Good streaming options?

kev313

kev313

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Warning...long semi-interesting preamble: I think I'm getting lazy. And cranky and old. Mostly lazy. And old, I guess. Anyway, I'm in the process of moving and have greatly enjoyed throwing unused things away and streamlining life. I hate having "stuff" I don't need. Clutter is my enemy. This is, of course, totally incompatible with this hobby. I've started clearing but dear lord do I have stuff. Speakers, amps, preamps, tweaks, 5turntables etc etc etc. I have a system for every mood. Solid state. Tube. Single driver. Horns. Vintage. Vintage solid state. A mono system only for 78s. A huge collection of lps, 78s, sacd and of course cds.

It's interesting that in real life - I am a managing partner of a law firm - I aggressively push for the adoption of new and better technologies in my practice and am constantly trying to modernize and innovate our practice. At home, I clean 70 year old funk off of 78s.

I'm not selling my records anytime soon. I like vinyl. Also, it would be a PITA. I just recognize that I don't *need* them. As many know, I recently sold what amounted to my dream system, not because I had to, but I realized it did not have to be part of the next phase of my life. Once I realized that I could do that, I was sort of able to reorganize my priorities.

To the point - I've also realized that I don't need a music library or collection. It will be a while before I sell mine, but I don't need it. I've been using an Aries mini to stream Tidal for a while and it has totally changed my philosophy with this hobby and with physical media. I don't need to "own" media. I no longer feel compelled to spend time collecting or curating a collection. I'm simply not interested. In the digital world this has the HUGE added benefit of simplicity. I realize that it likely means simplicity and the cost of sound quality. I'm largely ok with that, but here is the question:

Can one build a high quality system using streaming sources such as Tidal as the main source. If so, what is a good option for a dac/ streamer combo. I'm thinking something like the Altair as an example.

At this rate, I'm going to have wireless speakers in a year. I'm not even kidding, those new Klipsch are stunning...🤦[emoji16]


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not sure this totally fits the bill; however, if you are looking for extreme simplicity i would suggest having a look at the apple airport express.

for my digital streaming needs, i have an ethernet wired airport express connected to my system with an 1/8" stereo plug to rca cable -- but, it would work just as well over wifi. i simply flip on my system, sit in the chair and control the music with a smart-phone app. i can stream music from my computer or from a streaming service -- apple music in my case but tidal would work as well. from my research, i also believe it handles the tidal masters / MQA format via the apple lossless format, but you should double check that.

i was considering moving to a more traditional dac until i did a little research on the dac inside the airport express and ran across this ken rockwell technical evaluation (link below) -- basically a top notch dac inside a streaming device selling for $99. my experience is there nothing lacking in sound quality running through my crazy detailed SET amp.

...on the other hand if you are looking for something different, i have found the mytek digital dacs to be interesting.

____________

" kenrockwell.com/apple/airport-express-audio-quality-2014.htm "
 
Lumin A1. Very analog sounding. MQA coming. Amazing support right here on AS.


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Thanks guys. Great options to start considering. [emoji106] Lumin a, t, and d all very interesting.


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Mike said:
Lumin A1. Very analog sounding. MQA coming. Amazing support right here on AS.


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Click to expand...

+2

Best piece of equipment I've bought in years. Tremendous company support, easy to use app, and most importantly, great sound. Extremely difficult to beat in an all-in-one digital package.
 
Trust me when I say to take a look at the Cary.... I know they are not as well known for their digital, but the DMS-500 was done right.... It is a killer piece of gear.
 
Kev

One thing to decide upfront is whether or not you want to the streamer to have the ability to be wireless. A number of the top rated units have to have their ethernet connection hardwired which would require at least an access point near the streamer. The Auralic's are good units with mature software that like Lumin they are continually upgrading. I have two Aries units. Another option just released is the Oppo Sonica which has Tidal and Spotify integrated and features the newest ESS 9038 Pro chipset. It will operate wired or wireless. Great sounding unit with only downside being software that is going to mature more as time goes on. As is it works fine with either IOS or Android but as has been the case with Oppo over the years the Sonica app will surely see numerous upgrades. All the units mentioned have their merits with a pretty wide range in prices from the Oppo to the Cary. Elac also has a new unit that uses Roon but other than a review on Audiostream I don't know much about it.

http://www.audiostream.com/content/elac-discovery-series-ds-s101-g-music-server#8CMVm5IAGOERk8L2.97

Another thing is that with at least the Auralic, Elac and Oppo units you can purchase them from places like AA or Crutchfield with 30 day money back guarantees. Oppo offers the same thing direct from them. As they are the three least expensive options you can try them first and see if they suit your needs before moving up the money tree.
 
mhanc said:
i can stream music from my computer or from a streaming service -- apple music in my case but tidal would work as well. from my research, i also believe it handles the tidal masters / MQA format via the apple lossless format, but you should double check that.
Click to expand...

just a quick update on my earlier post. after doing more research and testing today i have found out the following:

1. ALAC [apple lossless codec] supports up to 8 channels of audio at 16, 20, 24 and 32 bit depth with a maximum sample rate of 384kHz.

2. the apple airPlay stack used to stream audio over a LAN transcodes the file using ALAC... but only with a 16-bit resolution and 44.1 kHz sampling rate. i confirmed this by testing with tidal master/MQA files played via both the tidal desktop player the audirvana desktop player - in both cases the stream being sent out via airPlay was 16/44.1 -- ugh!

so, MQA / hi-rez audio files get significantly down-sampled when using airPlay. that is very disappointing to learn as it would have been zen like and easy to use one's computer as an all-in-one solution [media server, player / streamer] that includes higher the resolution files.

as an aside -- if ever apple takes the governor off the airPlay pipe then the addressable market for network music players might get a little smaller -- well, at least by one anyway.
 
mhanc said:
so, MQA / hi-rez audio files get significantly down-sampled when using airPlay.
Click to expand...

You're correct that AirPlay is limited to 16/44.1. So you cannot send Hi-res through AirPlay without severe degradation, and it's also really bad for MQA too.

Network players like Lumin use OpenHome or UPnP. Roon Ready devices support the RAAT protocol so that they are not limited by AirPlay.

I'm not saying AirPlay is bad - it serves its purpose extremely well, e.g. playing YouTube music video or any other audio purpose that does not exceed CD quality.
 
sheltie1 said:
Trust me when I say to take a look at the Cary.... I know they are not as well known for their digital, but the DMS-500 was done right.... It is a killer piece of gear.
Click to expand...

Will definitely check it out.


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Jack said:
Kev

One thing to decide upfront is whether or not you want to the streamer to have the ability to be wireless. A number of the top rated units have to have their ethernet connection hardwired which would require at least an access point near the streamer. The Auralic's are good units with mature software that like Lumin they are continually upgrading. I have two Aries units. Another option just released is the Oppo Sonica which has Tidal and Spotify integrated and features the newest ESS 9038 Pro chipset. It will operate wired or wireless. Great sounding unit with only downside being software that is going to mature more as time goes on. As is it works fine with either IOS or Android but as has been the case with Oppo over the years the Sonica app will surely see numerous upgrades. All the units mentioned have their merits with a pretty wide range in prices from the Oppo to the Cary. Elac also has a new unit that uses Roon but other than a review on Audiostream I don't know much about it.

http://www.audiostream.com/content/elac-discovery-series-ds-s101-g-music-server#8CMVm5IAGOERk8L2.97

Another thing is that with at least the Auralic, Elac and Oppo units you can purchase them from places like AA or Crutchfield with 30 day money back guarantees. Oppo offers the same thing direct from them. As they are the three least expensive options you can try them first and see if they suit your needs before moving up the money tree.
Click to expand...

Great info. I was aware of the oppo, but had not heard about the Elac. Thanks!


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Hello Kev,
I am using Spotify since years. And I have about 5000 cds in my NAS.
My streamer is a SqueezeBox Touch with a linear PSU. The Dac is the McIntosh MDA1000.
Spotify is only 312k but sounds really good with the MDA.
I do not think I would stream anything without that dac. It is very analog sounding and make both streaming and demat cds / high res files sound awesome.
I sold my high end cd drive when I discovered that I could not hear any difference between a physical cd and the digital file on my NAS.
 
David ( 1kW) on AA talked to me about Tidal. I' m trying the hifi version right now. Pretty good !
Very clean sound. Seems even a bit leaner than my CDs but in the good sense of the word.
The bass is superb. I always found my FLAC files on the NAS sounding better in the bass than even very expensive cd drives. I can also get that with Tidal HiFi.
 
Jerome - Tidal is definitely the way to go for streaming. Their interface isn't as good as we would like and I find they don't have every album for every artist they have, but the selection is still very good and now with MQA, they have more to offer than their competitors.


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Jerome W said:
Hello Kev,
I am using Spotify since years. And I have about 5000 cds in my NAS.
My streamer is a SqueezeBox Touch with a linear PSU. The Dac is the McIntosh MDA1000.
Spotify is only 312k but sounds really good with the MDA.
I do not think I would stream anything without that dac. It is very analog sounding and make both streaming and demat cds / high res files sound awesome.
I sold my high end cd drive when I discovered that I could not hear any difference between a physical cd and the digital file on my NAS.
Click to expand...
How would you compare it to TIDAL?
 
Jerome W said:
David ( 1kW) on AA talked to me about Tidal. I' m trying the hifi version right now. Pretty good !
Very clean sound. Seems even a bit leaner than my CDs but in the good sense of the word.
The bass is superb. I always found my FLAC files on the NAS sounding better in the bass than even very expensive cd drives. I can also get that with Tidal HiFi.
Click to expand...

I really like Tidal. I realize there are a lot of complaints with the interface, but I don't really mind it. I've gotten pretty used to it and one can always use roon (I'm not interested). Tidal was a game changer for me and in more than an audio sense. Once I realized losing much by way of quality, it started to open the door for me to realize that I don't need to collect, or even own, physical media. Certainly digital audio, anyway. Again, I've said this many times, this is just me "catching up" to where my kids are. The oldest is 12. She finds cds to be a quaint and curious artifact of her "childhood" and cannot even process the idea of downloading music to be stored on a local device.


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