Allo USBridge Signature

[MikeyFresh]

Hi all,

New to the forum/first post. I have been doing lots of research and surfing online and I have reached a point where I am unsure what to do next. Maybe someone can chime-in and help/answer some questions. 

I am considering buying a USBridge Sig with the Nirvana PS and running moOde as an endpoint to stream from Audirvana on a Mac. My current setup is Mac (2010 Mini, El Capitan, Direct Mode in Audirvana) into DAC via USB and 2TB powered USB hard drive with FLAC files attached to Mac. If I understand things correctly, I believe I can run an ethernet cable from my old Airport Extreme router, connect it to the USBridge, connect the USBridge to my DAC via USB from the clean USB output and stream files (located on the hard drive if I move it and connect it to my Airport Extreme) and TIDAL using Audirvana via UPnP. Is this correct? If so, I am wondering it is even worth it for me, or there is a better solution (USB conditioner/re-generator)?

I say this, because I will mostly be using the USBridge to take advantage of the clean USB and power-supply, because I will not be moving my Mac or my hard drive out of my listening room (too much of an ordeal, and my wife won't go for it). I will be moving the Mac and the hard drive out of my stereo rack and over about 15 feet away (where my Airport Extreme currently is located). Not sure that location is on the same power-bank that my stereo is, but I believe it is. So...not sure this move will accomplish anything in terms of reducing noise/increasing sound quality. 

Any advice is welcomed and appreciated! I recently got a new DAC and it sounds much better than my old one. I have it hooked up to a CD transport and it sounds amazing. Playing FLAC and and streaming TIDAL sound very good too, just not as great as the transport. So, I want to see if I can improve the sound quality a bit more for playing files and streaming TIDAL. Not sure if the scenario I described above will help with that, or I should go a different route. Maybe, someone here can help. Thanks in advance!

The above will work just fine, however I don't understand the part about moving the hard drive and connecting it the Extreme router. The hard drive will stay connected to the Mac computer running Audirvana, as that is your library software and it will catalog/index the tracks, as well as act as UPnP server. So the computer running Audirvana needs to have the hard drive with the album tracks, though I guess it's possible Audirvana allows you to access network attached storage, but I don't recall that being a feature.

Moode will then be your UPnP renderer, and yes in my opinion that sounds a whole lot better than any direct connection to a computer does. The USBridge Signature is a far better device for sound quality than a computer is, because it was designed to be audio purposed where regular computers are not, the USBridge has no switching regulators on the board and a host of other design features that make it superior to a computer for audio purposes.

Even just an RPi 4B running Moode powered by a Nirvana psu will blow away a standard computer for sound quality, I don't think you will be straining to hear the difference, it's far from subtle. What DAC did you get?