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!
