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I think I'm dialed in now, but there's that little nagging voice inside my head so many of us here (and our wives and checkbooks hate) saying "but maybe I'm missing something, maybe it could be a lot better."
Long story a bit shorter, as a combo anniversary/christmas/her birthday/my birthday present we decided to upgrade our home theater system. Nothing exotic, just looked for good solid value. Already had an Onkyo TX-NR737 receiver we bought a few years ago after the prior one died, then we upgraded to a 4K Ultra HDR tv, and now just completed the speakers, going with a nice 5.1.2 system build around the Elac Uni-Fi line and an SVS subwoofer.
I was a longtime Spotify Premium member and then found Tidal and wow did that sound a lot better. But as I researched what it would take to properly utilize MQA files I found Qobuz. With trial memberships to both my wife and I tested one vs the other, same songs streaming on our home theater system, this time just through Apple TV (which I know downscales to CD quality). Qobuz consistently sounded better to us. Then I tested in my car from the native apps, I have a fairly high end system there, much more expensive than what I have at home, actually. The difference isn't massive, but again, Qobuz was the winner for me. Just had a warmer, richer sound, especially in the highs and mids, more space, better instrument placing on the soundstage. I could be happy with either but it appeared I could take full advantage of Qobuz's high res files much more easily and cheaply than with Tidal MQA. Didn't want to have to buy something like a Bluesound Node 2i if I didn't have to.
Tried Roon, but it doesn't support dlna so can't stream to my receiver without some other hardware to help. And honestly, I wasn't a big fan of the interface. So just tried Audirvana. Interface is a bit dated but it's cleaner to my eye than Roon and I absolutely notice an improvement in sound quality over the native app. And it supports dlna streaming. Previously I was using the mconnect app to stream Qobuz to our Onkyo AVR, but when comparing sound on the same tracks using either mconnect or Audirvana, the latter was the clear (but not massively so) winner. So I'm planning on buying an Audirvana license unless I go a different direction.
So, for streaming, it's Qobuz on their top tier via Audirvana integration at home, connecting directly to our Onkyo unit. Sounds terrific. I'm figuring that's my solution going forward but if there's something else that would require spending some dough but would give me a distinct and easily hearable improvement in sound quality, I'd love to hear the suggestion. But if it's a proposition of "hey, go spend $500 for this box and you might maybe possibly hear a slight improvement", then I'm happy to stick with where I'm at now.
thanks in advance, folks!
Long story a bit shorter, as a combo anniversary/christmas/her birthday/my birthday present we decided to upgrade our home theater system. Nothing exotic, just looked for good solid value. Already had an Onkyo TX-NR737 receiver we bought a few years ago after the prior one died, then we upgraded to a 4K Ultra HDR tv, and now just completed the speakers, going with a nice 5.1.2 system build around the Elac Uni-Fi line and an SVS subwoofer.
I was a longtime Spotify Premium member and then found Tidal and wow did that sound a lot better. But as I researched what it would take to properly utilize MQA files I found Qobuz. With trial memberships to both my wife and I tested one vs the other, same songs streaming on our home theater system, this time just through Apple TV (which I know downscales to CD quality). Qobuz consistently sounded better to us. Then I tested in my car from the native apps, I have a fairly high end system there, much more expensive than what I have at home, actually. The difference isn't massive, but again, Qobuz was the winner for me. Just had a warmer, richer sound, especially in the highs and mids, more space, better instrument placing on the soundstage. I could be happy with either but it appeared I could take full advantage of Qobuz's high res files much more easily and cheaply than with Tidal MQA. Didn't want to have to buy something like a Bluesound Node 2i if I didn't have to.
Tried Roon, but it doesn't support dlna so can't stream to my receiver without some other hardware to help. And honestly, I wasn't a big fan of the interface. So just tried Audirvana. Interface is a bit dated but it's cleaner to my eye than Roon and I absolutely notice an improvement in sound quality over the native app. And it supports dlna streaming. Previously I was using the mconnect app to stream Qobuz to our Onkyo AVR, but when comparing sound on the same tracks using either mconnect or Audirvana, the latter was the clear (but not massively so) winner. So I'm planning on buying an Audirvana license unless I go a different direction.
So, for streaming, it's Qobuz on their top tier via Audirvana integration at home, connecting directly to our Onkyo unit. Sounds terrific. I'm figuring that's my solution going forward but if there's something else that would require spending some dough but would give me a distinct and easily hearable improvement in sound quality, I'd love to hear the suggestion. But if it's a proposition of "hey, go spend $500 for this box and you might maybe possibly hear a slight improvement", then I'm happy to stick with where I'm at now.
thanks in advance, folks!
