'RoonReady' not coming to Devialet….

[Antoine]

I've written it many times before (no offense) a standard off the shelf computer will sound better using AIR than USB. However USB can easily surpass AIR in quality after optimizing a PC. Unfortunately the/a NUC isn't really suited for this. A CAPS style PC for example is.

A new SonicOrbiter has just been released by the way, the SE. It's based on a low power Cubox. I've experimented with a Cubox i4Pro in the past and it sounded good though not as good as my custom music server.

Would you class the Melco products as a CAPS style PC?
I think the SQ matches AIR but it's hard to compare property as AIR is now in the past for me.

I don't know the Melco from personal experience but in a way most music servers are similar in that they use optimized hardware (like low noise USB interfaces, high quality clocks, multiple separate power supplies to isolate certain components etc.) and software/operating systems. In the beginning brands like Aurender used simple off the shelf low power computer mainboards (they do develop their own purpose built mainboards nowadays) and some still do.

They're not all the same of course and some are better than others but every time I see a new streamer/music server being introduced I always Google for pictures of the insides and most of the times I see ordinary computer parts, sometimes combined with proprietary stuff like power supplies or output boards but in their basis they are using a similar recipe. And of course there's more than only the ingredients, that's why it takes so much time to make it sound great in a DIY fashion unless you follow a well documented recipe like the public CAPS recipe. Although also even there, there are many things that can be improved upon. There's many forums on which people do little more than discuss new experiments and tweaks.

Some people, of course, just want a turn-key solution and I don't blame them.