Antipodes CX+EX

[adamaley]

Tao, thank you for your complimentary word smith-i-ness. You are the master of this
Keep in mind the K50 reclocker is only there to generate the other outputs - spdif, i2s, aes/ebu - not to enhance the USB performance. A USB reclocker can be added downstream, such as the Innuos Phoenix, Ideon 3R variants, or others. As I understand it, the K50 is better than the CX+EX on a level playing field (no USB reclocker enhancement). No need to fear the sound of the reclocker, Tao.

My conundrum is choosing a path, as there are more than a few options.

1. Keep the CX+EX as is. Do nothing. I have repeatedly shown the inability to do this.
2. K30 - I don’t upsample
3. K50 - hell yeah. But this may take time.
4. Upgrade the CX & EX when the option is announced this fall.
5. Get a USB reclocker.
6. Upgrade and reclocker.
7. Beg my wife for an SGM Extreme. It’s only one year of tuition for the kids. Come on!
8. Wait for the Extreme mini.

Hopefully our friends here will report on their K50 findings and shorten my list. It certainly would be helpful

I vote go K50 ;-)

 

[Thieliste]

Would be interesting to have a shootout between K50 and Pink Faun 2.16x.

 

[Tuckia]

I vote go K50 ;-)

How do you think it would fair against your custom server?

 

[Tuckia]

Would be interesting to have a shootout between K50 and Pink Faun 2.16x.

HiFi Advice did a compare of the CX+EX to the Pink Faun with a few options. So that is one data point anyway. If I remember the conclusion was horses for courses, but the PF was declared the winner by a nose.

The expectation is that the K50 needs to be better than the known usual competitors, Extreme excluded. In time they will come out with their new models too.

 

[adamaley]

How do you think it would fair against your custom server?

I wouldn't venture to guess. However, I'm sure the K50 will surpass the CX/EX as they are made by the same company and your Pacific deserves the best source.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Tao, thank you for your complimentary word smith-i-ness. You are the master of this
Keep in mind the K50 reclocker is only there to generate the other outputs - spdif, i2s, aes/ebu - not to enhance the USB performance. A USB reclocker can be added downstream, such as the Innuos Phoenix, Ideon 3R variants, or others. As I understand it, the K50 is better than the CX+EX on a level playing field (no USB reclocker enhancement). No need to fear the sound of the reclocker, Tao.

My conundrum is choosing a path, as there are more than a few options.

1. Keep the CX+EX as is. Do nothing. I have repeatedly shown the inability to do this.
2. K30 - I don’t upsample
3. K50 - hell yeah. But this may take time.
4. Upgrade the CX & EX when the option is announced this fall.
5. Get a USB reclocker.
6. Upgrade and reclocker.
7. Beg my wife for an SGM Extreme. It’s only one year of tuition for the kids. Come on!
8. Wait for the Extreme mini.

Hopefully our friends here will report on their K50 findings and shorten my list. It certainly would be helpful

Thoughts are dangerous things

Audio Bacon adds another positive review for the Phoenix USB reclocker... has anyone tried one of these in after an Antipodes... Jay from the Bacon points towards visceral and natural... so Tuck’s option 6 also looks potentially good to me. More dangerously incendiary thoughts on upgrades adds further fuel for the fire. Love having options.

Audio Bacon Phoenix Review

 

[Tuckia]

Thoughts are dangerous things

Audio Bacon adds another positive review for the Phoenix USB reclocker... has anyone tried one of these in after an Antipodes... Jay from the Bacon points towards visceral and natural... so Tuck’s option 6 also looks potentially good to me. More dangerously incendiary thoughts on upgrades adds further fuel for the fire. Love having options.

Audio Bacon Phoenix Review

Interesting read. One of the commenters has a CX+EX and added the Phoenix to reported good effect. Several times in the last 10 months since I acquired the CX+EX I almost purchased the Phoenix, but various things popped up. I suppose a Phoenix could be used with a K50 too. Yet another option to rid ourselves of retirement funds. Add a good PC, yet another good usb cable, and isolation for another box and it gets serious.

Elsewhere I read that the effect of the USB reclocker is less dramatic when between better servers and dacs, which seems logical. Need more data points.

 

[Tuckia]

I wouldn't venture to guess. However, I'm sure the K50 will surpass the CX/EX as they are made by the same company and your Pacific deserves the best source.

I think the Pacific deserves one of those Sablon Audio Platinum Bocchino IC’s to talk to

 

[the sound of Tao]

Interesting read. One of the commenters has a CX+EX and added the Phoenix to reported good effect. Several times in the last 10 months since I acquired the CX+EX I almost purchased the Phoenix, but various things popped up. I suppose a Phoenix could be used with a K50 too. Yet another option to rid ourselves of retirement funds. Add a good PC, yet another good usb cable, and isolation for another box and it gets serious.

Elsewhere I read that the effect of the USB reclocker is less dramatic when between better servers and dacs, which seems logical. Need more data points.

Thanks for pointing me towards the comments section after... I usually don’t read this after reviews of this kind of gear because there’s always angry audiophiles everywhere trying to teach us how bits are just bits etc etc .

Jay also used the Phoenix into a Chord mScaler/TT2 combo (which is the same as I am running) and points that the Phoenix was night and day feeding into the mscaler... so some very helpful data points for me in the comments section... and I do have a spare matching USB since going to internal ssd for music files in the CX

Not that we’d ever just talk ourselves into these things

 

[RaChiK]

Hi guys,
Another small help. Does your MacBook often get disconnected from the CX when playing Roon ?. Has been happening quite frequently needing to reboot the CX to connect again and playback.

 

[sbnx]

I was told that I should have my K50 by the end of the month. Time is dripping off the clock -- tick, tock, tick, tock (or whatever sound digital clocks make ). I am looking forward to getting all of my CD's ripped onto it although this will be a loooong process. I am sure it will smoke my old Aurender. Sorry I won't be able to help you guys out with a comparison to the EX/CX.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Hi guys,
Another small help. Does your MacBook often get disconnected from the CX when playing Roon ?. Has been happening quite frequently needing to reboot the CX to connect again and playback.

Hi Romney,
I just use the Roon app on my iPhone mostly but haven’t found that I’ve had it disconnect or needing to reboot unusually.

 

[Tuckia]

Hi Romney,
I just use the Roon app on my iPhone mostly but haven’t found that I’ve had it disconnect or needing to reboot unusually.

My iPad to CX connection is pretty good. Occasionally it refreshes, but then keep on going.

I have an issue with the HQ player losing connection with the dac if I turn the dac off without pausing the track first. Usually at end of day. If I don’t pause the track first, I need to reboot the EX the next day. Roon Ready never did this. However, I don’t consider this to be much of a problem.

 

[Tuckia]

I was told that I should have my K50 by the end of the month. Time is dripping off the clock -- tick, tock, tick, tock (or whatever sound digital clocks make ). I am looking forward to getting all of my CD's ripped onto it although this will be a loooong process. I am sure it will smoke my old Aurender. Sorry I won't be able to help you guys out with a comparison to the EX/CX.

Must feel like a looong time. FWIW, I’ve been ripping my CD’s onto the NAS, then copied to the server, for 6 years. Down to my last 50 .

Your feedback will be most relevant to me if you are feeding the Pacific. The CX+EX is quite good into mine through USB via FTA Callisto. The K50 should work well for you. Currently I am leaning toward this path (because Adamaley told me to ) and I can’t bank on my wife for the Extreme. Keep in mind the break in is about 1200 hours. Tick tock, , tick tock, x 10 to the 1200 power. But the CX+EX sounded pretty good after a day or so. Just keeps getting better.

 

[sbnx]

Must feel like a looong time. FWIW, I’ve been ripping my CD’s onto the NAS, then copied to the server, for 6 years. Down to my last 50 .

Your feedback will be most relevant to me if you are feeding the Pacific. The CX+EX is quite good into mine through USB via FTA Callisto. The K50 should work well for you. Currently I am leaning toward this path (because Adamaley told me to ) and I can’t bank on my wife for the Extreme. Keep in mind the break in is about 1200 hours. Tick tock, , tick tock, x 10 to the 1200 power. But the CX+EX sounded pretty good after a day or so. Just keeps getting better.

Tuckia, On the CX+EX do you have a SSD plugged into one or both slots? Is it pretty easy to back up one SSD to the other on the CX+EX? Last thing I want to do is spend a bunch of time ripping CD's only to have a HD failure with no backup.

I will be feeding the Pacific (PX25 tubes). I have the that same USB cable. But I am planning on trying the SPDIF and AES/EBU outputs as well. It seems that Antipodes thinks USB is flawed and that SPDIF or AES would sound better.

I know what you mean about the extreme. I thought about it for a few milliseconds but $30K for a server was just too much. It is costly to be on the bleeding edge. I still think things in this space are changing rapidly. Heck even $15k for the K50 gave me pause but I went ahead as I will likely use it for at least 5 or 6 years. In a couple years the extreme probably won't seem so extreme.

 

[Tuckia]

Tuckia, On the CX+EX do you have a SSD plugged into one or both slots? Is it pretty easy to back up one SSD to the other on the CX+EX? Last thing I want to do is spend a bunch of time ripping CD's only to have a HD failure with no backup.

I will be feeding the Pacific (PX25 tubes). I have the that same USB cable. But I am planning on trying the SPDIF and AES/EBU outputs as well. It seems that Antipodes thinks USB is flawed and that SPDIF or AES would sound better.

I know what you mean about the extreme. I thought about it for a few milliseconds but $30K for a server was just too much. It is costly to be on the bleeding edge. I still think things in this space are changing rapidly. Heck even $15k for the K50 gave me pause but I went ahead as I will likely use it for at least 5 or 6 years. In a couple years the extreme probably won't seem so extreme.

I have one 4TB SSD (Samsung EVO 860) in the CX. The other drive slot is open. Years ago I started ripping from my PC with dbpoweramp, then moved the files to my Synology RAID 1 NAS. This is my primary storage and backup. Servers come and go. Now with the Antipodes the SSD is removable and expandable, thankfully. So while I always copy to the server SSD this is manual, not automatic. Just a control issue for me. I like having a backup isolated from the server too.

Did you get the K10 ripper too? if so, it would seem entirely logical to use two SSD’s with one designated as backup. However, I haven’t done this so don’t know if this can all be done within the Antipodes server without involving a network PC. Perhaps someone else here can elaborate?

I never picked up on Antipodes (Mark Jenkins) thinking USB was inferior. Rather he seems, or at least did favor USB to Ethernet. But apparently it is still a debate among the low bandwidth crowd (me included) that it’s hard to tell which one (usb or spdif) is worse, depending on implementation. This includes the server/streamer, connections, and dac as a system. Lampizator users of a few years ago were all about conversion to dsd, upsampling, etc. Frankly the PCM was sub par compared to the competition and dsd. So USB was the only way down this path or the rare dual AES/EBU. Today I see that most long time Lampizator users still run USB into their Pacific’s despite the much much better PCM performance of the DS57 digital engine. The trend is running native, no conversion, no upsampling. This re-opens the door for spdif use, but I don’t see users switching back. But it is a worthwhile investigation for you. I’d like to hear what you think on this. Currently I can’t run spdif without a P2. My former Aurender N10 was better through the spdif than usb. As you stated earlier, it’s all about the clocks. Someday I2s or similar will take over.

Ditto on the K50 vs. Extreme. I work for a living. I will wonder what the performance delta is in the end.

 

[sbnx]

Here is what Mark put on his webpage regarding the S20 reclocker "Unfortunately, USB Audio has been negatively impacted by revisions of the USB standard, and the noise introduced by using Ethernet is just as troubling. The Antipodes S20 is the answer to this problem, isolating the USB input electronically from the reclocker circuit and then providing precision re-clocked outputs, powered by Antipodes HSL power supplies."

But of course, as you pointed out, for DSD there really is not choice but to use USB.

I did order a K10. What you said about installing two SSD's and using one of them as a back up is exactly what I was thinking. Hopefully someone here has experience with this but if not I will enquire with Antipodes once I get it installed.

 

[sbnx]

Truckia, I notice you use tube amps/preamp. Since you have the Lampi Pacific I am wondering if you have auditioned the Lampi amps. I find the 211 Pacific balanced interesting. But it seems nobody really talks about the Lampi amps.

 

[bonzo75]

Truckia, I notice you use tube amps/preamp. Since you have the Lampi Pacific I am wondering if you have auditioned the Lampi amps. I find the 211 Pacific balanced interesting. But it seems nobody really talks about the Lampi amps.

I think kernelbob had it. PM him if he doesn't read this

 

[Tuckia]

Truckia, I notice you use tube amps/preamp. Since you have the Lampi Pacific I am wondering if you have auditioned the Lampi amps. I find the 211 Pacific balanced interesting. But it seems nobody really talks about the Lampi amps.

I was equally intrigued but never tried or ran across a pair. I’m liking my Allnics, but certainly wonder. With all of the proud Lampizator dac owners out there, the quiet on the amp side is curious.