@ronboco Great choice with the Rockport Aviors. I own Altair speakers and they're my end game speakers. I don't understand the purpose of the Bluesound Node. I used to own the Boulder 866 and in addition to being a great amp/preamp, the Streamer/DAC section is certainly superior to the Bluesound Node. If you plan to add an Ethernet filter, you may want to consider the EtherREGEN unit. It made a noticeable improvement to my system for network streaming music.
My endgame system I think
Good day everyone. I wanted to share what I believe is my endgame 2 channel system and say thank you to all of the members here for all of the advice I’ve gotten and read. It’s a simple system but the forum has guided me tremendously with my decisions. A special thank you goes out to Duke of audiokinesis (who I met at Axpona was very gracious with a few questions I had) for recommending Jeff at HDacoustics to design my room that I built while the speakers were being built. I hope to have many years enjoying my new system. Thanks again everyone !
Ron
Showing 4 responses by cycles2
@ronboco The EtherREGEN is in the audio path for any music you Stream (eg. Qobuz, TIDAL, Spotify) or any music you may have locally ripped that resides on a computer or hard drive that's on your home Ethernet network. The EtherREGEN isn't in the audio path for any CDs you play. I can't believe your dealer didn't let you know the 866 has a great builkt-in Streamer. Below is a Q&A re: Streaming from the Boulder website. The mConnect app isn't the greatest but the 866 is also Roon ready as you can see here,
“Can I stream Tidal or Quobuz directly to the 866?” Currently there is no way to directly stream to the 866. But you can use a 3rd party app like mConnect, JRiver to stream. We also recommend using Roon for streaming, as the 866 is a Roon endpoint and will stream both Tidal and Quobuz and music stored on your home network. |
@ronboco I strongly suggest using the 866 for streaming as it's better than the Bluesound Node. You're also not taking advantage of one of the main reasons to own an 866, you only need a single power cable and no interconnect cables, other than connecting a CD player/transport. You don't need Roon, I don't have it and won't get it since they added DSP features and screwed up the SQ. You can download the 866 Owners manual from the Boulder site. Starting at page 4-14 are instructions to connect the 866 to your home network. You'll need an Android or iOS mobile device to pair your mobile device to the 866. That's all you have to do to access and play songs from Qobuz, TIDAL or other music services. Note - once you've successfully paired the 866 to your home network, you may want to use the mConnect HD app to access music services as it's easier to use than the Boulder Controller app.. mConnect HD is available on the App and Play Store. If you need assistance, the great folks at Boulder will be glad to help. BTW, shame on your dealer for not knowing and helping you with this. May be time to find a different dealer. |
@ronboco If the only device you need to connect to your home network is the 866 then you don't need a network switch. You can go direct from you internet provider modem to the 866. |