to your comments, SJB!  Definitely worth the $10.  I really like the free Party version, too, for total ease of use -- great for handing off to folks who struggle with less locked-down interfaces.

Cheers!

Nick

Re non Naim Dac. I use a non-Naim  Dac . I run an SBT and a CD transport through a Bryston BDA-1 Dac into a hicapped nac 202 nap 150x pmc gb1 speakers. I must say that the sound quality is superb. I do not know how it compares to the highly regarded n-dac. I chose the Bryston for financial reasons. I did,however, compare it to my cd5x. As good as the 5x is, The stand alone dac blew it away. Hope this helps.

I run a SBT directly into my MF amp. It is not even ethernet wired but gets its streams over wifi.

Eventhough this combo is supposed to be the worst of all setups according to this forum I am more than happy with it and will not change it until the SBT goes up in smoke.

Initially I had the SBT paired with a CA DAC Magic. I had listened to the CA DAC Magic fronted by a Sonos vs. the stand-alone Sonos. That was a clear improvement and made me buy the DAC. The SBT had been on order at that time but was not yet availabe anywhere, so I could not test the DAC with the SBT. The rational was that if the DAC brought improvements to the Sonos it should equaly do so to the SBT. Boy, was I wrong!

The SBT sounded so much more lively on its own. So the CA DAC Magic went on sale.

I now have a very minimal setup with a minimum of wiring and am at a maximum of satisfaction.

Am I ever considering 'upgrading' to another streamer? Yes. But when I look into the usability of all those high-priced streamers, I lean back and cherrish what I have. The SBT/iPeng solution is STILL unrivaled.

I'm a big fan of the SBT too, and also thought for a long time that SBT/LMS/iPeng was unrivalled.

But JRiver Media Center/Whitebear/SBT/jRemote is, imo, a lot better. Much easier to configure views, much better remote.  Same sq from the SBT. 

The SBT is an amazing piece of kit for the price but adding a good DAC such as the Naim nDAC and a good quality Coaxial cable will result in a massive improvement in SQ, but in terms of what it can do I take my hat off to Logitcech, god knows why they discontinued such a great product?

IMO, it's a product without a clear market positioning, it was stuck in the middle of the market:

too cheap/plastic and too poor brand to attract hi fi lovers (which aren't many anyway), too geeky for mass market.

Slimdevices (the company that originally developed the squeezebox family and the top of the range Tranporter, which is still now an amazing product) was acquired by Logitech, which did not know what to do with that.

Slimdevices should have been bought by Denon, Maranz or Sony.

We've got a SBT on a nDac as well. Brilliant couple. The nDac makes it so much better!!

Just to be sure I bought a TP powersupply for the SBT as well.

I used to use iPeng, now I use the Squeezebox app as a remote. Works really well! 

What source files are being played through the SBT? I thought all internet streamed music or iTunes was horribly compressed no?

New to this lark, as you can guess.

Cheers

G

I stream FLAC files over ethernet on my network. There is no further compression beyond the compression of the original FLAC files (which is lossless).

Where do you stream from? What's the source?

Thanks

G

I stream from a QNAP NAS to a ND5 XS. The UPnP service runs o the QNAP. It is Logitech Media Server with the UPnP plugin.