 several gear updates and raising prices made it necessary to update the listing of my reference setups again. And yes, a lot has changed. The price of petrol and diesel plus the availability of semi-conductors caused quite some inflation. The world was recovering from the web banking crisis followed up by Covid-19, the Ukraine war and yet another series of bank problems. That has raised the prices of about anything including audio gear. That was already the case in January and it still continues, so I updated the prices in the listings but there also is new equipment in all but setup 3. Plus I reshuffled some gear so it can be used in more than one setup. Hence another update. Why reference setups? I have explained that in earlier videos on my reference setups. If you have heard this before, you can easily skip to the next chapter in the timeline. If not, let me explain. A reviewer needs a fixed setup of equipment to anchor his findings. At least I do. It is therefore important to limit changes in these setups to the bare minimum for it can make comparisons to earlier reviews difficult. At the same time you need references that are relevant and especially digital audio technology still is improving rapidly. To be clear, the gear I use certainly is amongst the best in its price category but it is also picked to be practical for me to work with. To make comparisons easier. But since I work from home, space is a premium. Money too by the way. I can't afford to have a series of setups stepping up in, say, 10 steps from low to high end. So I have to go about this cleverly. This is done by using equipment in more than one setup. Like the subwoofer in setup 3, that is more expensive than would be reasonable. But it does give a good impression of what adding a cheaper sub would do to this setup. The same goes for the network player I now use in both setup 2A and setup 1B. Still, I am very careful when replacing equipment not to lose my reference. The more than short loudspeakers I had for over 10 years I now replace by the Dali Oberon 1 loudspeakers. The LOU's bridge signature with shanty dual power supply in setup 2 made place with the Magna Manow MK3 Farad network player, that now is also used in setup 1B, where it is more realistic than the Grimm Mu1. What happens to the equipment that was replaced? It gets sold to keep me solvent and make someone else happy, for I would like to stress that it remains very good sounding equipment. For instance the LOU's bridge signature with shanty dual power supply would still be my choice in that price category. As are the SOTM-SMS-200 NEO, the SMS-200 Ultra NEO and the Aurelic Aries G2 I previously used. They were very valuable members of my setups. Time to look at the current setups and let's start with setup 3. In setup 3, the amplification is done by the great NAD C316BEE. This class AB amp isn't the most powerful but combined with the right loudspeakers it surely sounds great. New other Dali Oberon 1's that are very friendly loudspeakers. They can be driven by a wide variation of amplifiers in their price category. The RLT5 subwoofer can add some lows to them. In that case it is connected to the loudspeaker terminals of the NAD using the rail supplied cable. The Argon Audio Solo with integrated DAC is the streamer, aka network player. I use it mainly as Rune endpoint but it can also be used with its own app. Connection to the network is made of a Wi-Fi to a nearby TP-Link Deco M4 access point that is part of a mesh network. The setup's total price is €1256 without the subwoofer or €2147 including this sub. A more matching Dali sub C8 costs €400 less and would add up to €1747. All prices are including 21% VAT, the European sales tax. In for instance the US prices are excluding sales tax, keep that in mind when comparing prices. Set of 3 is located in the studio on the third floor and the equipment is housed in the target rack. Don't be mistaken, this is a very musical setup that has impressed many people it was demonstrated to. Set of 2 is split up in 2A and 2B. Both use the same amplifier, loudspeakers, subwoofer and cabling. Only the digital front end differs. The amplifier is a Marans PMKI Pearl Lite, a great class AB amplifier tweaked by the late Kenny Chiwata. It drives the acoustic energy Radiance One loudspeakers connected over Kimber 4PR loudspeaker cable. They are supported by the RLT5 subwoofer that is connected to the loudspeaker terminals on the Marans using the cable that came with the sub. Set of 2A and 2B are placed in the studio at the third floor and the loudspeaker switch places with setup 3. The network switch is the Opton Audio Ether Region with Opton Audio UltraCaps 1.2 power supply. The equipment is housed in the target rack too. The BlueSound Note IIi is a network player with integrated MQA DAC. It is a versatile all-in-one solution that can function as a network player or rune endpoint, thus Apple AirPlay and stream from about any streaming service you might be subscribed to. It has Bluetooth as input but can also send audio to for instance a Bluetooth headset at the same time. It was end of life in 2021 and followed up by the new Note N130 that looks and sounds about the same. It has added features like an HDMI input and being able to have an external DAC connected over USB. See my review. I still use the Note IIi but since my review of the PD Creative power supply for the BlueSound Note II, the internal power supply is replaced by this power supply. See my review. It is connected to the Opton Audio Ether Region switch over a CAT6 patch cable and to the Marantz amp over the no longer available Siltek London RCA's. This setup adds up to slightly over €3.800 without a subwoofer and almost €4.700 including a sub. This setup has clearly more resolution and authority than my setup 3. This setup also uses the Marantz app, acoustic energy loudspeakers, Kimber cable and the rail sub. But now the source is formed by the Magna Mano MK3 Farad network player and the Denofrips Aries 2 DAC. The Mano 3 uses Ruby XL software in rune endpoint mode but can easily be switched to DLNA, AirPlay, Spotify, HQ Player NAA, SqueezeLight or UPnP2 Roon Bridge. By replacing the microSD card it can run other software like Volumio. The output of the Mano is sent to the Denofrips Aries 2 DA converter over AES-EBU using Vanderholt AES-EBU cable. The Aries 2 is basic in its features but sounds great in its class. See the show notes for reviews. The total setup excluding cables adds up to almost €6.400 excluding subwoofer and almost €7.400 including a sub. Setup 1A and 1B also share the amp and loudspeakers. They are placed in the living room on the ground floor. The AX520 amplifier drives the PMC FAC12 Signature loudspeakers on stack audio OVA-70 isolators and connected over AudioQuest Robinhood Zero loudspeaker cable. The network connection comes from the Zistel GS-1900-10 HP switch and is now filtered by the network acoustic Muon Pro. The first DAC is in setup 1 for quite some time. The Mitek Brooklyn MQA enabled DAC powered by the Ferrum Hipsus power supply. It is connected to the Magna Mano network player over network acoustics AES-EBU cable and to the amp over Grim Audio SQM XLR cables. As such, this setup is financially out of balance, the air and the PMC is being of a higher class but it is very well possible to compare other DACs in this price range on this setup. The total setup will add up to slightly over €53.000 but the DAC and the streamer would already show its best in setups south of €12.000. For comparing DACs in the price category, this setup works fine though. Here the digital player is the Grim Audio Muon, that is a Roon Server, Roon Endpoint, ReClocker and Scaler in one. But because the Grim is based on an Intel i3 processor and I own a very large music collection, I don't use its Roon Server function. I rather have an Intel NUC 10i7 FNH running RoonRock as a server. It gives me the speed of the Intel i7, while I have the incredible sound quality of Grim Muon as Roon Endpoint, ReClocker and Scaler offers. The Cort Dave receives the digital signal from the Grim Audio Muon over Network Acoustics Muon AES-EBU cable. It is connected to the amp over Grim Audio SQM-XLR cables. Both the Grim and the Cort receive power via the transparent power isolated 8. The mains cables are crystal cable. The total system including cables add up to almost €80.000. I can imagine it's a lot of information and since I used these setups to give an indication of the sound quality, let's look at them next to each other. All three setups are based on an amplifier and a set of loudspeakers, while there are two classes of digital front end in setup 1 and 2. Let's start with setup 3 that uses the Argon Audio Solo Streamer that is connected to the NAD C361BEE amplifier over analog RCA cables. The amp drives the Dali over on the one loudspeakers. The RELT-5 subwoofer can be added to this setup 2. Then we go to setup 2BEE, we see the Bluesound Note II powered by the PD Creative Power Supplier Source. It is directly connected to the inputs of Tomeran's KI Pearl Lite that drives the Acoustic Energy Radiance 1 loudspeakers and the RELT-5 subwoofer. Setup 2A replaces the Bluesound by the combination of a Magna Mano MK3 Farad Network Player and the Denofrips Aries II DAC. Setup 1B starts with the Magna Mano MK3 Farad Network Player connected to the MiTech Brooklyn DAC with Ferrum Hipsus Power Supplier. That is connected to the Air Acoustics AX520 amplifier that drives the PMC FAC-12 Signature loudspeakers. In setup 1A the sound quality is brought to true high end level by replacing the Magna Mano MK3 Farad Network Player and the MiTech Brooklyn DAC with the Grimm Audio Muon Digital Player and the Cort Dave DAC. The transparent power isolator 8 was added to slightly further improve the sound quality. The equipment can be found on the ground floor and the third floor. These are connected by network. On the third floor, outside the studio we find the Netgear ProSafe GS418 TPP switch that, using Fiber Optics, is connected to the Opton Ether Region switch with UltraCAP's ultimate 1.2 power supply in the studio and provides the network to setup 2 and 3. It is also connected to the ZIXL GS1900-10 HP switch downstairs over Fiber Optic Connection. From the ZIXL there is a CAT6 to the Internet router that is also downstairs. It is also connected to a TP-Link, DECO and 4 network Wi-Fi access point. One for each floor. The Intel NUC10i7 FNH runs Roon ROG on an M.2 SSD and has the music stored on a 10 TB Western Digital USB drive. It is connected directly to the Netgear switch over CAT6 patch cable. Next to the NUC is the Synology DS1819 Plus NAS with DX517 Xtender. It mainly functions as a backup and storage for my videos but is also used for testing DLA streamers. On the other side of the spectrum I use a sub 100 single drive NAS, the Synology DS119J since that is more realistic for domestic use. The Roon ROG server shares its volume holding the music as Samba share so it can be used for self-indexing streamers like those by Sonos, Bluesound and Aurelic. But I can use one of the NASs as well. The DS119J holds a terabyte of music. The advantage of using a simple NAS is that it consumes less power than a computer and can do all kinds of other things, like backup and make files available to, for instance, your smartphone on the road. But it's also slower of course. I stock quite a bit of other equipment that I use for research, like for instance a Sonos Connect, a Sonos Port, a Squeezebox Duet, several Raspberry Pi based streamers and a Mini DSB SHD Studio room correction system. The NAD T758 version 3D receiver forms the center of my surround setup for TVA and video. It uses a PMC DB1 center speaker and 4x Mirage OS3 set surround speakers while my setup 1A, the Air AX520, set to processor pass-through and the PMCs take care of the left and right channel. Let's use the Linsondack LP12 lingo with SME5 tonearm and Vendenhall Grasshopper cartridge. A Studer 807 tape recorder that still is defective, a Revox A700 tape recorder, a Philips CD recorder and many more. They all have the purpose, otherwise they would have been sold. For instance the CD recorder is a great tool since it is quite jittery. Using it I can audibly test to what degree the DAC can reduce jitter. Other gear might be still around for sentimental reasons of course, like the DAT recorder and the tape recorder. It often helps to look at somewhat complex matters with graphics. That was the motivation for making and maintaining this series of videos. The complexity at the same time is the versatility, although I understand it can be hard to imagine what setup variants lead to what sound quality. Talking about quality, although it looks very convenient for you to publish absolute quality ratings, things in audio aren't that simple. If you want to know a bit more about this, you could watch my video Q&A which device is better. Please let me know when things are not clear, but realize that it's not always a matter of better or worse. There has to be a match with your requirements and wishes. Please see the description below this video on YouTube for links to the videos on equipment mentioned here. Which brings me to the end of this video. As usual, there will be a new video next Friday at 5pm Central European time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed when new videos are out. Help me reach even more people by giving this video a thumb up or a link to this video on the social media, it is much appreciated. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially. It keeps me independent and lets me improve the channel further. If that makes you feel like supporting my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on YouTube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.