Qutest and my Digital Weekend.

[Qwin]

Well, I never, didn't think you would go there James

Glad you are getting good results.

Move over, I'm lining up to get into Hi-Rez digital downloads and streaming services myself.

My approach will be some what different, but like you I want to keep my vinyl/analogue capability.

I have been looking at this for quite a while and rethought the whole set up several times. I'm currently looking at products from Primare/Classe/PS Audio, these all produce analogue Pre amps with built in DAC, so the Pre accepts digital or analog inputs and is a one box solution. They all control the volume, source selection etc in the analogue domain which is good for my vinyl. They are all fully balanced designs and have both balanced XLR and single ended RCA Inputs/Outputs, so very flexible bits of kit. My favorite contender is the PS Audio Stellar Gain Cell DAC (GCD) Pre, pictured below, It's a full width product and I'm trying to arrange a home demo of it.



What I particularly like about this model is the digital I2S input using HDMI cable/sockets. PS Audio created this system and several manufacturers have followed suit using the same pinout, which PS Audio have shared. They sent me details by email, but I later found they had published the schematic for an open use output board on the web, including pin out details. This board allows other manufacturers I2S capable gear to have an output added that can plug into the PS Audio range using I2S over HDMI cable. Audio-GD produce a pin compatible output board like this (available from Audiophonics) and they have also adopted this arrangement on some of their own DAC's.

My concept is to use a single board computer (SBC) and take it's I2S output through an ALLO Kali I2S reclocker then through an Audio-GD I2S (HDMI) output board and on to the Stellar GCD through a standard v2.0 HDMI cable.

My data storage will be on a NAS drive, both it and my internet streaming modem/hub will be connected to the SBC using Gigabit Ethernet cable. So there wont be any WiFi, USB or Spdif interfaces anywhere in the music chain.

I will be using LibreELEC OS and Kodi player.
LibreELEC is a trimmed down version of Linux with just the essentials needed to run Kodi, which comes as part of the distribution, so it's less resource hungry. Also Kodi has an add on for Qobuz, which is my streaming service of choice, for several reasons I won't go into here.

It's an ambitious project but I don't want to jack your thread, so I will start my own on the subject when I get into it, as I'm sure it will be of interest to others wanting to reap the benefits of I2S's simpler and cleaner audio path.