Sorry i do aliexpress Android tablets and self assembled desktop with virtually the same components thus performance (not going to argue about pc case preferences) against a fraction of the price. This brings us back to square one that there are/will be solutions around the corner with comparable performance as a Trinnov at a fraction of the price. But this is something you obviously don't want to hear (i may not want to hear it either if I owned a Trinnov, but i don't).
You can get a very nice Android tablet with premium 2024 performance, but many people will still prefer an older iPad due to the operating system and ergonomics. You will get the same apparent web browser and WiFi and Netflix, but the user experience can be different.
If you were building PCs during the “race to 1Ghz” clock speeds, you will recognize my username. I am a huge fan of custom builds, although I have am a big fan of scratch and dent Dell Precision workstations where you pretty much are getting machines for the cost of parts.
If you pop off the hood of a Trinnov you will see that it’s all the daughter boards that are interesting along with software and knowledgeable tech support. It’s very different from madVR for example.
In the hobbyist world, there was a time where you could run a Hackintosh with regular Intel PCs and do so all sorts of great stuff. Here’s the thing. Apple was running some custom hardware with a lot of very off the shelf fundamentals. Even if you got a hacker to extract the entire boot environment and operating system off the Trinnov, which isn’t hard, you are still dependent on all of the other electronics surrounding it. That’s why you don’t see non-commercial, hobbyist / pirated versions of StormAudio and Trinnov.
StormAudio has similar sinad when doing digital out.
But when you turn on dirac it drops below 100db.
So their Trinnov has a huge advantage
Only in measurement. In an anechoic room, I don’t think the difference in SINAD is that obvious although I think it was
@Buckeye Amps who had to return his Trinnov since it was too noisy with his Klipsch speakers.
At my listening position with my speakers, I don’t feel a need to upgrade the original DACs nor the need to even spend a few bucks on an external DAC.
Trinnov hardware is not terribly impressive. It's all about the software that they have developed over many years, offering a powerful Optimizer and very extensive, flexible user control of the processing that exceeds other solutions. I am not sure that kind of R&D from others is "around the corner". There are programs that offer powerful processing capability, such as Accurate, but they are much lower in breadth and scope than Trinnov's solution. As so often happens these days, it's the SW, not the HW, that sets it apart.
+1. If you look at JBL Synthesis, they have access to their in house pro team, the Arcam AVR line, and even their soundbar engineering team. Samsung even had a icePower amp AVR pre-Harman acquisition in the 1080p blu ray era.
But if you have an unlimited budget, the SDP-75 is still their answer. The cost to build something better just isn’t worth it.
For what it’s worth, Yamaha has SOTA commercial DSP (ViReal. 108.6 channel surround sound. Active Field Control) but they aren’t applying it to the consumer line. Sony has put their soundbar engineering team on the AZ receivers which many people like as long as they don’t have the noise issue.
If Topping didn’t want to license Dirac and licensed something from Sony or Yamaha, I bet it would still be pretty potent! The question is if they could get the reliability up to par given the track record of the PA5.