Both streaming and CD, everything just blossomed. I just sit there listening now and mutter 'holy sh88'
I found myself doing this a few times over the last week too, just grinning to myself and saying similar or doing Tom Cruise/Maverick-style double thumbs up / fist-pumps. I know.
Just to test your resolve that you're done with tweaks here's my promised (and advance-apologised slightly OT) update on the
LHY SW-8 switch / R26 / OCK-1 combo...
My setup is similar to yours with the OCK-1 & R26 but in lieu of your fibre convertors (which I've not yet tried) I have the SW-8 switch cleaning up the network. System sounds phenomenal now I've had the SW-8 and Athena preamp 2-3 weeks constantly running in the latter especially. All just clicked into place last week. I've found the gear needs to be switched on for at least 4-5 hours, preferably a day or more for it to hit its sweet spot. Some notes I took last week, switching (boom, boom) back and forth from my generic router with stock PS to the SW-8:
- much more expansive soundstage with a greater sense of depth and acoustic space
- treble of guitar strings has a beautiful shimmer and far longer decay
- instruments and vocalists are positioned far more precisely across the sound stage at different depths
- in the Riders on the Storm the thunder is more weighty and rolling, the rain in the background isn't just a homogenous wall of 'rain-like' sound, but has a more subtle ebb and flow, gets you closer (if not quite) to the sound of hearing rain out an open window
- overall great pace, rhythm, timing and energy… enough precision that all the separate elements in a busy soundstage can rise and fall dynamically and in their own spatial location without blurring.
- in Fever, Malia's vocals are more precisely imaged with more palpable and realistic texture. So good.
- HQP DSD512 sounds holographic in this setup. Simply amazing. Yes vocals not as forward as Roon but more nuanced and overall level of resolution vs Roon or even HQP PCM native res or PCM768 is on another level.
The above was based on Roon/HQP streaming directly to the R26.
The SW-8 is sufficiently good that it dramatically improves even the sound of streamed TV audio so there is genuine soundstage depth and some actual decay, realistic body and texture of sounds whether music, speech or atmospheric sounds in the show. Everything. And this is mere TV, let alone HQP DSD512. Chain is SW-8 > Panasonic TV (native HBO streaming app) > (toslink) > Ifi Purifier S/pdif v2 > R26 coax in (+OCK-1). If you take the SW-8 & Ifi out of the chain then comparatively it sounds exactly as thin, flat and edgy as you'd expect, though the R26/OCK do their best. My below reaction btw in response to Forgisound's question was actually after the previous evening streaming the HBO show The White Lotus. I have never heard AV sound remotely near this good. My newish Denon receiver already collecting dust is totally goneburger...
I have a question for the more technically proficient people. I use Win PC with Fidelizer app and Roon. I also have a network switch and an R26 LAN input. I use the OCK-1 clock.
How much can LHY ethernet switch with linear power supply and OCXO clock help in this setup?
Significantly. I was dumbfounded last night as to how good the combo sounded. Greater than the sum of its parts. Stupid good. Was grinning. Can elaborate, but not now as it is quite late here (post Christmas party).
The above observations btw predate but are consistent with the just-posted r
eview of the SW-8 by the Alpha Audio (AA) guys where they complained it was almost too detailed and holographic ('too much of a good thing'), but was the ideal switch to prove to sceptics that they make a difference. The funny thing with that sentiment is it's not the switch 'sounding' like that, it is the streaming endpoint/DAC doing that/being able to perform like that based on the super clean data stream they're provided. I'm not going to speculate on the precise technical mechanism of action that explains this, I mean it'd be cool to know, but I certainly don't wish to debate it here. AA:
Think of very large imaging, extreme detail, separation of instruments… sky… and a very black background. It's pretty bizarre what this switch does. Frankly, this is the perfect example to persuade a 'non-believer'. It's almost extreme.
In their recent switch test the Delock FMC that AA tried just had a stock PS, as did all the switches, as it would've just made the test too unwieldy to introduce another variable of linear PSs. So not a fair comparison to the LHY, but it still rated well.
There's a guy on another thread who has FMCs + linear PS > SW-8 > externally clocked R26 and reckons this works very well. I'll have to try this once I've back home after our summer Christmas break.