A Confused streaming system - Mutec / SOtM Ultra

[Confused]

@baconbrain @octaviars - I am currently doing a bit of research into room treatment, an interesting topic, which looks to be half science and half black art to me. The science is clear, but there is a subjective side to making the room sound "dead" with absorption versus adding "space" with diffraction. As an example of the science, when measured with REW the obvious problem in my room is a "null" at about 120Hz. The wavelength of a 120Hz wave in air is about 2.86m. This is not far off the distance between each speaker and the corresponding far side wall, and is roughly half the distance to the rear wall. So with some simple calculations I can start to identify issues. I did find some stuff on the internet about room treatment specifically with the KEF Blade, this stated that decent absorption on the side walls is essential due to the Blade having side mounted bass drivers. Match this to my null calculation, it gives some indication as to what I should be trying. In terms of researching room treatments, I would say that I have now reached the "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" stage, so I am not ready to start buying anything just yet. My mid term plan is to do a bit more research so I have a better understanding myself, and then get some professional advice.

As a curious aside, I have been trying some fine tuning of the speaker positions recently, just an inch or two movement here and there, but this has make a surprising difference. In my current favorite speaker position, I can just see the reflection of one of the Blade's Uni-Q drivers as a reflection in the Perspex cover of my turntable, so I have my TT cover as partial "first reflection point". Now that I have discovered that my Blu Ray player sounds just as good as my old dedicated CD player when playing CD's, this means I can take the CD player out of the system, lose one shelf from the rack, and get the TT's Perspex cover out of the "first reflection point" zone. Wheels within wheels as they say, but I am optimistic this should make some kind of improvement. I did even have a crazy thought about making a foam room treatment cover for my TT cover, but that was probably a little impractical and obsessive. Might be fun to try though.

@Vivialet - A very interesting observation re UPnP and via the CI board. In the past I have tried head to head tests of my Mutec SOtM kit versus AIR and Roon AIR, but I have never tried critical listening with UPnP. I have tried JRiver UPnP / DLNA (I am never sure what the difference is) via the CI board, so at least I know this works. In addition, I am interested in Audirvana, simply because it is just about the only "audiophile" quality music player that also supports individual track ratings, which are one of my pet loves for reasons I don't need to go into here. So I will give this a try sometime. In my case I do not have any optical converters, and I am not likely to buy optical converters as I am patiently waiting for the Uptone EtherRegen, which I believe is due to be released at the end of this year. In addition, in my case I can run UPnP / DLNA to either the CI board, or to the sMS-200Ultra, so there are a few options I could try in this regard, I will definitely give this a go when I have time.

I have also had some additional thoughts of things I can now easily A/B test now I have my Arcam USB stick streamer as a "reference". One is to try the old microRendu again, mR to tX-USBultra to Mutec MC3+USB. Another would be to try the sPS-500 to power my router. I suspect this will make zero to very little difference, but now I have a direct A/B reference it might be worth a go. Currently the sPS-500 is sat on a shelf doing nothing, so worth a try I guess.

As a final point, @octaviars - please keep us informed as to how you find the dCS Network bridge versus your SOtM kit, this is a very interesting comparison.