Hi Rajiv,
As you know, as you bridge your LAN ports, you gain the benefits of increased transparency both to the recording (which is a good thing) but also to your upstream components (which can be either a good thing or a bad thing depending on the quality of your upstream components). Once it became clear that the benefits of Ethernet isolation were somehow no longer there to the same extent with LAN bridging, then the usefulness of these Ethernet endpoints were now much less for me. At this point, why not go straight USB and incorporate some of this messy spaghetti chain internally, at least that's how I saw it. For sure, a single box solution has always been more attractive to me from a space and aesthetic standpoint but since SQ is the ultimate goal, well, I had to go with what my ears told me sounded better and thus far, each single box solution I have encountered including both the dCS Network Bridge and the Innuos Zenith SE have come with compromises.
With the dCS, you get this wonderful sense of detail resolution and timing precision but at the expense of dynamics. With the Zenith SE, it's the opposite. With what I have put together, I feel confident in saying that you get a greater measure of both and while I have moved away from your particular spaghetti situation, I still have a spaghetti situation, nonetheless, when you factor in my REF10 external master clock, a separate tX-USBultra and several Paul Hynes SR7s (I have now moved away from the Iso Regen).
Here's something that you and others may find interesting. In the past 24 hours, there have been new and surprising observations. As I transferred these servers yesterday evening to my near-field Voxativ setup in my home office for the very first time, I was surprised to find the Zenith SE preferable to the dCS NB by a large margin. For the past few weeks, with Blu2 and DAVE presently in my large listening room with the Martin Logans, I have been using my Hugo2 to directly drive my Voxativs (without a separate speaker amp) and while it does a very good job in this capacity, compared against DAVE, it had been sounding thinner. I was able to compensate for this to a large degree with a cable change and adjustment of my subwoofer but with the Zenith SE now feeding the Hugo2, I was shocked at how the Zenith SE transformed the Hugo2. This is now a different DAC and it feels like it's been turbocharged. The grip and authority of this DAC as it directly powers my speakers now seem Hulk-like. Transitions carry more weight and bass is so much stronger that I have had to literally turn down my subwoofer. Every track I've played has been several fold more enjoyable compared to when Hugo2 was being fed by my modified Mac Mini powered by my HDPlex and even without Blu Mk2 in this setup, I've found myself hardly missing it as I was simply in awe at what I was hearing. When I swapped the Zenith SE out for the dCS NB, there was this superior technical correctness on display akin to Yo-Yo Ma playing the cello but when compared against the Zenith SE, it was like Yo-Yo Ma was playing bored and uninspired. Lacking was the energy and emotion brought forth by the Zenith. Obviously, these servers are system dependent and so I don't feel that either of these servers/streamers is a lock in every system.
As I returned these servers back to my large listening room this morning where my Martin Logans and my Blu Mk2 and DAVE are presently kept, I was surprised by how much more dynamic the Zenith SE was sounding. In direct A/B testing, the dCS was now sounding flat as a pancake and this simply was not the case during the first 3 days I had these servers. I corresponded with the Zenith distributor this morning and to my surprise, I found out that the unit I received is virtually brand new and only had about 20 hours on it when I first received it. He told me this unit isn't even broken in yet. I know from my own experience that my SR7 didn't start to sound really good until it had at least 100 hours on it. Same with my REF10 Master Clock, my SOtM components and especially my SOtM cables (USB and CAT7). WIth the Zenith continuously playing back music all day, I gave it another good listen this evening and the Zenith has continued to improve with respect to dynamics, however, if I am to be honest, detail resolution is still a tad better with the dCS. At this point, however, if I had to choose one of these units for either my Voxativ room or my Martin Logan room, I would now go with the Zenith SE.
I decided to experiment some more. Since the Zenith SE has an "Ethernet out" port designed specifically for direct connection to a streamer, I decided to connect the dCS NB to this port. I suspect this is essentially a bridged LAN port (the first I have seen thus far in a mass produced Linux-based server) and sure enough, SQ from the dCS NB improved with regards to better clarity as if a thin veil had been removed. I decided to bridge the LAN ports on my custom server and connected the dCS NB to my custom server this way and this same SQ improvement was evident. Configured this way, the gap between the dCS and the Zenith SE has narrowed but given the choice, I think I would still go with the Zenith SE.
From there, I decided to connect my tX-USBultra to the Zenith SE (which is not yet possible to do with the dCS) and so now, this tX-USBultra (which is a USB regenerator) sits between the Zenith SE and my Blu Mk2. This tX-USBultra remains connected to my REF10 master clock and is powered by my SR7. All I can say is that this tX-USBultra transforms the Zenith SE in a very magical way. The wonderful dynamics are still all there but gone is the slight HF harshness I was detecting with the Zenith SE by itself. More importantly, the Zenith SE sounds even more dimensional in both depth and width and detail resolution is now actually better than the dCS NB. Of course, there is the option of pairing the dCS NB with an external master clock and I'm sure it will improve but guess what, with either of these scenarios, you will now find yourself with a spaghetti setup.
