Now you appreciate why we took the long route to arrive at today's final destination of 'more laid back'. There was a lot of ground to cover. Without defining meaning, 'more laid back' is as nebulous as hifi's favourite weasel word 'musicality'. Now you understand parallel sightings where playback's gestalt felt more laid back; and how contrary to popular kneejerk reactions, that quality can coexist with superior diction from higher exactitude. Higher exactitude isn't invariably synonymous with metronomic machinations of a clipped gait. A certain softness or gentleness needn't be the temporal blur of time confusion to stay well clear of so-called warmth and its congeal. Superior timing doesn't live under the preacher's tent of Crispianity but is a rather mellower more chilled fellow.

With NOS R2R DAC.

To rewind, this difference came from altering my usual signal path of SSD/cloud ⇒ Audirvana ⇒ USB ⇒ Singxer SU-6 bridge ⇒ AES/EBU ⇒ DAC to Audirvana ⇒ network ⇒ Streamer ⇒ coax ⇒ DAC. I didn't try the Streamer's potential turbo boost of fibre-optic isolation¹. But when that relies on Nagra's own DAC, a Playback Designs or competitor fitted with the matching fibre-optic port, it was rather imperative that even in S/PDIF mode, the Streamer made its presence felt. An interesting side note given repeat mentions of Wilson's ultra-precision user-adjustable time alignment in their dearer models is to remember many tradeshow sightings where Nagra demonstrated with Wilson speakers. They also use them at the factory. Time doesn't matter? Clearly it's not just the rare speaker designer who disagrees. Nagra do too. Will it take time-coherent speakers to maximize the Streamer's effect? It most certainly couldn't hurt but it transmitted already on the MusikBoxx whose physical time alignment isn't mated to minimum-phase filters; and the IQ whose 1st-order hi/low-pass on the 600Hz-8kHz open-baffle midrange mates to a vertical baffle for no physical alignment of the three voice coils.
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¹ From Frederic's review of the Lumin P1 Mini: "Switching to fibre-optic LAN yielded more refinement than expected over my regular Audioquest Ethernet cable. Since my LHY Audio SW6 switch includes an SFP optical port like the Mini, I purchased a pair of SFP LC modules and 10-meter optical cable as recommended by Lumin to check on any audible differences that may arise from electrically decoupling their Mini streamer from the network. Those turned out to be subtle yet meaningful. Overall the already quiet background got even quieter, small textural detail became more audible and a very fine layer of upper-midrange glare I hadn't even noticed left. The effect was very similar to what you hear with a high-quality USB noise filter; or to invoke bird-watching as another hobby of mine, switching from very good Nikon binoculars to Svarovskis. The birds are still birds but their colours more vibrant, they look more 3D and it's a lot easier to differentiate the finest feathers. That's what switching to optical networking does. If you don't try it you won't miss it but once you do try and listen in, the differences take the P1 Mini another rung up the refinement ladder. A LHY Audio FMC, a pair of LC modules and 10m cable will set you back about $600. If you already own a decent power cord and pair of interconnects, moving to optical is likely the most meaningful upgrade available for the P1 Mini."

By the end of April 2025, Christiaan Punter of Hifi Advice had published his review of the Playback Designs MPT-8 Dream transport. It contains this relevant paragraph about Nagra's fibre-optic feature:

"PLINK is a variation on ST glass optical specially adapted by Playback Designs to carry the delicate music signal from component to component whilst natively supporting all sample rates for PCM and DSD. PLINK is an optical format but uses an entirely different interface than Toslink. Instead of an LED source, PLINK uses a high-quality low-jitter laser ST-fibre interface normally used for very high-bandwidth communication links where receivers require an extremely low-jitter signal for reliable decoding. The music signal travels over PLINK using a much lower bandwidth protocol than the specified limit of the media to further increase robustness against jitter and allowing for extremely long cable lengths up to 300m. PLINK cables are specified for multimode 62.5/125µm.

"The first version of the PLINK interface launched more than 15 years ago and supported DSD up to 5.6MHz. This version now called 'Classic' implements in the Playback Designs 5-series products and IPS-3 (unless they were upgraded). As technology never sits still, the DSD sample rate has been expanded to 11.2MHz several years ago. Accordingly, Playback Designs expanded the PLINK format and called it 'Sonoma' reminiscent of its Sonoma workstation origin. It’s worth noting that PLINK is compatible with Nagra Link, meaning that the MPS-X network transport is compatible with Nagra DACs with a fibre-optic input. The same logic applies to the MPT-8 transport. This is worth noting as there are currently no CD/SACD transports in Nagra's catalogue."

By May 6th, marketing manager Matthieu Latour shared that aside from the new phono stage in the small Streamer chassis already out [see above], they're finalizing a dedicated linear power supply for the Streamer. It'll house in the same chassis footprint just with a bit more height to fit a power transformer. They're also at work on a deck currently still code-named Player. That will combine the streamer with a Sabre DAC and on-chip 32-bit digital volume once again in the existing Streamer/Phono chassis minus the fibre-optic circuitry. Presumably the new external power supply will also work on that and the Phono. In short, whilst building out their cost-no-object line, Nagra are expanding their new Compact line to open up their Swiss catalogue to a new audience. Switzerland isn't a monarchy just for royals but a democracy. Will we see a democratic trickle-up of the milled-from-solid Compact chassis in the Classic line? Not. The metal stock and machine time to do bigger chassis the same way would be cost prohibitive I'm told. That gives Compact customers unique bragging rights for beefier casework. Et voilà, that's what I have on Nagra's Streamer in 24/192 coaxial mode. Despite multiple attempts to secure a matching Classic DAC II, potential samples kept moving to paying customers just as they should have. If Matthieu is correct, fibre-optic signal transfer and their new power supply will take the Streamer's performance noticeably higher still…