Srajan, hello again. As always I enjoy reading your reviews and I had a question regarding the R26II. I note that it's now listed as part of your system. Is that a permanent piece of equipment (well as permanent as a reviewer's system can be)? My key takeaway is that the party trick for the R26II (and according to Darko, the R30 also) is its quality of DSD via Ethernet. You have also given glowing praise to the Cyan2 in another review. Those 2 DACs are about the same price point in Australia and they both seem to have qualities that appeal to my tastes (dynamics, clarity, soundstage, some warmth and body). I have HQplayer so I could run NOS in the Cyan2 and upsample. On the other hand, I have a well-sorted Ethernet system (fibre-optic isolation and a Waversa Ethernet filter at the DAC end) so I believe I could extract the best out of the R26II too. I know you probably hate people asking to pick which is better but in this case I guess I'm asking, would both be enjoyable in perhaps different ways? Regards, Mark
Actually… I never reviewed the Cyan. That was Frederic. As to the R26II, it anchors my office system. And yes, I think the very best performance comes using its RJ45 port, setting it to non-oversampling and native DSD then sending it DSD512. I use Audirvana for that, you’d use HQPlayer. And just to reiterate, I use Audirvana's UPnP function to route to the Gustard DAC so can't comment on other 3rd-party apps. Srajan
