Streamer Upgrade for Chrome Bumper Kan II setup?

Posted by: Lunicycle on 13 December 2014

Hi


A little bit of background.


A year ago I was running a Marantz MCR 603 one box streamer although I was happy with the SQ at the time but its lack of gapless playback and general gutlessness in the processing department drove me made; very slow listing, jumping at the start of tracks etc. A slight curiosity was that Twonky thought it was a Naim Streamer!


As a little experiment I bought a Raspberry Pi, my second, and a HiFi Berry DAC which I used as a source on the Marantz and this improved the functionality and the sound, initially I was using a media player called Pete Manchester Media Player but since it has introduced UPNP/DLNA support I have been using Volumio controlled with Bubble upnp on an Android tablet.


As mentioned above I was using Twonky which is part of the standard offerings of my NAS however on the recommendation of this forum I set up Asset on my old RPi with a mount to my NAS and has improved both sound quality and functionality.


Earlier this year a colleague loaned me a chrome bumper amp set up 32 SNAPS 140 ( I also auditioned the 42.5 but preferred the 32) feeding into my Tannoy Mercury M2s I found this a vast improvement on the Marantz and it made me more inclined to listen to music.


My latest change was to get some second hand Kan IIs which when I 1st listened to I was unimpressed then I pushed them back against the wall and wow.


Now I would like to improve my source on a relatively limited budget.

Now:
Raspberry Pi (Volumio)/HiFi Berry DAC
NAC 32
SNAPS
NAP 140
KAN II

Possible
Option 1:
Raspberry Pi (Volumio)
DAC V1 (via USB) (will this work has anyone tried it?)
NAP 140 (Can I plug V1 into NAP 140 does new into old work?)
KAN II
(This has the advantage that I could sell the 32 and SNAPS to partially fund it)

Option 2:
Raspberry Pi (Volumio)
Hugo (or other DAC via USB)
NAC 32
SNAPS
NAP 140
KAN II

Option 3:
ND5 XS/NDX (or other stand-alone streamer)
NAC 32
SNAPS
NAP 140
KAN II

Option 4:
NAC-N 172 XS
NAP 140
KAN II
(Same financial advantage as 1).

Although upgradability would be nice it is not essential .

I would be grateful for anyone’s thoughts on this if you haven’t got bored and stopped reading before now!

Posted on: 13 December 2014 by oscarskeeper

From my experience, option 2 is likely to be objectively the best sounding - it's also quite a bit cheaper than an NDX. However, the Hugo is voiced differently to Naim sources and you may or may not like what it does.

 

Try getting a dem - it's (as ever) the only way. 

Posted on: 13 December 2014 by HiFiman

I use hugo into a 72 (very similar to a 32) sounds wonderful

Posted on: 13 December 2014 by DavidDever

I use the Digi+ hat on the RPi B+ and this works quite well - I have not tried the Audiophilleo-based DACs (such as the DAC-V1) via USB with the RPi.

Posted on: 13 December 2014 by Lunicycle

Thanks David I had thought about the digi+ if I couldn't get my DAC of choice to talk to the Pi but my preference would be to use the USB as I feel like the less steps the better. I did have a look around for a DAC that uses the I2S connection however this seems restricted to the "homebrew" market. It goes without saying that listening is the key.