272 XPS 2 (Non-DR)

analogmusic posted:

I agree with your comments Emre, but what I am really saying is that XPS (even non DR) will improve the 272.

Graeme, I do hear what you are talking about when I hear a 272, but I don't think I could wait that long before adding an XPS to it.

Just remind me Ali, how long did it take until you upgraded from your Squeezebox as you only source? Must have been a good couple of years at least...

Hi totemphile, glad to see you back on the forum, welcome back.

My issues with non-upgrading initially is because of my own ignorance, I didn't know how to set up my 202/200 properly, but I've learnt what I did wrong with regards to earthing and cabling and once I got the 202/200 sounding as it should I had no hesitation upgrading with HCDR and then to 282/250DR. When using non-naim sources, one has to still provide a connection from the preamp to signal earth. Anyway it's all sorted out now, and 272 users do not need to worry about this at all.

The squeezebox is an OK source though... not to bad at all, but the current generation of Chord DACs as you know is really another league.

Finkfan posted:

I've got a 272 to try for a few week and it's sounding very good! Assuming it stays, at some point I'll get an XPSDR for it and I look forward to hearing the improvement it bring to an already great sounding preamp. I'm new to streaming but I'm unimpressed with Tidal hifi sound quality at the moment. 

Yes I am hoping that later firmware will address the Tidal SQ drop off with Naim. There is absolutely no reason why it should be different from locally streamed FLAC.. because Tidal is simply standard streamed FLAC. However the underlying TCP network transport layer appears to work harder on Tidal because of latency and the relatively slower throughput .. at least on my relatively slow broadband access. I am also hoping the new Uniti series make the differences less apparent or indistinguishable... and there may be technical reasons why this could be so.

For Tidal I currently use a non Naim solution and it works very well indeed.. very impressed with the SQ it can offer, being effectively indistinguishable from local FLAC for what I believe is the same master.

Indeed Simon I stream Tidal from my Laptop into my Chord Mojo and Dave, I don't hear any issues with SQ that have been mentioned here.

But one of my friends who owns Linn KDS/1 says tidal through his streamer isn't as good a the same file streamed from his NAS.

So I'm a bit puzzled by this. What did make a difference was improving the USB cable between my laptop and the Chord DAC.

Since USB streaming is isosynchonous and real time (no error correction), USB cables do sound different in my system. Unfortunately the best USB cables from Vertere and Chord Cable cost a LOT of  money.

UPNP has error correction, so maybe a superior way to stream, and with no interconnect or USB cables to worry about 272 looks very good value for money.

Hi Ali, UPnP has no implicit error correction, other than as it uses TCP for its network transport, and that transport function  can request the resend of a lost or corrupt packet of data from either the streamer or the server - but this is identical to Tidal - so no difference.

To my way of thinking any streamer platform that can distinguish differences (albeit) subtle between Wav and FLAC and/or different media server app-platforms is liable to hearing SQ differences between local and remote streaming - i.e. cross talk and noise from the network streaming function... and the more revealing the platform is and critical the listener is of the platform perhaps the more one is sensitised to such subtle differences.

USB is quite a tolerant standard at the physical layer and so there is i see quite a large scope for differing cables, and cables will electrically couple differently to the systems and cause different interactions and crosstalk. If this is going to somehow cross over into digital audio clocks, powerlines or analogue stages then almost certainly this is going to be audible. 

As you might remember I posted the links on this forum from  Texas Instruments (the organization that  makes the DAC chips and some analogue stage chips that Naim uses) have produced interesting design papers on reducing the crosstalk side effects on systems from coupling USB and Ethernet cables .