Best Recycled Streamer?


I was thinking about a reasonable streaming source for use in the system in my shop, such as an Allo Digione. I'd like it to be a Roon endpoint.  It occured to me that a used cell phone, ipad or even an old laptop would fill the bill rather nicely. So my question is has anyone read or have knowledge of which would be the optimum choice with respect to sound quality. I figure by dedicating the device as a streamer I could unload most of the software and shut down any unused services to try to eliminate unnecessary activity and noise on the device. I'd probably be hooking it up to a low to medium cost dac such as a topping or Chord Mojo. My guess is an ipad might be the best choice as long as it is new enough to run the Roon software. I use Apple devices so that is what I need advice on.

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Showing 2 responses by bruce19

Thank you for that really interesting lead. It looks like a nice package. Unfortunately a quick look around seems to show that Pis are in short supply right now. Sources I looked at were all out of stock. Here is an interesting item from Wikipedia that might be part of the explanation why:

COVID-19 pandemic

In Q1 of 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, Raspberry Pi computers saw a large increase in demand primarily due to the increase in working from home, but also because of the use of many Raspberry Pi Zeros in ventilators for COVID-19 patients in countries such as Colombia,[262] which were used to combat strain on the healthcare system. In March 2020, Raspberry Pi sales reached 640,000 units, the second largest month of sales in the company's history.[263]

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Further checking reveals that Roon only runs on Macos 10.14 or later and IOS 11 or later unfortunately  ruling out many older devices. There is an alternative of streaming from Roon via airplay, which limits the resolution of the music stream somewhat but might work on older devices. Anyone have experience with this?

@petaluman  Contrary to the experience of many here I have generally found wifi to be a superior delivery path for audio in my house. I have a mesh network so connectivity is good everywhere. My Auralic Aries actually recommends wifi over  a wired connection. When I see how many feel the need to use sometimes pricey  fiber and things like the Ethernet Regen to solve problems associated with the ethernet  I live in a non-congested area, somewhat rural so maybe I have less ambient  RF.  As far as bandwidth wifi has way more than necessary for even the highest resolution audio signal and I have no kids at home anymore so the netork is never overloaded:-)

FYI for others the chip shortage may have hit the Rasperry Pi world, I am finding them pretty much unavailable at un-inflated prices. ie what was $35 is now $100+.

 

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