Wow that's a nice setup you have there!
I was nearly buying a pair of focal electra (monitor size) 4 years ago to m8 with a push pull tube amp, and was hesitating between those and Cabasse Artis but I went with active crossover and multi amplification instead and also because I'm a long time meridian fanboy. Love the french touch but love the english sound better!
 
I "only" have Meridian DS3100 speakers, they are rather "monitor" like sounding but the three speakers configuration help the bottom end a lot and I always disliked sub.
Your system seems way more expensive than mine. While my common drivers are optimized through dsp and tuning, yours are top end and futuristic by the reputation of focal. Why using the little SBT with those glorious loudspeaker and amp? You got to feed it with a higher end source, it would mate better I guess. I never heard a Yulong, is it really that good for you to have chosen it? I would have chosen a more reputable DAC manufacturer IMHO.
 
You might have noticed that headphone listenning is pretty sensitive to tonal change and micro information retrieval, that is why I judge TT 3.0 through the HD650 and LF339, but the quality jump in my digital speakers is pretty spectacular as welll!
 
I would dream to have a Meridian Sooloos streamer but it's out of my budget right now and seeing how good the SBT now sound I won't climb that train. But for you I bet you'd appreciate the upgrade. I suggest those because I trust this brand, but I'm sure there are better streamers than SBT out there too!

I have to be able to try it before I buy it and sometimes the best sounding isn't the most expensive.  I had a Rega DAC prior but the Yulong was head and heals better sounding.  That said I won't quit looking, I'm patiently waiting for the Simaudio 380 to get released so I can try it.
 
Nothing wrong with the touch as a transport when driving an external DAC.  The hiface should eliminate any issues the Touch still has.
 
The other streaming solutions are mostly DLNA/upnp based and have way too many quirks for me.
 
I have 9000 cds so a high end CD player is out of the question, I need the convenience of a streaming lossless solution.

Sooloos have the best interface by a long shot, give them a demo they are first class in sound as well!

 
Quote:

telecaster said:

Sooloos have the best interface by a long shot, give them a demo they are first class in sound as well!

Click to expand...

 
 
Can't handle the size of my collection.  Approximately 5000 albums, I have pretty much double that.
 

That is quite a huge collection!
I dislike Squeezebox server because when it needs a reinstall (happend to me a handfull of times) scanning the 2Tb of flac took more than 20 hours each time... My NAS is pretty low end that may be why I got such a long scanning time.
I heard Sonos was way better and didn't need a powerfull NAS...
I thought you could add storage space to Sooloos pretty easily..
 

Quote:

telecaster said:

That is quite a huge collection!
I dislike Squeezebox server because when it needs a reinstall (happend to me a handfull of times) scanning the 2Tb of flac took more than 20 hours each time... My NAS is pretty low end that may be why I got such a long scanning time.
I heard Sonos was way better and didn't need a powerfull NAS...
I thought you could add storage space to Sooloos pretty easily..
 

Click to expand...

i've got about 1.5TB of flac encoded music on my NAS and squeezebox server works great over my gbit home lan.  i use my daughter's ipad as a remote with the squeezebox app.
 
i use a 2nd touch outside via wifi to my patio system.
 
as for one sounding better than the other, that is going to be very system dependent and clearly impacted by jitter sensitivity of your dac as well as any other re-clocking you might use.  my touch goes into a tact rcs2.2xp room correction preamp (in bypass mode for headphones) that retimes the signal going to the dac............i intend to try out 3.0 and see if it makes any difference in my case.  also, i have an audio-gd reclocker that i intended to use after the touch, and i'll test that out if 3.0 makes any difference with the tact re-timing.

keen to hear your experience with TT 3.0 and TACT and the AudioGD reclocker.. What model is the AudioGD?
 
My NAS is a synology and it's not the best for SBT. I heard netgear is better. Also the NAS is old with only a 1Ghz cpu and 128Mb ram, it's low end. When the server was sending FLAC to SBT it was fast but now it's little more slow when I do the encoding inside the server but it's worth it, it sounds better..
 
My understanding of jitter it's that it's not easy to eliminate once it's been created. That is why the source have to be the purest. But I may lack the knowledge in this so it's only my opinion.

Dr Tone, did you received your Hiface 2? If yes could you share your experience with it and your modded SBT?

Quote:

telecaster said:

Dr Tone, did you received your Hiface 2? If yes could you share your experience with it and your modded SBT?

Click to expand...

 
I have a stock SBT, just running the EDO applet.
 
Hiface II works fine, but seems to need more power than the touch can provide.  For now I have a Y USB cable and a USB hub adding more juice.  I ordered the AQVOX to power it, cleaner solution than the hub and extra cables.

I am very curious to hear about the sound you get vs the stock SBT.
 
My further experience with SBooster is not good. I prefer the sound without it, I found Sbooster sucks the bass out of the SBT, it's slight but in my system I can't tolerate the bass thinning. I prefer the sound without the Sbooster so it's money down the thrash...
 
Also with TT mod 3.0, I found my best settings now.
 
"tt - k" killed a little warmth so I don't use it anymore. Even if I found the sound is a little more relaxed when on.
 
I got the best sound and bass with:
tt -v : on
tt -b 3200
tt -k : off
All the other kills are on.

Quote:

telecaster said:

I am very curious to hear about the sound you get vs the stock SBT.
 
My further experience with SBooster is not good. I prefer the sound without it, I found Sbooster sucks the bass out of the SBT, it's slight but in my system I can't tolerate the bass thinning. I prefer the sound without the Sbooster so it's money down the thrash...
 
Also with TT mod 3.0, I found my best settings now.
 
"tt - k" killed a little warmth so I don't use it anymore. Even if I found the sound is a little more relaxed when on.
 
I got the best sound and bass with:
tt -v : on
tt -b 3200
tt -k : off
All the other kills are on.

Click to expand...

 
I can't really do a comparison to TT, I had to remove it and completely reset my touch to get the Hiface working properly.  It was many hours after I got it and the power issues all sorted out.
 
Any audio comparisons over that long of a period are not valid in my opinion.

After I transfer the TT3.0 over via scp and then, with the "tar xvf  touchtoolbox3.0-WLAN.tar", finally I follow the initialize command of "tt -i" it says it will reboot, the SBT turns black, the logitech logo comes up and then that's it.  It is a black screen forever and my terminal continues to say "rebooting now".  Can any one help?