Ethernet-wired setup of Phantom stereo

[streamy]

The Phantoms and Dialog are not (yet??) RAAT devices. So, either you connect the optical out of the MacMini to one of the Phantoms or you buy a Raspberry Pi and a hifiberry Digi (or any copy boards) to connect to one of the Phantoms. The optical input of Dialog is still not 100% reliable and also only accepts up to 24/96k and not 24/192k like the Optical input of the Phantoms. In case your power line is not too much contaminated with neighboring PLC's and the Phantoms and Dialog are on the same power net the internal PLC works perfect. In this case there is no need to connect the Phantoms through a switch to Ethernet. The Dialog needs Ethernet connection to your router to be able to directly stream services like Qobuz, Tidal, Deezer or Spotify (using Spotify Connect). When you run the Spark app on the MacMini you can access through Spark any local or NAS drive to play local files. Of course Roon is much better organized than Spark. But unfortunately streaming is very limited to Tidal in Roon and also internet Radio access is much better in Spark than in Roon. So, I use both Roon and Spark in parallel and have best from both worlds.