The Antipodes S series a fantastic entry point into high-end streaming. Made and designed in New Zealand, Antipodes has gotten recognition as one of the world leadings in high-end audio streamers. The S series is modular, so that you can buy the S30 music streamer, and upgrade it down the line with a better power supply (S60) and a re-clocker (S30).
We have a shop display unit on sale in Soundline Wellington, the full combo! S20 + S30 + S60. When put together, they sound absolutely stunning. Feel free to pop into our Wellington Showroom for a demo!
Below is an excerpt from the official Antipodes Audio website:
The tiny S30 is our entry level music server, focused on musical expression. It employs our V6X computing engine to perform both Server and Player functions
This is the same platform as we use in the K50 to perform just the Player function. The S30 also has the same full range of playback apps installed as the K50 and Oladra.
The S30 has 8GB of RAM installed, users can easily install one SSD (up to 8TB) for music storage, and provides a USB Audio output to play to the USB input on a DAC. The S30 is powered by a standard external SMPS brick. A basic analog audio output is included, so that you can add a USB DAC later.
Using the S30 as both Server and Player means it does not have the computational power to be used with a large music library (more than 8TB), and it is not advisable to use demanding server functions like DSP.
The S30 provides outstanding ‘bag for the buck’ and also allows its owners an easy upgrade path to higher performance solutions, by adding other models in the S-Series (see below).
The first step to upgrading an S30 is to power it with a S60 power supply. The S60 power supply is based on the power supplies used in the K50, and will take the S30 performance to a much higher level of sound quality, adding fine detail resolution and refinement to the infectious musicality of the S30.
Next is to add an S20, which provides high quality femto-second clock signal regeneration with S/PDIF (RCA & BNC), AES3 (3-pin XLR) and I2S (HDMI) outputs. To do this you need to add a second S60. One S60 should be dedicated to the S40, and the second S60 should run both the S30 and S20.