Hey Fireblade,

Man, I bet you will have fun getting to know your new gear. It seems to me the Mini Torri or any of the Decware amps could work well with or without a Zstage. But with the Mini Torris internal pre gain, it sounds like additional gain may not be necessary. But this might not rule out the riding the gain with a Zstage as a refinement tool.

If your tube choice and source cause the Mini to max out in the 12-2 o'clock zone, in terms of riding the gains, I would think it would be the similar to my setup. With music, I rarely turn my Torii up over 1 o'clock...it gets too loud!

If you go there, you could start with the Mini Torii gain point wherever the volume sounds right, and with a 12AU7 in the Zstage, I think neutral gain is about 12 o'clock. Say the Torii volume sounds good at 10 o'clock, and your optimal baseline for the Zstage is 12 o'clock. To add weight and punch you could ride the Stage to 1 or so while riding the Mini Torii to 9 o'clock or so, keeping the volume relatively the same, but tuning the sound values with the gain riding. Or the opposite to lean/open the sound. Not having a Mini Torii, I can't talk from experience, but unless there is some odd incompatibility with the internal Mini Torii gain setup, I would think it would work if you decided later that you could benefit from the Zstage. Ask Steve though.

But you have loads of flexibility in what you will have without a Zstage. With your treble cut, tube choices, cables and so on, your thought to hang with exploring the amp and new speakers with the front end you have until you get a handle on them should be plenty involving.

I think you will be amazed what the Decware gear will do for your front end. And with the Mini's built in pre, various voltage sources sound easy.

You will be covered by a world class amp and speakers. And maybe your room is treated, but if not, it is said that something like 40% of your sound quality is room. Then there is the adage ....."the source is the most important component in good sounding systems." After your AC, this includes, source files, their delivery system (source gear), and interconnects. For example, a CD quality music file played through a great transport, or that is ripped without compression and with error correction software, then delivered through a transparent server with good software.... with good cabling...this can sound as good as it gets source-wise. The music is delivered as it was mastered. Anything that gets in the way of the above will be perceivable if you are able to do direct comparisons.

And what feeds and conveys it all.....AC power, then IC, power, and speaker cables can really make differences too. Then there is vibration control! It all matters with this highly revealing gear.

Luckily though, by comparison to a lot of gear, it will sound really great without all this seeming peripheral stuff. But then if you want to go deeper, it is fun to explore.  I look forward to your sense of it once you amp and speakers are broken in and arranged to your satisfaction!

Yes, great music production is a great and fun passion! Have you compared FLAC to uncompressed error corrected WAV files. Though FLAC is theoretically lossless, and if one can't hear the the difference, why change. But if you can, with drives as cheap as they are now, I use uncompressed, error corrected AIFF (Mac) files, the exact files from the CD master. Also, I have found that, as my gear and cables have improved, the differences in everything show up more, and since even subtle refinements are important to me, I am glad to start with the pure file.

If you look around there is question about even "lossless" compression. But let your ears be your guide. When I first started with computer serving, I could hear it comparing Apple Lossless to AIFF. I don't know why, it may just be the extra processing to put the compressed file into playback with subtle effects from realtime processing and/or on noise in the computer that carries into the signal out. I have not really looked into the details of the "controversy" simply because I heard it, and subtle though it may be, with the minimal cost of drives, I never looked back wanting as little compromise as I could get.

Since I use Mac, I am not familiar with EAC software, but it does sound like it does error correction, so presumably you are good there.

It could be fun to run a few really good recordings using FLAC "lossless" compression, and the same tunes without, and just see what you think. There are a lot of folks using Apple Lossless or FLAC, and lot who use the original file format uncompressed.

Might be interesting to check it with your present system, and then check it with your new Decware stuff. I think a lot of times when we can't hear stuff, it is because of some truncation of the music files as they go through whatever gear we use.

If it is from a standard redbook CD, the pre-Flac file would be 44.1K/16 bit and called WAV (the Windows protocol for files that have not been compressed). I would be surprised if your player would not play WAV files, but you could check.

In general, it makes all the sense in the world to try and limit any compression whatsoever (as it is to avoid additional processing of the original source material).  The point is, I thought everybody agreed that FLAC (or lossless equivalents like Ape) had been tested in a bit-by-bit basis, with the conclusion that there were no differences (arrays of 0's & 1's don't lie, nor are subject to 'interpretation.')  So, theoretically at least, FLAC (equivalents) would be the minimum memory-using format still being 'lossless.'

Regarding testing your hypothesis, I've already begun re-copying some of my best sounding files to WAV, from the original discs.  I'll see if I find differences with their counterparts in FLAC (maybe my ears are not that sensitive anymore, maybe they are, who knows?)  I'll let you know.  If you are right, the main drawback would not be precisely the hard disk memory costs, but having to re-do all my collection again into WAV!

Checked Wikipedia for WAV compatibility/support by KMP, and yes it handles them also (great little tool this player, BTW).  I definitely understand/share the motives for your precautionary strategy, and I will try to see if I detect differences.  Later ...

The sound that comes from your computer is not all 1's and 0's. If it were, all servers, async transmission versus non-async, and all cables would sound alike, and they don't. If I get it correctly, one issue is the processors ability to process from compressed to non-compressed, and then convey those "exactly the same" 1's and 0's in exactly the correct time with the DAC. Another is noise. There are analog aspects of the computer to DAC conveyance in which noise can be a big deal. This is why all the tweaked out servers use the computer processor for as little as possible, focussing only on the music....to help it to come out quiet and pure as they can get it.

But I am no expert on this...I am satisfied with what I hear and care little about the naysayers who try to use limited scientific information and knowledge to tell us the sound differences that we can hear are not real because "they are all 1's and 0's." I get the idea, but if it doesn't play out with sound, it just isn't real...There are a lot developers out there that have theories on why it is not all 1's and 0's and if I were one of them, I would take the discussion more seriously.

I imagine FLAC uses similar computer memory to uncompressed files since the processor has to make the compressed file back to the original as it plays it???? But compressed files definitely use less hard disk storage space.

I am not all that concerned about being right, I know what I hear and how my reasoning works, and am good with that. But if you or anyone else can hear a difference and it is worth it to you, then my experience will have helped you get better sound. If one can't hear the difference, or the difference is not worth the hard drive space, that is fine with me too. But if for one of many possible reasons, one can't hear the difference and uses incomplete information to explain why what I hear is not real, this is where I get pissy. Less because it hurts my feelings, but because this kind of attitude holds back creative process and new growth in knowledge. I prefer "science' that says, hmmm, there is something here I can't explain, I would be fun to find out what it is!

I look forward to your listening tests!

will, I can't vouch for your typing speed, but you seriously under-represent your way with words. You have a very SOLID way of expressing yourself understandably.

Thank you Lon. I am glad to hear that! I just get frustrated that my posts end up so long a lot of times.

Hmmm...... "healthy" fat!