Sorry to probe Jonathan but I’m really interested. Hadn’t come across the Muon Pro before , but it seems like a fairly serious investment and potential joker in this hand. Can you ascribe the “big step up” purely to the SonicTransporter => K41 upgrade?
I think the muon pro is stunning, just how stunning depends on your streamer and DAC. With my (now departed) Meridian 818, the difference was huge when used alongside the K50. With the dCS, the difference is less pronounced, but nonetheless very much worthwhile (to my ears).
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As @jandersonhill says, the beneficial effect of the Muon Pro (which was recommended to me by a forum member) is subtle with my Rossini…
Sorry, that’s a difficult question to answer because I didn’t compare them ‘side by side’, and ‘audio memory’ is fallible.
Hopefully, you’ll manage to arrange a home demo so that you can do the comparison…
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Comparisons have their place but can often only reveal differences which may or may not be significant. What value is placed on these can be influenced by factors such as context. For example a couple of years ago I went to hear a turntable. Bought it but started to have doubts once at home. A couple of days later I had it in my possession and my doubts were proved real and I had to return it. The dealer was great and refunded me. However, why did I buy it in the first place? think that I must have been influenced by the fact I had waited weeks to arrange the demo and had ravelled many miles.
I now use a rule of thumb. If any difference can only be heard by comparison and is hard to judge on a stand alone basis then it probably isn’t worth the effort. So, wherever possible have a home dem and don’t base a decision solely on comparisons.
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@Phil, what are you storing there, the entire archives of the British Library and the BBC?!
; )
Same system? How many TB please?
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Hi,
The two five-bay expansion units are currently filled with 10TB WD ‘Gold’ drives and the eight-bay is a mixture of 16TB and 18TB Seagate EXOS.
It’s set up as the expansion units each being their own 50TB volumes (but in RAID5 so after redundancy and formatting they only come out at 38TB each) and the main unit is another single volume (again, after RAID5 redundancy and formatting that one comes out at about 112TB - which is quite disappointing given that going by the capacities on the drive labels themselves it’s got the best part of 1/4 of a petabyte in it…
Generally what I do as drive capacities increase and the next decent “jump” becomes affordable is rotate drives through … so that started out as 8 x 4TB, then as 6TB drives became available the 4’s were rotated out into newly purchased expansion chassis (along with a couple of new 4’s) and the main unit got 6’s, then when 10’s got to be reasonable the 6’s got rotated into the expansion units (along with a couple of new 6’s) and the main unit got 10’s in it, then as 16’s became affordable the same happened again but part way through 18’s became available for the same price as I’d been paying for 16’s so the main unit now has a mix of 16s and 18’s in it - they all use SHR so the volumes expand automagically as bigger drives get rotated in and the array rebuilds each time which is really handy.
I’d really like to “upgrade” to the DS3622xs+ as that can take a couple of the 12 bay expansion chassis
to really satisfy the storage cravings and has a proper CPU so it could be used to host containers - I was in a position to do so a few years ago but as a “proper” business NAS it doesn’t support SHR which would make the rolling upgrade of drives impossible. 
[Edited to add : @Synology - I am open to sponsorship offers … I’m a big guy so there’s plenty of space for tattoos etc. 
)
P
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New to this forum and dCS gear. I recently purchased slightly used a Rossini Apex DAC and matching clock.
My Roon core is a Pink Faun 2.16x Ultra with 2x 4tb SSD’s
Extra storage is on a Synology DS1522+ with 5x 8tb drives running SHR (Raid 5).
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I have had the Antipodes K50 Mk1 and Mk2 before now owning the Antipodes Oladra mk2. The K50 mk3 and the Oladra mk2 both have significantly upgraded usb outputs compared to the earlier versions of those models but despite that I still prefer the BNC output from both of them (the BNC output also benefitted from the upgrades to the new models, particularly the Oladra).
Innuos have for some time favoured only offering USB on all models apart from their entry level one but I get the feeling from looking at their Pulse/Pulsar removable output boards that they might be readying themselves to start offering different outputs (but it is only me seeing those potentially swappable output boards and adding 2 + 2 and getting 5!!
When I had a Rossini Apex in my system I used the BNC output from the K50 and it sounded exceptional.
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Many thanks Nick. I’m taking notes!
I have a home-built server based on an SoTM Q370 motherboard, powered by a Taiko Audio DC-ATX power supply, itself powered by a Sean Jacobs ULPS. Local storage is on an m.2 drive with the OS (Euphony) on another m.2.
The path from the Arris S33 cable modem is copper to a Ubiquiti Edgerouter 4, then copper to a modified Buffalo GS2016 switch. The server is connected by fiber to the Buffalo, thus it’s galvanically isolated. An Ethernet cable runs from the Buffalo to my dCS Lina.
On the Ubiquiti, my WiFi access point is connected by fiber via a Startech FMC again galvanically isolating the WiFi. I also have separate vlan’s for home and audio networks.
Sounds pretty good!
Colin
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Yes, I have the Taiko extreme, taiko switch and the new router. Value of course is always going to be subjective, but this has been one of the most meaningful upgrades to my listening experience! I used to have the Nucleus+ and an M-12 Gold switch before. (When listening in my system, these were not even close to each other). I read a lot about the Olandra, but unfortunately I couldn’t demo that in my country (but it looked interesting) and I’ll generally only buy something I can try out in my own system.
colin–just curious here–is there any real advantage to having a non reulated power source power another power source. Im not an electrician, just wondering
thanks
mike
To Grimm MUx users out there 
Did you hear the Grimm vs Nucleus running Core in your setup?
Is there a huge difference SQ wise?
(why I ask: Does it make sense to replace my Roon Nuc + PowerBooster PSU vs Grimm for Roon duties)
Thanks for your input!
I have a Roon Nucleus (with sBooster power supply) as my core. I used it as my streamer (connected via usb to a McIntosh C2700) before recently purchasing a Lina DAC. It works flawlessly with Roon and Qobuz.
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Thanks Bruce, could you compare it with Grimm?
Well, the Grimm should be better based on the $10k price differential and I haven’t heard it in true comparison. I bought the Roon Nucleus based on the premise that it’s their software and I assumed the Nucleus is built specifically for the task of running Roon. I like buying specific equipment that serve exact purposes. I bought the Lina DAC and now the Clock because I already have a Tube PreAmp (which I like) and I don’t listen to headphones.
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The original objective of this bedroom based rack was to go 100% fanless. I failed as my chosen NUC was not supported by any of the fanless cases of the time and additionally the cost of a fanless NAS was far in excess of my budget.
Well, in my personal experiences, costing more is one of the least reliable indicators of SQ. I’ve demoed both Pink Faun and Taiko, but no sale. I’ve remained with a Nucleus+ with 8tb of internal SSD storage which simply works. My music library is stored on a Pegasus32 RAID that syncs with Nucleus+ and backed up on a Netgear ReadyNAS [used to be a big Synology fan, but two controller board burnouts due to cheap parts cured me of that]. And of course there is off site backup.
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The offsite backup site is a 2000sq meter house in Santa Monica 
…with a backup stereo 
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