Its a different dac, but part of my choice going for the GA is that dacs usually dont burn through tubes and they tend to last longer. That said, they still use them and they do eventually need replacing.
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Itās very chill to leave something turned on 24/7 and not have to worry bout nothinā.
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Donāt chase tubes if you have no desire for the added expense and ambiguity of the tube roll.
Your already doing that with the WA33.
The Pacific power tubes are expensive, but I wouldnāt suggest you roll them, all your trading off in the end is dynamics vs mid range depth and stage, every tube set I tried the pacific still sounded like the pacific.
The Rectifiers will all work in the WA33, so you can justify it to hear them on both 
Pre tubes there isnāt anything worth rolling.
They are all grossly under driven, so they should be good for years.
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Did an experiment and removed all the cable, power and digital upgrades from my chain.
So simply:
-
Gaming pc ā mscaler via cheap usb ā dave via silver dragon bnc ā 3es elite via cheap XLRs
Power direct from wall, using cheap power cords
Instead of this clusterfuck:
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router via cheap ethernet ā small green computer FMC/iPower2 via cheap optical cable ā etherRegen via FTA Metis ā k50 via audience usb ->Mscaler via silver dragon BNC ->Dave via aq earth xlr->3es elite->Shangri la
Power: powerplant 3 (stock cable), k50 (stock cable), Mscaler (stock psu), Dave (aq blizzard), 3es elite (aq blizzard)
Without those upgrades, the SRL sounded quite good still. Iād even say you can āget awayā with skimping on these upgrades considering they werenāt cheap.
Unsurprisingly, the combination of streamer, digital cable, interconnect, power cable and power regenerator made a big difference. (I knew dac, amp, headphone and headphone cables made a difference from previous upgrades/testing, but I hadnāt taken out digital, interconnect, power cables or power regenerator in previous comparisons.) I figured Iād still post my thoughts as I am sure there are a lot of people that are skeptical that any of these upgrades can actually make a difference.
Staging got bigger, imaging got clearer and more distinct, bass was more tight and controlled. Texture got betterā¦Honestly not sure if itās even worth enumerating because the upgrade was seemingly across the board.
Still need to test what just the etherregen stuff + streamer contributed (leave the digital cable, IC, power cable and power regenerator in the chain). I guess dac upgrade is just a matter of timeā¦
TLDR;
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The running joke is, itās easier to just say: itās just a lot better.
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Good thing i finished my tea or else it would hae been all over my desk.
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Antipodes owners - are you using Roon? Squeeze? something else? notice any sound quality difference?
Asking before I go down the rabbit hole of moving servicesā¦
Hell no. Lol.
I use LMS/Squeeze. It is the most noticeable with how it handles my bass, but there is certainly another level of clarity that I cannot unhear.
I would say if you not too acclimated with the Roon setup yet, then switch while you still can. I liked the UIX of Roon and how it handled things, but I didnāt use enough of its features to keep paying into it when Squeeze sounded much better to me.
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I actually tried my dCS bridge last Thursday night before I reconfigured my system. I tried a couple of comparisons but spent about 90 minutes listening back to back from Roon and from the dCS. I chose the track Numb on the Free Love album by Sylvan Esso. I chose that because itās something that I bought directly from Qobuz so I was able to compare the same album/track as was being streamed.
I listened to the 16/44 version as thereās also a version thatās 24/48. I played Qubuz configured directly from the dCS Mosaic player then the same track from Qobuz through Roon. I then played the same track from my local library and from a USB thumb drive pluged into the dCS.
Whether using Roon to play a Qobuz file or dCS Mosaic to play the same track, I couldnāt hear a difference. I could however hear a very slight improvement playing the local library file. Or at least I convinced myself there was a difference. When I played the 24/48 version of the same track (I donāt own the hi-res copy) I could hear an improvement both on Roon and on the Mosaic app over the 16/44 I own, it just had more range, felt more open on the low to high volume swings but again nothing I could clearly discern between the two.
This track has a lot of that classic easy to listen to easy midrange female voice, itās got a little bit of a quick hard stop the the hi-hat loop in the beginning of the recording thatās easy to fix on and the immediacy of how quickly it stops is very telling in a highly resolving system. Thereās also very deep reverberating syn bass thatās clean and again very easy to tell if thereās any kind of smearing on it. Iām rambling now. lol
Not scientific but for me and my ears, not something that I could make out. I will still continue to collect and grow and curate my local library though as the high resolution files are definitely and noticeably better when played locally versus streaming via Roon. I didnāt check a hi res file on the Mosaic because I was just lazy and didnāt want to do the transfer on the USB stick. lol
EDIT: Adding on this from last night, if youāre not leveraging Roonās ecosystem. Meaning multiple systems or multiple locations and now with ARC for mobile use of your playlists, itās just not worth it for the slick interface UI alone.
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Looking forward to hearing your impressions of the s stack when you get more settled in
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Okay, this guyās tone makes Hans B sound like the most interesting guy in the world, but I genuinely learned a lot and it gave me more confidence in my Antipodes
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Absolutely, it took him a couple of minutes to say that he designs stremers. Kiwi version of Hans B. Mark abruptly stops and Hans has the amazing transitionsā¦ or lack there ofā¦ interesting listen after advancing the podcast once or twice.
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Iām 45min in and enjoying it very much. Learning a ton. Heās just about to explain why galvanic isolation isnāt enough of a ācureā for the digital signal which reminds me of the Holo May owners who claim thereās no need for better servers behind it.
Thanks for sharing!
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Did you end up getting more extended impressions on your Antipodes and your Roon vs Squeeze comparison?
If you absolutely hate the UIX and want to pay for the interface, you can actually do Roon Server + Squeeze Player with Antipodes.
Not yet. I went back to Roon because I had so many changes to my source (Antipodes as the source + having a DDC with the S20 + moving to AES input in my DAC + getting a high end cable for it) that I felt I need time with this as my baseline and then do the comparison with only switching the softwares if that makes sense.
I didnāt like the Squeeze interface so not sure how this solves that? In any case that is secondary to the actual sound quality so will need to do that comparison first.
I actually think it is the other way around, it uses roon interface but squeeze protocol or whatever.
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The roon app can be used with different server? Great to hear I didnāt know that. Iāll check that out.
Yes, there should be a preset.
Oops, I aimed for the wrong setting. It should be Squeeze Player with Roon Server.
Then, on Roon settings/Setup, find the āEnable Squeezebox Supportā then on players, you should see your Antipodes show up as a player. If you do this, be sure to Disable āFlac compressionā
I would have posted more screenshots, but uninstalled my Roon by now, lol
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I think there is also a Roon plug-in for PNP/DLNA support, which would give you the 3rd option.
Though as far as I can tell squeeze and DLNA basically work the same way.
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