I looked at the Grim as I have heard good things but lack of streaming services made it a no go (Spotify is a must).
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No AirPlay either with the Grimm. At least with the Aurender I can get rid of the WiiM box I use now for device to DAC wireless streams.
Whoops. Totally overlooked the Cascade doesn’t come with AES/EBU built in. Do you have the module in stock? I will have @almaaudio order one for me tomorrow.
A synchronous connection like AES/EBU is inferior to asynchronous methods (USB, network renderer). The clock in any MSB DAC is superior to any external clock and it is located where it needs to be for lowest jitter, immediately adjacent to the DAC modules.
My understanding is that the source clock is not used by MSB DACs, which buffer the data and then clock it using the internal clock at some multiple of 44.1 or 48 thousand samples per second, en route to the DAC modules.
I suspect that the Grimm MU1 is a superior Roon endpoint for DACs that are vastly inferior to anything from MSB.
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Thanks for that helpful information. My thinking is to take the AES/EBU from the Aurender N20 to the Cascade and take the Cascade word clock output to the clock input on the Aurender bypassing the Aurender’s internal clock replacing it with the clock from the Cascade. I’ll use the Aurender to Qobuz and Tidal directly eliminating Roon.
There are many reports that this N20/AES solution sounds better than Roon and it’s at minimum an interesting experiment giving me an excuse to spend an evening or twocritically listening.
This will allow for multiple Cascade connection evaluations:
- Roon to MSB Renderer over Ethernet
- Roon to ProISL USB via USB out on the Nucleus
- Roon to Aurender via ProISL USB
- Roon to Aurender via AES/EBU
- Tidal and Qobuz direct to Aurender via ProISL USB and Cascade Clock
- Tidal and Qobuz direct to Aurender via AES/EBU and Cascade Clock
It’s either going to show us that there’s one standout architecture that works best, or that all of these digital connections to the Cascade sound basically the same and I can stop messing with it 
I’ll keep everyone posted on the results
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Thank you, I am very very interested in your observations
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When you make these comparisons, also compare them with only 1 connection.
My experience is when you connect a server to multiple inputs on a MSB Dac, even if they are not active when not selected, it tends to affect the musical flow .
I have done some A/B testing between ProUSB / ISL and the Renderer on my Discrete DAC, and struggle to hear any difference. So much talk about more noise being on a network with Ethernet. But I struggle to hear a difference between streaming local files from my NAS using Roon on the Renderer and playing the same files also stored on my Aurender N200 over ProUSB / ISL
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This is the outcome I would expect. There is absolutely zero audible noise through my Renderer 2 and Discrete. I read a lab report some years ago of this configuration that measured the S/N ratio to be 114db. Well below audible.
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For completeness, if you update your K50 to the latest AMS version, Squeeze will play native DSD64.
The K50 will also work well using JPlay to control minimserver. That will play native DSD
128 (I think). I am testing this now and JPlay sounds fantastic and is a pretty good interface. It just lacks the rich metadata of ROON but it sounds great. Now, I am not sure it sounds better than Roon + Squeeze or enough better to offset the loss of the Roon metadata advantage.
I am reserving judgement until my Premier arrives although I may not be able to test before my JPlay trial ends.
My Premier + Digital Director with the i2S module arrived and has a few hundred hours on it.
There is still an extra level of clarity when using JPlay or ROON + Squeeze player versus all ROON. However, I am not sure I like that much clarity - it might be too much. The horns in Concerto de Aranjuez on the 2012 SACD of Miles Davis “Sketches in Spain” release exposes that added clarity in the biting horns. Your mileage may vary by your system (MSB DAC) and preferences.