18-Feb-2018, 17:25
I am wondering what people's experience is with the new CI board. I received my upgraded Expert Pro on Friday and here is my impression so far:
A welcome addition to the CI is that the Pro wakes up automatically from standby and switches to the correct input automatically. Although it won't play for a few seconds (it has to wake up), during which you wonder if something has gone wrong (and it used to go wrong, so we have to build confidence in the updated Pro). There is also the occasional case where somebody else in the family uses Audio Station on their own phone to change the audio, without you noticing, which can be a blessing or a nuisance (YMMV). We had also one occasion where the Pro woke up the middle of the night at full volume for no particular reason. Thank you UPnP.
- Devialet AIR with Audirvana Plus on a Macbook Air streaming from a Synology NAS (or Qobuz), all over Wi-Fi, works perfectly. No dropout. No crack. I could browse the Web and download files and launch Excel without any impact on sound quality. These were things that were simply not possible before. I could even disable Sys Optimizer without any impact at all on sound quality.
- Streaming from the Synology NAS directly to the Pro via UPnP and Audio Station works well. No need for a laptop in the loop. It can all be controlled via the DS Audio app on the iPhone. (Notice this was not quite the case with DOS 2.1.0. I had to upgrade to DOS 2.2.0 beta 12.) But how about sound quality? How can I control that the Pro is really receiving bit-perfect data at the correct frequency? How about the extra smothness (processing ?) provided by Audirvana when the Mac is present in the loop?
- I briefly tried using AirPlay. But then again, how do I trust that the Expert is receiving the correct data ?
- Glider on the iPhone worked well, but I don't have high-resolution music on the iPhone (not enough room and not needed before).
- mConnect Light + Qobuz were OK, until I realized this was NOT comparable to option 1. A lot of saturation, probably due to inferior processing in mConnect/the iPhone, especially when the Queen of the Night started singing.
Another problem that came up is that pressing play in mConnect was also routed to Audio Station and Audio Station would take precedence. Quite confusing at first !
A welcome addition to the CI is that the Pro wakes up automatically from standby and switches to the correct input automatically. Although it won't play for a few seconds (it has to wake up), during which you wonder if something has gone wrong (and it used to go wrong, so we have to build confidence in the updated Pro). There is also the occasional case where somebody else in the family uses Audio Station on their own phone to change the audio, without you noticing, which can be a blessing or a nuisance (YMMV). We had also one occasion where the Pro woke up the middle of the night at full volume for no particular reason. Thank you UPnP.
