Astra reviews

[ray1234]

My dear friend is a professional audio engineer and has always said that AES (XLR) inputs were only necessary when the source has a much longer run than a few meters.  In a standard Hi Fi setup ,typically you are not more than a couple meters from your system.  Is that not your understanding as well?

For Devialet Expert Pro series, one can perform a ground lifting on XLR, which for some reason increases the soundstage size and detail level of the overall sound. The theory behind is that Devialet does not like to share common ground with the equipment before it (e.g. streamer, phono output, etc).

For normal SPDIF connection, there is only two wires, the signal and the ground, there is no way to lift the ground.

Of course, at the end of the day the judgement should be based on the sound quality. Maybe Astra has advanced to a stage that it sounds better than the Expert Pro with ground lift, we just don't know .....