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Andre Gosselin · 28-08-2014, 19:43

(28-08-2014 18:13)Mike48 Wrote: My experience of the MiND was between those of LA and AG. It worked well with my PS Audio PWD-II at resolutions up to 192/24. However, after years of promises, Simaudio apparently gave up on offering Android control software, which means that users not in the Apple ecosystem must buy an iOS device to have a supported configuration. When used with generic UPnP control software, the MiND did not support pause/resume and seeking within a track, at least with WAV files, which sound best (by far) to me in my setup. I did get those functions to work occasionally when streaming FLAC files without transcoding.

When I changed my DAC to an Auralic Vega, the MiND did not work well, as noted in the first post of this series. In stream receivers, the Auralic Aries proved a far better match. The Aries does support pause/resume/seek on WAV files from MinimStreamer.

So though I didn't think the MiND was an alpha product, I was disappointed badly by Simaudio's lack of follow-through on a promised feature and unwillingness to even test their product with an Android control point. This was annoyingly reminiscent of PS Audio's flailing around with the gapless issue! When I'm paying specialty-audio prices, I expect that good support should be included.

I think the MiND might be a good choice for someone using a Simaudio DAC. If pause/resume/seek works with FLAC files when using Simaudio's own app (iOS only!), this would be a good combination. Certainly, I found no problems with sound quality.

I should note, I used wired Ethernet only.

I agree with you that pause/resume/seek/volume control do not work on the Mind if using an independent UPnP control point like BubbleUPnP or Lumin (in that last case, with the Mind proxied as an OpenHome renderer through BubbleUPnP server). To get those functionnalities, you must use Simaudio own app, which is (so far) only available on Apple IOS. I agree also that SimAudio has kept promising an android app for more than a year, and that this app is not available yet. I have personnaly sort of given up on that promise. I have learned to live with those limitations, finding that they are not (for me) that much important.

I never tried mixing the Mind with a non Simaudio DAC, so I cannot comment on that.

I am happy to hear that sound quality was no problem for you. I was mostly concerned about sound quality when I qualified the Mind as top-notch. Given the problems about the software/firmware limitations mentioned above, I should have qualified my reply a bit.

Regards,