Conrad Johnson Owners.com

I think you will have fun with the node. And who knows, you may enjoy the digital sound. If not, they have a very generous 30 day return policy. But even if you decide to keep it for awhile, the resale value is rather good compared to selling price. Regarding the Node, admin said he is using the us...

Sorry to hear about the accident(s). But agree. I think the $125 repair bill is reasonable considering the MSRP of a new cable. As an AQ speaker cable owner (thanks to you AJ), it's good that AQ is supporting their products with reasonably priced repair services. A week turnaround time is excellent.

Interesting discussion of the possible failure of fiber optic cables. I wonder if I’ve been an unknowing victim of this. I had a Samsung sound bar and subwoofer attached via Toslink to one of their big screen TVs at the old house. It was continuously aggravating in that it would drop in and out, se...

I think we can disagree. The “right people” are Audio Freaks. That’s clear. If CJ were to get involved, it would be by supporting Audio Freaks, not Matty directly. Proper chain is customer to dealer to importer to CJ. If every foreign customer tries to bypass this chain and go directly to CJ, it cr...

This is NOT Matty’s fault. 100% correct. Not suggesting it as all. He is being totally screwed over by Audio Freaks. What I was implying was that Matty has not elevated the issue to the right people (ie contacting CJ about how he should proceed). I'm not trying to victim blame, rather the opposite,...

I was wondering if any of you have had these sort of issues and if so, what was wrong and how was it fixed... by CJ or another techie. I think after many years most people will have issues with at least one unit in their system. I can recall 3 personally. 1) My APC power conditioner died. I was on ...

You also mention that it is a glass toslink cable. These are the "higher end" material as most consumer toslink cables are made from plastic fiber and not glass. The advantage of glass is less light attenuation so you can do longer runs. But they can also be more fragile. It may have crack...

If the cable was ever bent to much, it could have broken the optical fiber, if their is any dirt on the ends of the cable, that could block the signal as well. so that is another reason I will always try a 2nd cable if something is not working. Optical is by far the most finicky cable system. Ok, th...

I've had these issues with toslink in the past. Rules of thrumb: 1) Try another cable. 2) Have the cable as short as possible. 3) Hold the cable with your hand and slight push it in while trying to play music. I've had a lot of loose connectors and with toslink this could be an issue. The USB connec...

It's a very sad situation with Matty and Audio Freaks. But as you say, Matty really needs to help himself at this point.

If you can select the digital source (optical or coax) then there shouldn't be any issues connecting both at the same time. If not my personal prejudice is for coax but that's mainly because my Oppo 105D is limited to outputing 96/24 via toslink. There are no limitations up to DSF 64 via coax. You ...

AJ, I think you made a smart choice. This will get your feet wet and I think the Node is a very solid performer. You will be able to access any music service, local files, and experiment with different output options (usb/toslink/coax) to see which one you prefer. The BluOS app is very similar to HE...

Two questions for admin (or others): 1. Are you saying that the one box solution is more likely to become obsolete than say a streamer and a DAC in separate boxes? Intuitively it makes sense that that this might be the case. I think the streamer will be obsolete quickly. Let's use a real world exam...

PS Audio and dCS address this upgrade issue, dCS going all the way to argue that their products are “future proof.” But, as you point out, how far into the future is an open question. Agree, that's a hard sell. If you look at their dCS control app, it needs android version 4.4 (kitkat) or above. Th...

I think easier to support because it is fewer units so less dealer issues (like ground loops, compatibility between devices, etc) and the manufacturer will handle most hardware failures. If something breaks in a 150B, it's not going on a bench, it's going back to the factory for replacement. So this...

For better or worse, I think you have caught the streaming bug.

I also think that the dCS setup has caught your fancy. Maybe time to pull the trigger and start going down this rabbit hole?

I know the theory that one streamer is as good as the next since it’s just handling 1s and 0s. But so is the DAC. Keep in mind however that "ideally", the digital stream output of every streamer should be identical. But the output of every DAC will be different (even if ever so slightly)....

Very nice. Just goes to show you that a system can always evolve and that sometimes we introduce a new component that we first thought to be superfluous but proves to be a significant advantage.

You could get an inexpensive streamer that has usb/coaxial/optical output and use that to run into the Ruby for DAC utilization. Would be plug and play, no exotic cables, or complex computer configurations.

Just to be clear about it, the PS Audio FR20 is USD $18,999 in the US. https://www.psaudio.com/products/aspen-fr20-loudspeaker/ Good point Joe. I overlooked that the $50k was the "down unda" price. Sometimes I forget that the poor folks in Australia are paying twice the amount for their g...