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"Need" Roon, Bluesound Node, or or other streamer?

I am thinking about adding a streamer, and have hopelessly confused myself, and hoping you all can straighten me out with some advice/options here.

All I want to do is stream my Tidal with MQA quality, Quboz, new Apple tier, Amazon, and my ripped CDs, all with as much sound quality as possible (with a budget of $1200 maxish).   Integrated playlist capability, and ideally with full MQA for the Tidal (but low priority in the scheme of things).   I do not need wireless, multizone, etc. 

Currently my Macbook Pro is the "streamer" using Tidal, Quboz & Apple supplied apps.  I USB out to my DAC.

-- If I buy the Bluesound Node, I lose full MQA if I connect my external DAC.  They tell me I have to use their internal DAC.  Otherwise I can connect my external at a lower "quality".  Yet, many people here trash their DAC...
-- Trial of Audirvana Studio is a train wreck so far... 

 Questions: For my situation, in you all's opinion:

  • Buy the Node, and call it a day? I could switch between Internal Node Dac for MQA and external DAC...
  • Buy a Cambridge or other streamer and call it a day? Are they worth the extra $$ especially if I would ideally like to stick with my external DAC?
  • Buy into Roon solution and either build a NUC server or go Little Green or Nucleus?  OR use one of my old Mac laptops maybe?
  • What the hell is the difference between Roon and the Bluesound Node anyway?

Sorry, all over the place here, but evidence of my frustration...

Any advice is greatly appreciated!






bogbeat

Showing 1 response by calvinandhobbes

calvinandhobbes
312 posts
 
Another vote on dropping Tidal. My experience is that it sounds worse than Spotify Premium.

Another streamer to consider is the Pro-ject Stream Box S2 Ultra which is supposed to sound better than the Bluesound Node. It’s about $750-800 new and you can easily get one used for about $500. It runs on the open source Volumio software so there is ongoing work on improving the interface. Some other interface software is slicker, but Volumio works fine for me. The Pro-ject doesn't have a lot of flashy features such as LCD screens, built-in DAC or internal memory for storage, but its materials cost seems focused on areas that improve sound quality such as the isolation of its power supply and cleaning up its USB output.

Here's some comments from the designer about the considerations behind the design of the Pro-ject: https://www.avforums.com/threads/why-is-pro-ject-stream-box-ultra-s2-so-expensive-700euro-for-an-r-pi.2175090/

What I heard about the current version of Roon is that it doesn’t sound as good as prior versions or compared to other streamer software.
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