Hi all!
Happy to join the Antipodes family with my new (to me) S30/S60/S20 stack!
I have a separate Roon ROCK on a fanless NUC that’s been my server before upgrading to Antipodes and I was wondering if there’s a way to turn off the server option in the S30. My ROCK is acting as a S40 and I’d like to compare sound quality with using it vs letting the S30 do everything.
Couldn’t find a relevant thread using the search function. Apologies if this was discussed already.
Thanks!
Sure, in the AMS Dashboard set Server to NONE.
Ugh can’t believe I missed that lol thank you. It’s a bit weird though that’s a setting that exists under the Player menu. I was trying to find something on the Server menus to turn it off. Similarly the Player menu has the option to set the app to None so “it controls itself” and follows a different logic. Just a small UX nitpicking.
Would you say it’s more important to separate the tasks like I have it now (although the NUC is definitely not the quality of a S40) or that the S30 as server+player will fair better because of the components quality in it? I do almost 100% streaming Qobuz through Roon, no DSP.
My two cents: keeping Roon Core off of the server that directly connects to the DAC over USB is usually a good thing. Roon generates a lot of activity so segmenting it off can yield sound quality benefits.
Back when I used a single box (Innuos Zenith), I found that Roon even harmed sound quality when I wasn’t using it. I shut it down when running Squeeze. I have not found that to be necessary since moving to a two-tier Antipodes configuration.
Thanks. I do have a S20 so the S30 isn’t connected directly to the DAC but I’ll try to compare the different options for the Server and see if I can get rid of the extra NUC or keep it for better sound.
Thanks for sharing Paul. Those make sense to me.
Seems like I’m on the right path but I’ll probably skip the extra S40/S60 and jump to the K50 when I’m ready for that.
My current system runs a dedicated roon ROCK server from a fanless NUC (with optical networking to separate it from the rest of my network), connected to the same switch as the S30 (player only mode), which is connected to the S20 with USB (Final Touch Audio Callisto cable) and the S20 connected through AES (Audience Au24 SX AES) to a Rockna Wavedream. The S30 and S20 are powered by S60.
I’m quite happy with the sound so far. Feels like an upgrade over my Auralic streamer I had before the Antipodes gear.
I wish you a K50 for sure! I suppose you stream from roon? Fiber is always good to help isolate. But use a very good Ethernet Cable to your S30.
Local files possibly always sound better if the nuc has an internal (or external) drive with music connected to it. Ideally you would run Squeeze to Squeeze to hear the best from these files, you could try one day.
Nice DAC , I suppose i2s does not sound as good as AES in your setup?
Enjoy!
I went with AES mainly because of the Audience cable. I love their sound. I think AES is better future proofing if I end up upgrading DACs since not all of them have i2s.
I’ve started exploring local files and definitely plan to test Squeeze after I get used to the Antipodes sound as a baseline to be able to compare.
I used one of their USB cables for a while. It was really good for the price.