Thanks in advance for any advice. I'm chest deep in the middle of an upgrade and am a bit lost, and thought to seek wisdom here.
My office headphone rig consisted of:
Aurender N100H digital server -> Curious Evolved USB cable;
Rega P8 turntable;
Vinnie Rossi LIO w/ his L2 DAC and L2 phono stages -> DH Labs Air Matrix;
Ampsandsound Mogwai SE
ZMF Verite open
This sounded wonderful, but I got caught up in the upgrade path, and with holiday blessings I was thankful to now have a Nautilus here, and a bunch of various tubes. However, I noticed that while it sounds great, the LIO does not necessarily match perfectly w/ the Nautilus, and there seems to be a limit in dynamics/overhead/whatever. Justin advised that it may have to do w/ the LIO's 2Vrms output needing more gain, and I have tried his Booster box as a potential solution. But so far, I'm undecided about the benefits/downsides to LIO->Booster->Nautilus vs LIO->Nautilus.
Last night I pulled (from my main rig) a Resolution Audio Cantata 2.0 and plugged it directly into the Nautilus, driven by the Aurender. It sounded less Hifi'ish and more musical, and it does have a higher RCA (and also balanced) output voltage. But in its current setup, without another preamplifier, I'm unable to listen to vinyl.
So my question to the group is: What are reasonable upgrade paths? I don't have the opportunity to listen to a lot of gear. Here are some ideas:
1) Upgrade the LIO to its DHT stage, which adds 300B magic, while keeping a single box phono+DAC -> Nautilus. Plus it's beautiful. This would be a pretty pricey front end.
2) Replace the LIO w/ the Cantata 2.0 as the front end, and upgrade to Cantata 3.0 R2R-ladder system for $3k, which has the benefit of having analog inputs for a new phono stage, and now it acts as a digital 'preamp' and DAC, and can run balanced cables to the Nautilus. Question here is what phono stage.
3) Replace the LIO w/ another DAC (too many choices, which one? Holo Spring? Lampy?), and then buy a phono ADC and use the DAC as the source selector. One option here is replace the Aurender N100H with like a A200, which would effectively upgrade the transport as well, and use its DAC output directly to the Nautilus.
4) Buy a preamplifier and separate DAC and phono stage (I hate this option as it's the most complicated and I only have 2 sources).
Thanks in advance (again).
Keith
My office headphone rig consisted of:
Aurender N100H digital server -> Curious Evolved USB cable;
Rega P8 turntable;
Vinnie Rossi LIO w/ his L2 DAC and L2 phono stages -> DH Labs Air Matrix;
Ampsandsound Mogwai SE
ZMF Verite open
This sounded wonderful, but I got caught up in the upgrade path, and with holiday blessings I was thankful to now have a Nautilus here, and a bunch of various tubes. However, I noticed that while it sounds great, the LIO does not necessarily match perfectly w/ the Nautilus, and there seems to be a limit in dynamics/overhead/whatever. Justin advised that it may have to do w/ the LIO's 2Vrms output needing more gain, and I have tried his Booster box as a potential solution. But so far, I'm undecided about the benefits/downsides to LIO->Booster->Nautilus vs LIO->Nautilus.
Last night I pulled (from my main rig) a Resolution Audio Cantata 2.0 and plugged it directly into the Nautilus, driven by the Aurender. It sounded less Hifi'ish and more musical, and it does have a higher RCA (and also balanced) output voltage. But in its current setup, without another preamplifier, I'm unable to listen to vinyl.
So my question to the group is: What are reasonable upgrade paths? I don't have the opportunity to listen to a lot of gear. Here are some ideas:
1) Upgrade the LIO to its DHT stage, which adds 300B magic, while keeping a single box phono+DAC -> Nautilus. Plus it's beautiful. This would be a pretty pricey front end.
2) Replace the LIO w/ the Cantata 2.0 as the front end, and upgrade to Cantata 3.0 R2R-ladder system for $3k, which has the benefit of having analog inputs for a new phono stage, and now it acts as a digital 'preamp' and DAC, and can run balanced cables to the Nautilus. Question here is what phono stage.
3) Replace the LIO w/ another DAC (too many choices, which one? Holo Spring? Lampy?), and then buy a phono ADC and use the DAC as the source selector. One option here is replace the Aurender N100H with like a A200, which would effectively upgrade the transport as well, and use its DAC output directly to the Nautilus.
4) Buy a preamplifier and separate DAC and phono stage (I hate this option as it's the most complicated and I only have 2 sources).
Thanks in advance (again).
Keith
Last edited: