I finally decided to move into the 21st century and give digital music a try. So I picked up a Slim Device's Squeezebox 3, liked what I could easily accomplish, and added it into my overall system upgrade (chronicled in other threads).
For those not familiar with it, the SB3 connects to your local LAN (either wireless or wired) and plays songs stored on a music server. Its output is either analog left and right, optical digital, or digital coax. (Its really simple and pretty sweet, actually. It took me something like 10 minutes to unbox and have it up and running.)
The only real weak point of the SB3 is that, even given a high-quality digital source, at $300 its internal DACs aren't really up to audiophile levels. The solution, of course, is to route the digital out through a more capable external processor. So I fugured that I would use my new Sunfire TGP-5 preprocessor. But then Jeff Zaret decided he didn't need his CIAudio VDA-2 DAC with his new transport, so I decided to give that a try (it also came with the CIAudio VAC-1 high-current power supply).
I am very glad that I did. Even though the TGP-5 does a much better job of processing than the SB3, the VDA-2 is even better. In fact, I was surprised at how much better it was. I was able to set up an A/B test between the two, and the DAC gave perceptibly more depth and detail to the music. A good example was when we were listening to one of the Barb Jungr "Studio Master" downloads from Linn Records. Using the TGP, you could tell when a harmonica came in that it was somewhere behind and to the right of the singer. With the VDA-2, however, its position became certain. Suddenly, you could point to a specific spot and say "the harmonica is right there". It was pretty neat.
Bottom line, I can highly recommend the Squeezebox with the CIAudio VDA-2 / VAC-1 as an external DAC.
For those not familiar with it, the SB3 connects to your local LAN (either wireless or wired) and plays songs stored on a music server. Its output is either analog left and right, optical digital, or digital coax. (Its really simple and pretty sweet, actually. It took me something like 10 minutes to unbox and have it up and running.)
The only real weak point of the SB3 is that, even given a high-quality digital source, at $300 its internal DACs aren't really up to audiophile levels. The solution, of course, is to route the digital out through a more capable external processor. So I fugured that I would use my new Sunfire TGP-5 preprocessor. But then Jeff Zaret decided he didn't need his CIAudio VDA-2 DAC with his new transport, so I decided to give that a try (it also came with the CIAudio VAC-1 high-current power supply).
I am very glad that I did. Even though the TGP-5 does a much better job of processing than the SB3, the VDA-2 is even better. In fact, I was surprised at how much better it was. I was able to set up an A/B test between the two, and the DAC gave perceptibly more depth and detail to the music. A good example was when we were listening to one of the Barb Jungr "Studio Master" downloads from Linn Records. Using the TGP, you could tell when a harmonica came in that it was somewhere behind and to the right of the singer. With the VDA-2, however, its position became certain. Suddenly, you could point to a specific spot and say "the harmonica is right there". It was pretty neat.
Bottom line, I can highly recommend the Squeezebox with the CIAudio VDA-2 / VAC-1 as an external DAC.
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