dCS Network Bridge

Elberoth

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Dec 15, 2012
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dCS has just introduced the Network Bridge.

It allows Elgar/Debussy/Puccini/Paganini/Scarlatti owners to take advantage of their network streaming tech, as used in the Rossini/Vivaldi.

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Making the Network Bridge

Chris Hales, dCS Director of Product Development, gives his take on the new Network Box…

“This is for people who bought into pre Vivaldi, to give them access to network streaming of audio. Scarlatti, Paganini or even classic Elgar owners don’t have access to this – unlike the new Rossini – and it's increasingly becoming the way that people are consuming music”, explains Chris Hales. “This special product really came out of that need. In essence it's using the network hardware that we have in Rossini and Vivaldi, all the IP and know-how that we built up over the period that we have been developing that. It receives audio via UPnP, Apple Airplay, Spotify Connect, TIDAL and other sources and outputs bit perfect au-dio in a form that a legacy dCS DAC can use, and that’s really what we are try-ing to achieve.”

Chris says that it was a case of using the tried and tested dCS streaming plat-form and adapting it for this special box of tricks. “As far as the network hard-ware design is concerned, our platform is now well developed, although need-less to say some customisation was needed.” As with the new Rossini, the net-work hardware itself is supplied by Stream Unlimited in Vienna. “The Rossini uses a Stream 800 board which is a very capable network solution, and the Network Box is using a variant of that – the Stream 820. This is essentially the same board, but with a slightly more powerful processor, plus it’s wi-fi enabled. We really wanted to take advantage of this feature.”

He says that dCS always recommends a wired connection for the best sound, “…if you possibly can. This is because you are guaranteed bandwidth which you are absolutely not with a wireless connection. But some users although they stream all their music files, may enjoy the added flexibility of wi-fi.

“The board itself is self contained and is not modified,” explains Chris, “as de-livered by Stream Unlimited. But needless to say, it requires power supplies and is flexible in its own right. So one of the key things that we have done is to alter the clocking. So the Stream board plugs into a motherboard that has some typi-cal dCS circuitry on it that basically gives you all the benefits of our clocking system that you'd have in any other dCS product. The very high quality clock-ing gives low jitter, and of course it has our usual power supply arrangements. Traditionally we don't make too much fuss about dCS power supplies because it’s something that’s just got to be done right, but perhaps that’s dCS modesty – you need to do things well if you want things to work right. But the Network Box power supplies are typologically similar to what you would find on a dCS control board, with ultra low noise…”

In terms of connectivity, Chris says dCS, “is trying not to be too partisan”, so it could be used with both dCS and a very wide range of other manufacturers’ products too. “But the general idea is that if you have a dCS product, be it the very early Elgar or the most recent Scarlatti, you will be able to use this box to maximum effect. So we have processing options which will allow you to downsample to whatever the maximum sample rate your DAC can cope with, or not as you wish. The idea is to make the box as transparent as we possibly can where we can, and then to process minimally to suit your DAC where that's appropriate.”

“The motherboard has a big Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) on there as you’d expect from a dCS product, which does all the processing and all the logic and so forth. It’s not quite the monster that we have inside the Rossini but nevertheless we've got a lot of processing in there that can interface with the Stream 800 board and take that and send it out onto the digital output and so forth. So the processing platform is typically flexible and upgradable, as ever with dCS. All the software is done in-house as usual, from our algorithms to the control coding. What we have inside is by no means a generic Stream 820 by the way – there are lots of features which didn't exist before we commissioned them to build those in. We had a lot of dialogue with Stream Unlimited to shape the architecture of this board and to integrate these new features into our pack-age. I think many of the performance features wouldn't have been developed, if we weren't the lead customer on those…”

Overall, Chris says the new Network Box is an interesting niche product that will expand the horizons of both dCS fans and the wider audiophile public alike. “It’s a product for the legacy market, but with very much the quality of that processing that you would expect from dCS.”
 

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microstrip

VIP/Donor
May 30, 2010
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dCS has just introduced the Network Bridge.

It allows Elgar/Debussy/Puccini/Paganini/Scarlatti owners to take advantage of their network streaming tech, as used in the Rossini/Vivaldi.

View attachment 28909

View attachment 28906

View attachment 28908

Making the Network Bridge

Chris Hales, dCS Director of Product Development, gives his take on the new Network Box…

“This is for people who bought into pre Vivaldi, to give them access to network streaming of audio. Scarlatti, Paganini or even classic Elgar owners don’t have access to this – unlike the new Rossini – and it's increasingly becoming the way that people are consuming music”, explains Chris Hales. “This special product really came out of that need. In essence it's using the network hardware that we have in Rossini and Vivaldi, all the IP and know-how that we built up over the period that we have been developing that. It receives audio via UPnP, Apple Airplay, Spotify Connect, TIDAL and other sources and outputs bit perfect au-dio in a form that a legacy dCS DAC can use, and that’s really what we are try-ing to achieve.”

Chris says that it was a case of using the tried and tested dCS streaming plat-form and adapting it for this special box of tricks. “As far as the network hard-ware design is concerned, our platform is now well developed, although need-less to say some customisation was needed.” As with the new Rossini, the net-work hardware itself is supplied by Stream Unlimited in Vienna. “The Rossini uses a Stream 800 board which is a very capable network solution, and the Network Box is using a variant of that – the Stream 820. This is essentially the same board, but with a slightly more powerful processor, plus it’s wi-fi enabled. We really wanted to take advantage of this feature.”

He says that dCS always recommends a wired connection for the best sound, “…if you possibly can. This is because you are guaranteed bandwidth which you are absolutely not with a wireless connection. But some users although they stream all their music files, may enjoy the added flexibility of wi-fi.

“The board itself is self contained and is not modified,” explains Chris, “as de-livered by Stream Unlimited. But needless to say, it requires power supplies and is flexible in its own right. So one of the key things that we have done is to alter the clocking. So the Stream board plugs into a motherboard that has some typi-cal dCS circuitry on it that basically gives you all the benefits of our clocking system that you'd have in any other dCS product. The very high quality clock-ing gives low jitter, and of course it has our usual power supply arrangements. Traditionally we don't make too much fuss about dCS power supplies because it’s something that’s just got to be done right, but perhaps that’s dCS modesty – you need to do things well if you want things to work right. But the Network Box power supplies are typologically similar to what you would find on a dCS control board, with ultra low noise…”

In terms of connectivity, Chris says dCS, “is trying not to be too partisan”, so it could be used with both dCS and a very wide range of other manufacturers’ products too. “But the general idea is that if you have a dCS product, be it the very early Elgar or the most recent Scarlatti, you will be able to use this box to maximum effect. So we have processing options which will allow you to downsample to whatever the maximum sample rate your DAC can cope with, or not as you wish. The idea is to make the box as transparent as we possibly can where we can, and then to process minimally to suit your DAC where that's appropriate.”

“The motherboard has a big Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) on there as you’d expect from a dCS product, which does all the processing and all the logic and so forth. It’s not quite the monster that we have inside the Rossini but nevertheless we've got a lot of processing in there that can interface with the Stream 800 board and take that and send it out onto the digital output and so forth. So the processing platform is typically flexible and upgradable, as ever with dCS. All the software is done in-house as usual, from our algorithms to the control coding. What we have inside is by no means a generic Stream 820 by the way – there are lots of features which didn't exist before we commissioned them to build those in. We had a lot of dialogue with Stream Unlimited to shape the architecture of this board and to integrate these new features into our pack-age. I think many of the performance features wouldn't have been developed, if we weren't the lead customer on those…”

Overall, Chris says the new Network Box is an interesting niche product that will expand the horizons of both dCS fans and the wider audiophile public alike. “It’s a product for the legacy market, but with very much the quality of that processing that you would expect from dCS.”

Well, the most interesting thing is learning that DCS has a partnership in the development area with StreamUnlimited, a company known for its great expertise in the streaming and multi-room audio integration solutions. In some sense it assures us that DCS products will follow the evolution of market tendencies.

Do you have an idea of the Network Bridge price?
 

Elberoth

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Dec 15, 2012
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No. It hasn't been announced yet.
 

frd

Well-Known Member
Sep 25, 2016
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dCS has just introduced the Network Bridge.

It allows Elgar/Debussy/Puccini/Paganini/Scarlatti owners to take advantage of their network streaming tech, as used in the Rossini/Vivaldi.

Hi, thanks for this insight.

Since I could be interested, I have been checking for more intell.

Here is a description of the technical specs I haven't seen from now on dCS website : http://www.moremusic.nl/dcs/network-bridge.html

(dCS pdf product datasheet attached to this post)

Best regards

PS : I spend time reading this forum, it's a tremendous source of enlightenments ! thanks to everyone !
 

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pessoa00

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Feb 25, 2015
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Do you have an idea of the Network Bridge price?

The price will be £3.250, which seems very competitive considering all the features. I wonder how the sound quality will compare with Aurender N10, N100 and Lumin U1.
 

stevebythebay

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Oct 21, 2012
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Been auditioning in my system as a replacement for my "aging" Berkeley Alpha USB D/D along with microRendu/Sonore Signature LPS. Clearly this bests that kluge with finesse. Anyone using the Alpha USB should give this a go. Easy to install and use, but most importantly takes your system to new heights of sonic splendor.
 
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microstrip

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Been auditioning in my system as a replacement for my "aging" Berkeley Alpha USB D/D along with microRendu/Sonore Signature LPS. Clearly this bests that kluge with with finesse. Anyone using the Alpha USB should give this a go. Easy to install and use but most importantly takes your system to new heights of sonic splendor.

What are you using as a server?
 

stevebythebay

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Oct 21, 2012
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What are you using as a server?

I've a late 2014 MacMini that's got 8 GB mem and fastest processor. I've an Ethernet and Thunderbolt/Ethernet virtual bridge set up, with the Ethernet wire going into the dCS while the other wire from the Thunderbolt/Ethernet going into my switch. This avoids the comms software layer that exists with the RAAT protocol of Roon. That along with a recent implementation of a NAS (had a USB attached drive) have helped lower the noise floor, among other things.
 

microstrip

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I've a late 2014 MacMini that's got 8 GB mem and fastest processor. I've an Ethernet and Thunderbolt/Ethernet virtual bridge set up, with the Ethernet wire going into the dCS while the other wire from the Thunderbolt/Ethernet going into my switch. This avoids the comms software layer that exists with the RAAT protocol of Roon. That along with a recent implementation of a NAS (had a USB attached drive) have helped lower the noise floor, among other things.

Thanks. I am not familiar with Mac's ... Does it mean you connect the MacMini directly to the DCS Network Bridge using the MAC gigabit Ethernet and the Mac to your home network and NAS using an Thunderbolt/Ethernet adapter connected to a switch?
Are you running just Roon on the MAC?
 

stevebythebay

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Oct 21, 2012
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Thanks. I am not familiar with Mac's ... Does it mean you connect the MacMini directly to the DCS Network Bridge using the MAC gigabit Ethernet and the Mac to your home network and NAS using an Thunderbolt/Ethernet adapter connected to a switch?
Are you running just Roon on the MAC?

Yes to both of your questions.
 

jfrech

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Sep 3, 2012
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I've a late 2014 MacMini that's got 8 GB mem and fastest processor. I've an Ethernet and Thunderbolt/Ethernet virtual bridge set up, with the Ethernet wire going into the dCS while the other wire from the Thunderbolt/Ethernet going into my switch. This avoids the comms software layer that exists with the RAAT protocol of Roon. That along with a recent implementation of a NAS (had a USB attached drive) have helped lower the noise floor, among other things.

I've had issue's with Roon. Lacking leading edge dynamics and sounding soft. I'm running Roon core on my NAS (Synology) into a Apple Airport Extreme. Ethernet from NAS to router to dCS Upampler. I've long been curious how to shut parts of Roon down to improve my sonic experience. Any ideas?
 

stevebythebay

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Oct 21, 2012
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Sorry but I've no ideas on Roon optimization. Have you posted to the Community at Roonlabs? I'm just guessing, but I'd bet there's little, if anything, that's available to "turn off". Maybe the upcoming R.O.C.K. OS and NUC implementations will resolve what you're experiencing. Maybe this will give you some ideas, or not https://kb.roonlabs.com/Sound_Quality
 
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microstrip

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Yes to both of your questions.

Well, now the question is for Windows 10 experts - would it be possible to have two RJ45 PCI cards in Windows 10 machine running Roon, one connected to the Vivaldi upsampler and the other to the home network? Apparently it seems it would be a better configuration than connecting everything using a common switch/router.
 
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stevebythebay

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Oct 21, 2012
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See if this is helpful: https://www.computeraudiophile.com/...of-the-sms-200-and-microrendu/#comment-613370
Best to check with dCS about all of this. I have accomplished this with my MacMini and am running this with the dCS Network Bridge (Ethernet from MacMini directly into the dCS, while the Thunderbolt/Ethernet dongle is wired into my Cisco switch that has a WiFi Router (Eero mesh network) attached along with my NAS. The setup was tricky given I'm running headless. Best to have display/keyboard/mouse wired into the Windows system or you'll possibly lose access to the system along the way to success.
 

mitch2

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Mar 28, 2016
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Have any of you compared the dCS Network Bridge with the SOtM triple set as a Roon endpoint?
They both have sufficient functionality for me so I am interested in SQ.
Any comments on the dCS Network Bridge or SOtM triple set, even if not a comparison?
Thanks
 

awsmone

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Apr 6, 2014
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Canberra Australia
Have any of you compared the dCS Network Bridge with the SOtM triple set as a Roon endpoint?
They both have sufficient functionality for me so I am interested in SQ.
Any comments on the dCS Network Bridge or SOtM triple set, even if not a comparison?
Thanks

Good question +1
 

adyc

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Jan 5, 2013
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Have any of you compared the dCS Network Bridge with the SOtM triple set as a Roon endpoint?
They both have sufficient functionality for me so I am interested in SQ.
Any comments on the dCS Network Bridge or SOtM triple set, even if not a comparison?
Thanks

Until dCS enables NB USB output, there is no point of doing comparison. Last I heard is that NB firmware upgrade is schedule on May. I guess you have to wait for a while.

There are many resources on CA on SOTM trifecta. I’m summary, SOTM trifecta is excellent.
 

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