project86
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2007
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Matrix Audio has released a good number of products over the years, and nearly every one I've tried has been quite competitive in its price range. But the one thing they had yet to offer - despite me telling them they should, over and over again - was a dedicated transport. They even added streaming audio playback functionality to all their DACs, some of which also had pre-amp capabilities and/or headphone outputs, but still never gave us a device to handle that function on its own.
Finally, the team at Matrix offers just that, in the new Element S music streamer.
The Matrix Element S is a dedicated transport with Ethernet and built-in WiFi capabilities. It does Roon, Tidal Connect, Spotify Connect, DLNA/UPnP, and a bunch of other options for playback. The front panel display is a touch screen and shows album art, sample rate, and track information. Pricing is $1499. Basically if you've ever seen or used one of the more recent Element products, this is similar but just dedicated to providing clean digital outputs rather than having integrated D/A conversion.
I'm also told this has a lot in common with the recent Matrix X-SPDIF 3. Basically take one of those, put it in the enclosure from the Element series, with the usual streaming/touchscreen/etc, then add a high quality PSU and you've got yourself the Element S. That should give us extremely clean digital outputs in USB, AES, optical, coaxial, or I2S which is configurable in software to work with various DACs.
You can also feed the Element S via USB, which initially seems weird because why not just get an X-SPDIF 3 if we aren't using the integrated transport features, right? But Matrix points out that the Element S works well using a USB output from phones and tablets, which I suppose could come in handy from time to time. Still, my primary use case would mostly be streaming, using Roon for the files stored on my NAS as well as Tidal and Qobuz. I have also had good results using the Matrix MA Remote app on previous models, so Roon isn't the only game in town (though it is my preferred player of choice).
I've got one of these on the way for evaluation and will post impressions when I can. I think Matrix nailed the look and functionality but it will all come down to how good the SQ is - the key trait on a device like this imho. More thoughts and some real pictures as soon as I have them.
UPDATE - at long last my full review is complete. CLICK HERE to read it.
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