In addition, there is an incredibly realistic spatial reproduction, if the recording is adequate. In the tonally excellent recording of Beethoven’s 7th symphony with the Budapest Festival Orchestra (Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 - Channel Classics, 96 kHz) under Iván Fischer with the S 10 II never arises any doubt where which instrument is positioned and which size it has. Especially the latter for me is important for the spatial image, as I simply do not like it at all when a small flute virtually becomes an instrument of 2 meters.

Now I concealed that meanwhile I have switched to the DSD-conversion. Very generally one can say that many PCM-recordings are granted some more brilliance and perhaps this special something. Especially music material in CD-quality enormously benefits from the DSD-conversion. As already with the “old” S 10 for me the optimum lies at DSD128. I cannot recognize any further advantage at DSD256, although without any doubt it sounds slightly different. But that may certainly also be a matter of taste.

And how does the S 10 II perform as pure networkplayer without JRiver? To find this out the player is my AudiophileOptmizer tuned music server with Windows Server 2012R2 in Core mode. On the server are installed MinimServer as well as Roon-Core. In both configurations regarding the operation there is nothing to bleat. The proprietary Ayon app is optically appealing and communicates perfectly with the streaming-unit of the S 10 II. It is even more important, that the tonal result convinced me completely also in this configuration. Nonetheless, the influence of the music server must not be underestimated. Taking my Sony notebook with Windows server 2019 also optimized with AudiophileOptimizer for comparison the clear advantage is at the S 10 II “Server” version.