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Point of higher priced streamer?

Hello,
Assuming I have separate DAC, and I just want to play songs from iPad by Airplay feature.
In this case, I need a streamer to receive music from my iPad -> DAC.

What’s the point of high price streamer? I’m bit surprised that some streamers are very high priced.
From my understanding, there should be no sound quality difference.
(Streaming reliability and build quality, I can see it but I do not see advantages in terms of sound quality.)

Am I missing something? If so, please share some wisdom.
128x128sangbro

Showing 2 responses by aschuh

aschuh's avatar
aschuh
42 posts
 
@sangbro For the purpose of playing music via airplay from an iPad to a DAC you don’t need a streamer. Just get a used airport express with digital optical output into your DAC and then you select this airport express as your speaker.
Sound will be good.
If you get a streamer like Bluesound configure the iPad such that it serves merely as remote control, I.e. signal path is from your Wi-Fi to Bluesound to DAC, iPad is not in the path. This solution is very good. If Wi-Fi is good (eg, Google or Linksys mesh), connecting Bluesound via Wi-Fi is superior to Ethernet, I.m.e.
Even better: Get Roon. I run a roon core on a dedicated MacBook via WiFi to a couple OPPO 205 - I have yet to find better (and I have been looking quite a bit).
aschuh's avatar
aschuh
42 posts
 
@paulcreed not sure what you mean with 'noisy', but, ime, some systems pick up noise originating from the MacBook wall wart power supply. Good conditioners (Furman, Shunyata in my case) reject this noise entirely. You can also run the MacBook for many hours of battery power alone (no audible difference in my case, but if that wall wart causes trouble ...) Of course you don't want any other applications like messaging, email etc. run on that macbook.
Re soundstage: Roon seems to provide for perfect time domain control of the digital data stream, and, again, ime, imaging is superb. Somebody else here stated that they prefer wired ethernet connection over Wi-Fi. Again, I believe this depends on the quality of your home Wi-Fi system. Multi-channel mesh systems have very high capacity, no drop outs, etc. and, again, in my experience, streaming from a MacBook via Roon to an OPPO 205, with the MacBook receiving signal via WiFi and sending signal to the OPPO via WiFi, sounds superior to any variation of one or both digital connections by ethernet cable. In the end, Ethernet cables are not that well shielded and you would expect some RFI/EMI contamination of the unit they are connected too, but that is speculation on my side. WiFi of course provides for complete electrical isolation.
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