Few years ago my father passed away and I did not imagine myself selling his HiFi system.
I have added an Aurender N100c to the system to make it more versatile.
It’s has been at least a year I started looking back and forth on how to achieve 192kHz on the clock and so far I assume the Aux/RCA cable is the limiting factor.
For this use, the environment is as follows,
Source Aurender N100c with Tidal HI-FI PLUS files, to dCS ElgarPlus slave and dCS Verona Masterclock, then Preamp, Monos and Speakers.
Can someone share his wisdom please! Or am I going after a chimera
Hi @Ellixtos and welcome to the forum. I had an Elgar Plus/Verona/Purcell/Verdi too back in the day. Your father had good taste! Unfortunately the Elgar will only accept up to 96kHz on a single-wire interface, and since the N100C only has a single coax output you will be limited to 96kHz with that combination. If you want to maximise the Elgar Plus and achieve 192kHz the easiest and cheapest way would be to add a dCS Network Bridge (they often come up second hand) and connect that to the Elgar Plus with Dual AES. For streaming Tidal via the Elgar that would replace the Aurender, although of course the Aurender has other functionality and a nice UI.
Well, I will keep it as it is then, the DAC and the Karans are pushing the music well enough for my hears.
It was the perfectionist in me trying to get as much as possible, I should learn to be happy with what I have,
I will just expand a little on @struts excellent advice.
As he says for various reasons the best way is to add a dCS Network Bridge. This was specifically designed to allow certain high resolution files to be heard using earlier dCS components which were designed before those formats existed. As well as the unit ( they are no longer manufactured but do come up in the used market from time) you may also require dual AES EBU cables. So it may be thought of as involving a significant additional cost. However this also adds full streaming of e.g Qobuz, Tidal, Deezer and Spotify ( subject to subscription) and internet radio.
A further matter is to consider why the frequency of 192KS/s is attractive. Yes its a big number but the repertoire available is limited. Incidentally those with upsampling facilities may be able to use such rates but for best sound quality the rate chosen should be a multiple of the original’s sampling frequency. As standard resolution us a frequency of 44.1KS/s upsampling to 176.4 KS/s is often more appropriate.
Finally a subscription to Tidal may limit your choice of best sound quality. High resolution files on Tidal have been limited to MQA encoded ones which Elgar cannot decode. MQA is now looking to be effectively redundant ( at least in the form we know it) and Tidal is moving to a FLAC hi-res format. However the changeover seems confusing and replay facilities would seem to need a way of choosing between formats. work is underway on these but for unambiguous resolution FLAC streaming now I would be thinking of opening a Qobuz account, should I live in a territory that is served.
Regarding the hardware, I will eventually trade in my Aurender for Network Bridge when I find the opportunity; I have a Nagra CD player already connected on AES1 and I recall having several other AES cables somewhere.
I tried simultaneously Qobuz and TIDAL, and went for the later as I did not quite enjoy Qobuz. I may give it another go in the future.
Thank you all for the advices and wisdom on the matter,
