Anyone who says a cheap streamer sounds just as good as anything else hasn’t heard a good one or doesn’t have the system or ears to be able to tell the difference. The difference between a Wiim or Node and something like an Innuos Zenith or Aurender N200 is night and day, and if you can’t hear that level of difference, we’ll, that’s just sad. Ignorance is bliss.
Showing 3 responses by soix
I tend to disagree with @jl35 a little bit on this. While I agree Tidal/Qobuz will sound better than Spotify given good enough equipment, my improvement with a streamer over the iPad was so large I have to think you’d still notice a significant improvement even using Spotify. Just a semi-educated guess given my experience. FWIW. |
Ok, I’m gonna answer your question directly. I started streaming with my iPad and it sounded fine but CDs sounded better by a good margin and I was disappointed. The good folks here encouraged me to get a streamer, so I got an inexpensive iFi Zen Stream (with upgraded iPowerX power supply) and the difference was literally night and day. Bottom line — the iPad is a crap streamer and you don’t know what you’re missing. Further, my guess is once you have the better resolution with a streamer you’ll hear greater differences between services like Tidal/Qobuz and Spotify. If you don’t like the selection on Qobuz maybe try Tidal. In any event, don’t fool yourself into thinking the iPad is ok as a streamer because it absolutely is not and it’s greatly compromised. |