All in One From Cocktail Audio - Focus on its Streaming ability

[miro]

A very positive review of the X40:


http://www.novafidelity.co.uk/media-cove...0-review-5

[ledesc]

This is interesting. Any feedback on a Devialet ?

[lueneburg-dev]

Hello, this is my very first post on Devchat. (Am an owner of a Dev200 for a couple of months now [details in signature]. My former main system was with a Musical Fidelity M6i amp, an Eastern Electric Minimax Supreme DAC modified with Burson Opamps Supreme of 4th generation, and a basic Marantz CD5004 used as cd transport - now relegated to 2nd system in the bedroom, with some Focal Elektra Be907 speakers.)

I would also be very interested to read about anyone who compared the sounds of the different cocktail audio products, with their various digital outputs (incl. the AES/EBU, Coax, and USB), into a devialet, ignoring their other functions (DAC, small amplifier or preamp, etc.) which are rather irrelevant to Devialet-based systems... I mean the X12, X30 and X40, but also the new X100 launched by the UK distributor of Cocktail Audio (which does only the USB output, and does completely away with DAC and amplifier functions)...

Extra question:
If anyone already started using that new X100 seriously, I would be also curious about how it really manages the ripping and metadata tagging (as it claims to use now an own database that would be better than FreDB, but am wary of marketing claims)...

The advantage I perceive, for own purposes (still many hundreds of CDs to rip) being, that these devices from Cocktail Audio all include what seems to be easy CD ripping, while costing an equivalent price to respective Auralic devices for example. But how do they sound compared to e.g. an Auralic Mini, or an Auralic Aries LE, or Auralic Aries Femto...?

[Jnan_devi]

Welcome to this chat forum and Congratulations for your system.

Below is my opinion and budgeted.
I was looking for Cocktail Audio X30/x40 is in early days I never had good way to send bit-stream to Dev. for me AIR did not work well and I was not interested in iTunes. Then I bought Bluesound which i sold eventually. However coming back to X30/40, this has so many components and outputs, DAC a little amp etc for which we dont use and paying for those unnecessarily.

Dev has good DAC in itself and all it needs is bit-sream so it can do its job well. Now there are good number of people on Roon (Software) + Computer to stream audio digital bit-stream to Dev over AIR3/USB and other options.
Personally I would recommend looking into "Roon" thread on Streaming category in this forum. Computer -> Mac-Mini, NUC, Intel Laptop, MacBook, sonicTransporter, uRendu etc.

there are serious X100 users on this forum. Ripping is indeed painful but i dont think its as easy as its written on their website but thats my opinion. And there are believers nothing beats CD player which X40 has on board.

Good Luck for your streaming options.

[lueneburg-dev]

Thanks for your reply. So far I was lucky, had no issues with AIR over Ethernet or Wifi (just sometimes some drop-out for a fraction of a second, nothing dramatic). So I have no urgency for a different solution. But I just read here and there on this forum/website, people (including the administrator) who said that they got better sound with e.g. highly expensive streamers, so it raises my curiosity about the comparative sound of... especially that X100 device (i.e. modified Linux pc)... But I skeptically guess it will not sound any better than AIR on my system... Still curious to read from others...
(Had a first look at Roon, thanks, but am not convinced. This is not what I am looking for.)

... But that is indeed only half of the story. The other half, more urgent to me, is how to rip my many hundreds of CDs in a nicer, easier, faster way [as I also keep buying new CDs often], as I am fed up with manually doing it on a Windows laptop with Foobar2000 or EAC:
- So one option may be a cocktail audio device, especially that X100 (if it does it bitperfect as claimed, and does a decent job at metadata and album art, so that I have less work to do afterwards, correcting the metadata...).
- Or the other option I am considering is buying a "Nimbie" and use ith with DBPoweramp's batch ripping functions... It would be even more automated, the DBPoweramp seems reliable and performs metadata retrieval well, I read (but I also read that the databases are then not free)... but I would have to hide the Nimbie in the cellar when not using it, that ugly huge thing (whereas the X100 can sit next to hifi equipment without much problem)...
--> So I am very curious about the X100's ripping and metadata abilities...

If I would go for a CD Transport for the devialet [as you mentioned that too], that's another story (I already read the other threads here), which would mean further extra costs, and am not sure yet whether to 'break the bank' and find a used Moon Neo 260D [although some units break down after just 2 years], or get instead something slightly less expensive, like a used Musical Fidelity A1 CD Pro [has no aes/ebu], or a Cyrus CD t [also no aes/ebu] or a RS CD Box from Pro-Ject [does have aes/ebu and some folks here seem to like it]...

[mdconnelly]

I've been down the same path with regarding to CD ripping.   I chose to use EAC and it took a long time to finally rip all of my music.  Yes, it is tedious, but I also learned much along the way so no regrets.  I'm sure there are better tools now to do so as well as ripping services, but I know little of them.  


But I can speak to sound quality for streaming.   I have an excellent CD transport (Oracle) which allows me to play CDs to the Dev via the AES/EBU input and have been very happy with that combo.   For a long time I streamed using LMS to a Squeezebox Touch to the SPDIF of the Devialet.   That sounded very good but not quite as good as the CD transport.  Then again, it did allow me to stream hi-res music as well.   AIR was never very reliable for me, but when it did work, it sounded better than the SB Touch... probably as good as the CD transport and better on hi-res music.   Over time,  I found myself streaming far, far more than spinning CDs.  Along came Roon and, well, there's just no going back.

But given my frustrations with AIR, I opted to give the Sonore uRendu a shot (USB input to the Devialet).   All I can say is WOW!  Sound quality took a major step up and no more stuttering or white noise from AIR.  Compared to other high-priced music streaming solutions, the uRendu is a huge bargain.   I'm using the iFi power supply for the uRendu but many have said that it will improve even further with a better power supply.   Haven't gone there (yet).

[Jnan_devi]

CD ripping is painful but would help keep options open with data available on your HDD so you have many options out there to send bits to the Dev.

I bought dbpoweramp too for ripping my collection and occasionally buy from HD sites. Your idea on dbpoweramp is good. There are CD ripping threads on this forum where folks have used different techniques. Check them out for ideas.

Coming back to streaming, @mdconnelly, I too agree .... Along came "Roon" and everything is so easy and sorted. I currently use MacBook + AIR3 + Roon for streaming bits from NAS to Dev. However my next buy is NUC with good local SSD storage (~1TB or more) so the computer need not have NAS called into service in sending bits over ETH/WIFI instead all music files are local to the Computer ( NUC, and other machines)

[mdconnelly]

Coming back to streaming, @mdconnelly, I too agree .... Along came "Roon" and everything is so easy and sorted. I currently use MacBook + AIR3 + Roon for streaming bits from NAS to Dev. However my next buy is NUC with good local SSD storage (~1TB or more) so the computer need not have NAS called into service in sending bits over ETH/WIFI instead all music files are local to the Computer ( NUC, and other machines)

Right now I'm running Roon off a fairly powerful Win 10 desktop with an SSD and 4TB drive, but have been giving serious thought to a NUC and/or a NAS, but now the SonicTransporter seems like a very interesting solution as well.   A lot of interesting choices in this audio world of ours.