Source setup for new Towers

[elan120]

I have been considering Ascend speakers for a short while, finally decided to place the order, and now while waiting for the delivery, I am curious what source setup do you use and how well the Towers w/RAAL respond to changes you made to the source?

I spent the past few years refining my source setup, although it is not finished (may never be anyway), it is quite close to what I like. It is a computer based setup, where I prefer sending upsampled music files from either locally stored or streamed from Qobuz to either 1.5MHz pcm or DSD256/512 to the DAC before going into the amp that powers the headphone. It is a very revealing system, and I will be setting up an endpoint to receive the signal from the same server, and use extra components I already have to get the setup ready for the Towers when they are delivered.

Hope to learn what source setup you use that is working well when you are using your system to play music.

I am looking forward to spend a good amount of time trying different setups once the speakers are here.

[choirbass]

My signature hasn’t been posting, so I’ll just say that the RME ADI-2 DAC FS is a worthwhile component to consider. It’s $1300 tho, so maybe not for everyone. But for an external DAC it has plenty of options.

Not quite necessary but helpful nonetheless, but using a pair of mono block amps with your towers would go a ways to improving sound. The amps I have are no longer for sale, the Emotiva PA-1’s were only $300 each. Class D so they’re lightweight too, 3 lbs each. Balanced too. So you can use XLR connections with the external DAC.

The $2200 PSaudio P3 Power Plant AC regenerator improves sound, but you may not notice it at first, I know I didn’t. It wasn’t until I had it powered for weeks that there was a noticeable difference when I powered it on after a week of not using it due to a blown fuse. Amazon had the replacement fuse available for purchase.

I have the Sierra-2, but I’m planning on moving up to the NrT Sierra Towers after a year or so. The RAAL tweeter in the Sierra-2 didn’t make an audible difference from the CMT-340 SE’s I had.

[elan120]

My signature hasn’t been posting, so I’ll just say that the RME ADI-2 DAC FS is a worthwhile component to consider. It’s $1300 tho, so maybe not for everyone. But for an external DAC it has plenty of options.

Not quite necessary but helpful nonetheless, but using a pair of mono block amps with your towers would go a ways to improving sound. The amps I have are no longer for sale, the Emotiva PA-1’s were only $300 each. Class D so they’re lightweight too, 3 lbs each. Balanced too.

The $2200 PSaudio P3 Power Plant AC regenerator improves sound, but you may not notice it at first, I know I didn’t. It wasn’t until I had it powered for weeks that there was a noticeable difference when I powered it on after a week of not using it due to a blown fuse. Amazon had the replacement fuse available for purchase.

Thank you for sharing your setup. I plan to work on power conditioning section a bit later, after I get the basic setup settled. I will be using the DAC I pulled from my headphone system as a start, it is a Holo Spring L3, a R2R DAC, and I have an integrated amp on the way to try and see how well the Towers will respond. There are few more things I plan to try on the network and USB input side after I am done break-in the Towers.

How do you send signals to your DAC? In my case, I build my system around HQPlayer, sending upsampled pcm or DSD signals from the music server to an endpoint (streamer), and from endpoint to the DAC.

[choirbass]

I use an optical cable to send to my external DAC. From my TV I use Chromecast with WiFi from my phone, also HDMI from my HTPC. I just use iTunes for music playback.

[elan120]

Great, get to learn different setup already. Out of my curiosity, what is on your HTPC? Is it where you store movie/music files also?

[choirbass]

For movies I use Netflix and Disney+ from my phone and cable TV for general watching. For music I use YouTube music from my phone. I don’t have a whole lot of music on my HTPC.

My HTPC is few years old, just has an 8 core FX-8320 cpu, 8GB DDR3, GeForce GTX 1060 gpu, Optane 905P 960GB SSD.

[elan120]

Got it. Do Netflix or Disney+ stream movies in 5.1 format? It's been a long time since last time I checked.

[choirbass]

I don’t know if they do 5.1 actually, since I’ve only been using stereo, no sub.

[elan120]

Hope they do. It will be more enjoyable to watch movies.

[choirbass]

If you get a quality external DAC it’ll make movie watching and music playback more enjoyable. I gave up on surround when I heard how much of an improvement there was using the external DAC for stereo playback. Stereo all the way for me since.