I listened to both the Sony and the bluesound and I bought the Auralic Aries which blew those 2 away in sound and especially the DS Lightning iPad software to control it. I bought the Auralic Aries mini for the living room which I think is superior to the Sony or bluesound, the Aries mini uses the DS lightning software. Also, you can hook up an external usb drive to the auralic. The drawback to all of these units is that it doesn’t support MQA. I sold the Aries and went with the ps audio directstream with bridge which is excellent as a dac and streamer. I use Roon as the GUI iPad interface and you can’t get better than that. Roon allows you to integrate Tidal songs/albums with your ripped music collection so when you shuffle an artist you don’t know if you are playing ripped music or music from Tidal, integrates it perfectly. I do use a dedicated Mac mini with external disks for my ripped cds and the Roon server part. Btw: Tidal has the best quality music from redbook to MQA
Digital Audio for Dummies
As I have stated before, I'm a bit of an audio dinosaur. I love simple. I love reliable. I love a high performance/price ratio. So no surprise I'm still happily spinning discs. Give me a nice CD player direct to an integrated and I'm good to go.
But it is 2018. Reading on this forum about the demise of Oppo was a bit of a wake up call. Also the Lyngdorf 2170 has inspired me. An elegant all in one box product that is ready to connect with many of the digital options now available. So I'd like to get educated on what's out there and what you suggest. Basically I would want to know about ripping all my CD's--exactly how that is done. Dedicated audio computer? How big of a hard drive/other considerations? Wired vs. wireless. And then what streaming services are out there? Cost, quality, ease of use?
PLEASE keep things simple and don't assume the reader knows, for example, what Roon is. I've seen it mentioned, but would want to know exactly what this does, how it functions, etc.
THANKS!
But it is 2018. Reading on this forum about the demise of Oppo was a bit of a wake up call. Also the Lyngdorf 2170 has inspired me. An elegant all in one box product that is ready to connect with many of the digital options now available. So I'd like to get educated on what's out there and what you suggest. Basically I would want to know about ripping all my CD's--exactly how that is done. Dedicated audio computer? How big of a hard drive/other considerations? Wired vs. wireless. And then what streaming services are out there? Cost, quality, ease of use?
PLEASE keep things simple and don't assume the reader knows, for example, what Roon is. I've seen it mentioned, but would want to know exactly what this does, how it functions, etc.
THANKS!