NovaFidelity/Cocktail Audio N15D - Network Adaptor

Ok...so pretty much what I have here?

The preamp has 0.0002% THD, the amplifier the same ....as good as.

The DAC has higher THD but out of the supposed audible range. There is no extra gain in the chain as the preamp has unity gain....so only driving the signal and removing any impedance issues between pre and power.

Not sure the yams have much in the way of distortion?

Very interesting indeed.

Re MrC

He's done his sums, he knows that a piece of kit sat on the shelf ain't doing anything but costing him money. If the cost of postage vs the likelihood of a direct sale from sending it, including all the people who read about it and might buy it doesn't make sense then it stays on the shelf. But if the likelihood of the customer buying it is 50/50 and the likelihood of a punter reading about it and buying is 1%, and it'll get 100 views on a forum then you'd have to be mental not to send it out.

Add in that MrC genuinely loves music, hifi and electronics in general and gets a kick from helping people broaden their pallette then its easy to see why this make sense.

If you're a shop with only one example on the shelf and 100 customers coming through the door over the weekend then it makes sense to keep it in for demo.

It's all a numbers game lads, plain and simple, we're just lucky to have dealers like MrC who play the side of the game that includes us.

At this juncture I should probably retention that my MrC modded Gustard A18 is doing Sterling service. I'm enjoying a bit of Mingus at the moment.

A question from the floor if I may?
Probably for Tony I guess or anyone else that knows.
Would the N15D receive a stream of Qobuz and then ‘broadcast’/ send/allow other upnp players to receive?
I’ve downloaded the manual but still can’t figure out if it will work this way.

For the past week I’ve had issues with my Mac mini crashing, or running out of application memory and shutting Audirvana down. It forms the heart of my digital music with Audirvana playing Qobuz and then playing to 3 different pi based streamers via upnp.
Thought about a new Macmini but then you are looking at £700 just to get back to the start line.
If I can achieve the same with the N15D then it may have a few bolt on advantages. ie it might just sound better.

Hi Tony
Thanks for your response,
Yes, exactly that.

Not that I’m unhappy with the sound quality I’m currently getting.. just the opposite. However I can wander into any room, fire up the Audirvana app on my phone and change the network player.
Very much like Roon, although I have tried this (still under a 3 month trial) but I preferred the sound from Audirvana.
I also agree with Oliver that the Pecan pi dac is restricted by the pi signal it is fed by.
I got round this by using the Allo USbridge signature/ SBooster linear ps.
A Pi on steroids.
I also discovered that I preferred a chord mojo fed by this than the pecan pi.

However all this presupposes that Audirvana will work properly using Qobuz... and it ain’t!
If I could get my current Mac mini working properly I’d be quite happy to keep the current set up and explore alternative dacs down the line.

However this is the second Mac mini that has caused me issues by not working consistently as a server. I may dig out the older model I’ve got somewhere and see if I can get Audirvana to be stable on that.
Hence looking at alternatives.
A new Mac mini is around £700, and at the end of the day it’s not a dedicated machine... but it would work.
If the N15 can feed my network players a Qobuz stream then it would also actually be a cheaper option.

Thanks for that Mikey.
I’ll have a look into that, definitely food for thought.
I run MoOde on all my devices, do that’s the Allo USbridge signature into a chord mojo, two Allo Bosses and now I have a Pecan pi to run from a normal pi ( used to be on the end of the USbridge).
Cheers Steve

Hi Jim
Thought about that.. but in essence it’s a cd ripper that I don’t need !
I’ve got a NAS with over a TB of ripped music that I never really look at anymore. Virtually everything is on Qobuz.. and in higher quality than the red book I ripped to.
Thanks though

Oli, any connection protocol is only as good as the devices sending and receiving the data. I've never heard one interface constantly outgun another, it has always been device dependant. They all have possible flaws.

Replacing the SPDIF cable with an RCA-RCA adapter seemed to give a clearer presentation in the midrange so thought I'd improved the sound. I made a couple other changes in the next few days... and then over the next couple weeks I was frustrated by less lifelike sound. I'd added a NOS Teflon bypass cap on the amplifier's opamp so thought that might be to blame. Then I thought to put the 1.5M SPDIF cable back in place just to rule it out. Voila! The dimensionality and sense of lifelike separation between instruments returned. Too bad as I really don't need 1.5M of cable there but the music is more satisfying which is what it's about.

So, if you are not using the internal DAC, is it bypassing it entirely, or is the internal DAC acting as a reclocking device for your DAC?
I am trying to get my head around how this is working in your system.

So it is plugged in to your network?
Have you loaded it with music files, or does it get them from elsewhere?

Surely if you are out putting via SPdif, it is not going through the internal dac, if it was going through the dac you would be out putting through RCA/XLR's

If it's outputting a digital signal then de facto it cannot be passing through a DAC first. Unless there's also an ADC inside after the DAC, which I doubt.

It is clear to me.
You are bypassing the DAC.

no, it is, as i have the soekris on the SPDIF from the N15D and the internal dac on interconnects to the preamp. I can switch between the two dacs and they are definitly both on at the same time.

This was something i wasn't very keen on as that internal DAC is making unnecessary noise. However, i havent figured out a way to either disable it, or just remove it full stop.