DAC + AMP separates for future upgrades? (2.0 -> 5.1)

[yoprado]

Hello!

I just joined the ASR community and was curious on the best path forward with my future plans. I just bought some ascend acoustics tower speakers to fill up my two story 1600SQFT condo. These towers will ideally be for critical listening as well as for watching movies (50%/50%). My condo has vaulted ceilings and I am about 13 feet away from the speakers when sitting on my couch. I plan to one day upgrade to a 5.1 surround system in a year or two, but I want to build towards a quality 2.0 system first.

Originally I had bought a NAD M33 and was pretty happy with it, but I realized that there is no way to match them up to a receiver in the future because it does not have passthrough. I have read the forums noting of hacks to combine an AVR with it, but it will need delay relays to delay the sounds to the other speakers and it just all seems rather complex to integrate. The way I see it, I can do a couple things:

1. Buy streamer(node) + dac(schitt modius) + preamp(freya S) + amp (buckeye stereo purifi) separates. When it comes time to integrate an AVR, I can just add in a balanced audio switch to the AMP and I switch it over if I want to move to Movie mode.

2. Buy a integrated streamer/dac/preamp (matrix audio m2 is top choice) + amp (buckeye stereo purifi). Again, I can buy an audio switch when the time is right.

3. Buy an integrated amp with pass through, but nothing tested by ASR so far has enough wattage (>150) or high enough SINAD(>100) to merit this.

4. Just buy an AVR now (Marantz Cinema 40) and just use the stereo speakers and build slowly from there.

Are there any other options I'm missing? I am assuming 1 is very complex, 3 won't be satisfactory, and 4 will just be overkill for now. Thoughts?

Extraneous information that may be useful:

- I might want to add a subwoofer for 2.1 listening sooner
- I have an HTPC for watching 4k movies. I plan to also use this for dirac when I want to do more critical listening within the room

Thank you!

York

 

[luft262]

I'd just buy an AVR now. Most of the ones with the best SINAD will be Denon. In the end that's the direction it sounds like you're going anyway. It will have a good enough amp and DAC combo to power your speakers clearly for both stereo and surround sound.

 

[yoprado]

Thanks for the reply @luft262. Seeing that the latest denons have an amp SINAD of 87 compared to separate hifi amps that can measure in the 100+, do you think it will matter much?

 

[linger63]

Hello!

Originally I had bought a NAD M33 and was pretty happy with it, but I realized that there is no way to match them up to a receiver in the future because it does not have passthrough. I have read the forums noting of hacks to combine an AVR with it, but it will need delay relays to delay the sounds to the other speakers and it just all seems rather complex to integrate.

Thank you!

York

You don't need passthrough........it does simplify things a bit but you can still use your NAD M33 in combination with an AVR.
Don't understand the "delay, relays" forum talk at all.
The AVR will need to have Main Pre Outs though.

If it has then you simply connect your NAD to the AVR's pre outs.
Set volume at around 12.00 on NAD......(see below....needs to be a repeatable spot)
Run AVR's onboard speaker setup.
You are now perfectly good to listen to 5.1 with your NAD running the Mains.
Do not touch NAD volume as you are now using AVR's volume.
Signal degradation using cascading volume controls?.........inaudible...... and benefits of NAD for mains in 5.1 are WAY higher.

Stereo listening remains pure as you don't even have to turn the AVR on if you don't want to.

IMPORTANT..........The reason HT passthrough is handy is that it provides unity gain.

In this case you need to do that yourself which is why I mentioned around 12.00 on the NAD earlier.
You would pick a spot where the AVR doesn't have to be set to extremities for channel balance......
i.e set NAD volume so that AVR doesn't need to be +/- 12dB for the Mains.......more like 4 or 5 is ideal......even 0 (unity)

VERY VERY IMPORTANT................

Remember to turn volume on NAD back down when not using AVR or you may damage your speakers.
As long as you trust yourself this will work fine..........I did it for several years back in the day with no issues.

Good luck with whatever direction you decide.........

 

[yoprado]

@linger63 I’ve read in this same Forum that because there is no way to turn off the digital amp, there will be about a 50ms delay. They need this delay to play across other BluOS devices which you can’t remove. That means I will have to delay the avr sound as well and get it just right to sync properly. Other people in this forum have had to use delay relays in order to match those delays. It seems that it starts to become more and more tedious to get this type of setup done properly because of the no bypass issue

 

[luft262]

Thanks for the reply @luft262. Seeing that the latest denons have an amp SINAD of 87 compared to separate hifi amps that can measure in the 100+, do you think it will matter much?

Well, that's a good question. To me it wouldn't matter as I don't care enough to build two separate systems so my living room serves as my home theater and stereo music spot. An AVR is the easiest way to make use of that. If I want to listen to something with perfect accuracy I use my headphones with and amp/DAC stack. I've never listened to a near perfect SINAD, non-headphone system vs just a very good one, so I can't say if I'd hear a difference or not, but AVRs generally have better room correction and I feel like room correction and EQ would be more important than perfect SINAD. I'm not big on pre-outs with a separate amp as I always use subs with my speakers and you'd be stuck with the AVR DAC anyway.

 

[HarmonicTHD]

Thanks for the reply @luft262. Seeing that the latest denons have an amp SINAD of 87 compared to separate hifi amps that can measure in the 100+, do you think it will matter much?

You can test here

Listening Test

www.klippel.de

and here

Distort audibility tester | Distort documentation

distortaudio.org

for yourself.

 

[yoprado]

@HarmonicTHD Thanks for the help! It does put things into perspective

In the end, I am looking at two scenarios for a separate DAC/Preamp/streamer system or an integrated streamer for my amp. I hope to eventually move my two speakers (ascend acoustics sierra tower v2) into a HT system, if that helps any decision making. My two choices are:

Integrated Streamer (Matrix Audio M2)
Pros
- all in one device
- Pretty touch screen
- play all the formats ever
- TOTL SOTA DAM Preamp (DSD,MQA,ETC)
Cons
- has a quicker EOL because services may come and go
-Chinese brand fairly young but doesn't seem to have huge issues online
- need to manually switch Amp source once I get 5.1 system

Schitt Stack (Freya + Modius) + Streamer (Bluesound Node)
Pros
- Easily upgradable Pieces
- Reliable US Brands
- has Theater bypass (well it's complex, need to switch preamp settings and put it all the way up)
Cons
- No screen
- not elegant solution, multiple pieces
- Not TOTL, only 192khz max (may not be a con because there isn't much content above this that I listen to DSD/MQA/ETC)

Thoughts?

 

[pogo]

Here is my wireless upgrade of the NAD M33 to a 4.0 system:

My surround decoder is about 5m away from my M33 and I can now save the long and lossy transmission with a Bluesound HUB.
The LINDY compensates the 50ms delay.

 

[pogo]

preAV nuXinema