I’ve been enjoying keeping up with this thread, but I haven’t posted anything in a while. I figured it was time. I’m about four months into owning my Vio, using it every day, and loving it only more and more.
A month ago I set up my V281/V800 stack as my stereo preamp. It’s working great! When I bought the gear I felt a little silly paying for connectivity and options I was pretty sure I’d never use. Now I’m using almost every input and output for something!
I started using my old laptop as a makeshift music server. It sits near my stack so if I’m ever without my main laptop, I’ve still got music. That runs into the optical port on my V800. I plug my main laptop into the USB. FWIW I prefer the USB sound over optical. I play the same file on both computers. Through USB I hear more distinct notes in the bass, and a little more crispness in the treble. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison because the old laptop is on optical and the new one is USB. I really should do the proper experiment and run the newer laptop on optical and the old one on USB. Too lazy for now. Someday.
I found an old Technics turntable on Craigslist, and an Emotiva phono preamp. It’s been a joy to revitalize my vinyl collection. Plus, my friends all say, “here, you want these?” so I’ve amassed a pretty sizable vinyl collection in just a few months. I run the phono preamp into the RCA jacks on the V281.
The best part is I send the balanced out from the V281 to my Parasound A23 stereo amplifier. It’s driving a pair of Polk LSI9 speakers. (Both also Craigslist finds - the V281 is the most expensive component in my whole setup.) They sound terrific.
So putting it all together, on the input side, I’ve got my main laptop with my full music library (FLAC and iTunes) running Audirvana plugged into USB. I’ve got my old laptop / new music server plugged into optical, so there’s always music on hand. I’ve got my turntable via RCA. On output side, I’ve got balanced headphones (HD800 and LCD-3), a couple other unbalanced headphones that just aren’t seeing much use these days, and a pretty decent starter-kit speaker setup. A press of a button or two, and I can switch seamlessly between these sources and outputs. I can send music to headphones, to the stereo, or (kinda fun) to both.
Yeah, my Vio stack is utilized to the max, and in retrospect I’m glad I got a system with so much flexibility. Even the remote, which I thought I’d never use, has become indispensable when I’m listening through speakers. Now if only I could come up with a way to use the digital out on the V800...
