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I auditioned Dutch & Dutch 8c, and I have more questions now than before

No bullshit at all.

If you bought a piece of hi-fi gear of whatever type that included a power supply for example, and you took off the lid and peered inside, what would you think if you saw a ps similar to the one in your laptop? You'd likely be appalled and return it to your dealer in disgust. The same applies to other component parts of hi-fi gear that may have been adopted from the computer industry - they should be designed and built solely for audio excellence - something completely unnecessary and absent in general purpose computers such as your laptop.

If you are prepared to accept this sort of corner-cutting, I doubt you've ever heard what good equipment is capable of delivering.
:facepalm::rolleyes: … and that’s about all I got to say about that
 
Regarding the addition of new streaming services, previously this year D&D gave this quote to The Ear:
"Right now, we're working on implementing both Qobuz and Tidal, as well as UPnP. We expect to release these features later this year." And they will be available as a firmware update.“

It seems however the latest firmware update that was recently announced doesn’t include these services yet: https://dutchdutch.com/pages/firmware-version-2-6

In the The Ear piece D&D also mentions a smaller version, the 6c, is in development.
 
Regarding the addition of new streaming services, previously this year D&D gave this quote to The Ear:
"Right now, we're working on implementing both Qobuz and Tidal, as well as UPnP. We expect to release these features later this year." And they will be available as a firmware update.“

It seems however the latest firmware update that was recently announced doesn’t include these services yet: https://dutchdutch.com/pages/firmware-version-2-6

In the The Ear piece D&D also mentions a smaller version, the 6c, is in development.
Welcome aboard!
 
Regarding the addition of new streaming services, previously this year D&D gave this quote to The Ear:
"Right now, we're working on implementing both Qobuz and Tidal, as well as UPnP. We expect to release these features later this year." And they will be available as a firmware update.“

It seems however the latest firmware update that was recently announced doesn’t include these services yet: https://dutchdutch.com/pages/firmware-version-2-6

In the The Ear piece D&D also mentions a smaller version, the 6c, is in development.
Bacch over AES though!
 
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The only network in my house is wifi. I see there are any number of RJ45 to wifi bridges available on Amazon and elsewhere for not very much money. Do they work painlessly with the 8C? Even if so, it would be so much better if wifi were integrated in the 8C

In hindsight, adding wifi to the 8c would have been a smart move. At the time, we decided against it for two main reasons. First, we realized early on that synchronizing audio wirelessly on an existing network would be even more challenging than on a wired one. Second, and this part is mostly on me, we believed the market might be skeptical of wifi in a product aimed at the highest levels of performance, because wired ethernet is simply more reliable and robust. That belief turned out to be wrong.

In my living room, I have a pair of 8c’s set up permanently. I use a wifi extender near the speakers, connected to a Netgear GS-105 switch, and both 8c’s are wired to that switch. Streaming works smoothly with this setup.

Wifi doesn't reach my office, so I'm using power over ethernet edit: ethernet over powerline connected to a wifi extender. There's an unmanaged switch connected to that extender, and the 8c’s are wired to it. This setup works well, too.
 
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Wifi doesn't reach my office, so I'm using power over ethernet connected to a wifi extender. There's an unmanaged switch connected to that extender, and the 8c’s are wired to it. This setup works well, too.
Imagine telling this 10 years ago to audiophiles who argue over speaker cables :D
 
One thing the Kef LS60 and JBL 4329P have that would nice with the 8c, remote control.


View attachment 393553
If you mainly use Roon, you can use the Microsoft Surface Dial with the rooDial extension for rooExtend on a Pi. This way you can control volume, play/pause and skip track in Roon. Or the Xencelabs Quick Keys controller with the rooMax extension (no first hand experience with the latter).
 
If you mainly use Roon, you can use the Microsoft Surface Dial with the rooDial extension for rooExtend on a Pi. This way you can control volume, play/pause and skip track in Roon. Or the Xencelabs Quick Keys controller with the rooMax extension (no first hand experience with the latter).
Interesting but how does it connect? I run roon core on a NUC in my office upstairs, the 8c's would be in my living room, everything connected by ethernet. Where does the rooExtend go ?
 
Interesting but how does it connect? I run roon core on a NUC in my office upstairs, the 8c's would be in my living room, everything connected by ethernet. Where does the rooExtend go ?
The Pi running rooExtend should be in the vicinity of your listening position for Bluetooth connection with the remote control and is connected to your network through Ethernet. It uses the Extension functionality in Roon (can be found under Settings in the Roon app), hence it only works with Roon on the 8c and not with Spotify or components that are connected through AES or analog XLR. Further details can be found on the Roon forum and the rooExtend website.

Apart from the remote control I also wanted to add Airplay to the 8c through the rooPlay extension of rooExtend, but that didn’t work out for me the way I hoped it would (10 seconds delay between hitting play and actually hearing sound and connection issues), YMMV. For now I occasionally connect an RME Pro with a streamer to the 8c for Airplay functionality, but that takes the whole all-in-one / Big Sonos thought away a bit.

Would be very pleased if the 8c could get Airplay added to its functionalities, but haven’t seen any mention of that from D&D yet unfortunately.
 
The Pi running rooExtend should be in the vicinity of your listening position for Bluetooth connection with the remote control and is connected to your network through Ethernet. It uses the Extension functionality in Roon (can be found under Settings in the Roon app), hence it only works with Roon on the 8c and not with Spotify or components that are connected through AES or analog XLR. Further details can be found on the Roon forum and the rooExtend website.

Apart from the remote control I also wanted to add Airplay to the 8c through the rooPlay extension of rooExtend, but that didn’t work out for me the way I hoped it would (10 seconds delay between hitting play and actually hearing sound and connection issues), YMMV. For now I occasionally connect an RME Pro with a streamer to the 8c for Airplay functionality, but that takes the whole all-in-one / Big Sonos thought away a bit.

Would be very pleased if the 8c could get Airplay added to its functionalities, but haven’t seen any mention of that from D&D yet unfortunately.
I wonder if the new Fosi VOL20 would work in the same way?
 
No bullshit at all.

If you bought a piece of hi-fi gear of whatever type that included a power supply for example, and you took off the lid and peered inside, what would you think if you saw a ps similar to the one in your laptop? You'd likely be appalled and return it to your dealer in disgust. The same applies to other component parts of hi-fi gear that may have been adopted from the computer industry - they should be designed and built solely for audio excellence - something completely unnecessary and absent in general purpose computers such as your laptop.

If you are prepared to accept this sort of corner-cutting, I doubt you've ever heard what good equipment is capable of delivering.
My OKTO Dac running my Genelec's from my laptop sounds incredibly, scarily good. Wait till you find out all the music you listen to was mastered using a computer ;)
 
Wifi doesn't reach my office, so I'm using power over ethernet edit: ethernet over powerline connected to a wifi extender. There's an unmanaged switch connected to that extender, and the 8c’s are wired to it. This setup works well, too.
Obligatory reminder to those reading that you don't want to be using this HomePlug crap unless you really, really, really have to.

It's a last resort option if say you live in what roughly amounts to a concrete bunker and getting either WiFi or network cables from A to B is an absolute chore. It is very sensitive to mains interference e.g. from badly filtered SMPS wall warts, needs both ends to be on the same phase or explicit RF coupling between different ones, and in unfavorable conditions will crank out enough RF power for the mains wiring (which was never designed to contain RF) to be radiating substantial amounts of interference over hundreds of meters. In a nutshell, you more or less need the qualifications of a ham radio operator to reliably deploy the stuff, but then you'll also be very aware of it being a Bad Idea.
 
Obligatory reminder to those reading that you don't want to be using this HomePlug crap unless you really, really, really have to.

It's a last resort option if say you live in what roughly amounts to a concrete bunker and getting either WiFi or network cables from A to B is an absolute chore. It is very sensitive to mains interference e.g. from badly filtered SMPS wall warts, needs both ends to be on the same phase or explicit RF coupling between different ones, and in unfavorable conditions will crank out enough RF power for the mains wiring (which was never designed to contain RF) to be radiating substantial amounts of interference over hundreds of meters. In a nutshell, you more or less need the qualifications of a ham radio operator to reliably deploy the stuff, but then you'll also be very aware of it being a Bad Idea.
I've used it without problems.
 
Now that I think about it, an alternative to a wifi bridge would be a mesh network adapter/node. I had one in my last house where each mesh node had an RJ45 input. Put one on each speaker and a couple others around the house and you are in business, likely even inside that concrete bunker described in the previous two posts.
 
I used to but now have gone full ‘audiophile’ and have a length of wire.
Keith
 
I don't see the point of using wireless for any installments in the house that are not moved around a lot. It's fairly easy to hide the wires, and the transmission is usually faster, more stable, and less prone to errors.
 
I used to but now have gone full ‘audiophile’ and have a length of wire.
Keith
I'm hopefully moving soon and the first thing I'm going to do in my appartement is rewire all the outlets to ground them all and pull ethernet to every single room. Don't want to deal with wifi if I don't have to. Doesn't matter for music, but I like to game and wifi can be a bit less stable (ping going up and down is a bad experience in some games).
 
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