Sonore Streamers

[Hifi_swlon]

That makes complete sense. To be honest I wasn't really expecting a change of that magnitude, but so many people report huge differences when upgrading digital sources that its almost surprising when someone gives more 'honest' feedback.

When I demo'd the N100 I perceived a lot more details than from my Mac, but it didn't really change the sound signature at all, or at least if it did it was subtle. This surprised me at the time as I was hoping for more of everything - more bass etc - but that of course makes no sense. This is 'just' data delivery, so it shouldn't really change the sound dramatically on a bit-perfect stream otherwise it would be doing something to the data. I don't really know why I expected a bigger change - possibly just because some people (and reviewers) give the impression the change from a Mac to an Aurender is like buying a new system, whereas in fact its probably a lot more subtle than they make out. Still worthwhile though hopefully.

Bearing in mind your very balanced approach of keeping things comparative to key component upgrades like say speakers, it will be interesting to see whether if I detect any positive difference, wether that difference outweighs the difference Dirac makes. I've got a real feeling that it won't, as I find my system sounds a bit anaemic without it (i.e. I can live with it and get used to it, but I don't really like it, and definitely don't when I first turn Dirac off), but in a way that makes this experiment more interesting.....

Mine's in customs now. Let's see how this compares to my Regen delivery experience....