Choosing a network player/streamer

I have 3 systems. The main one has a DCS Vivaldi stack and the other 2 have the Bryston BDP3

I have owned the top of range Melco and the Aurender, and Innuos statement also the tested the Tyko Extreme

The DCS is by far the best .. surprise surprise.

I quite liked the manic moose when it was available but when it was discontinued I have been very frustrated with Safari 

I tried Regalion and also Bubbles somewhere. Yes it is a serious irritation with the BDP and Bryston seem to not care

Roon is sonically inferior when used with the Vivaldi upsampler, and the reasons can be better explained by a techie

Roon takes up more resources than my Nas has, so I had to run it on a linked ssd drive (see.. Roon interferes and does too much with a normal flow)

Also I disliked the Roon interface as I want a simple file structure

The Aurender app is by far the best out there, but does not work with DCS or Bryston

At any level below the DCS - my preference is for the BDP3

Hard to go wrong with the Yamaha MusicCast system. I love how easy it is to use on the WXA-50 which is running the bedroom system.

My thoughts exactly travelinjack, but I still hope to achieve success using the Bryston. 

I use my bdp2 via Roon or Audirvana and have no problem besides having to go into settings and click Roon ready every so often.. (if I turn my computer off)

I don’t ever get the urge to upgrade as this setup works great! 

If the OP really can’t perceive a difference between the Yamaha and the Bryston, imho he should sell off the Bryston and be done with it.  I get what he is saying about brand loyalty, and I held on to the BDP3 for about a year longer than I should have because I felt the same way, but ultimately it was Bryston attitude towards the problems with their controlling software, as another poster noted, that killed my loyalty.  I still use and love the DAC, which btw is the first DAC that I have encountered where the usb is not a compromise, and Bryston makes good power amps, but I will probably never buy anything from them again.  The BOT was also a POS.

  I tried a Roon trial with the BDP3, but my previous server couldn’t handle it.  If you go the Roon route make sure that you have a lot of computing firepower.  And then if you have problems down the road, I suspect you will have Roon and Bryston pointing fingers at each other

  when I bought the Melco N100 my original intent was just to use it as a server with the BDP3, but the Melco dealer talked me out of it, and I’m glad he did.  The Melco as a player equaled, if not exceeded, the BDP3 sonically .  I haven’t tried Roon with the Melco but there is a Melco fb Forum and others seem pleased.

  I used Rigelian with the BDP3.  It was an improvement over Manic Moose—that is a low bar—and it was free, but it couldn’t find about half the music on server, and was unstable, leading to a lot of deletes and rebooting.

  I added a SHM DSP to the system for Room Correction.  It basically threw in a free streamer and said streamer sounded very thin with the DAC3.  So all streamers are not created equally.  However if the OP finds the Yamaha to be a good fit…