Re: streaming recommendations for newbie
Hi,
I'd like to finally enter the streaming world with my hifi system and am looking for recommendations. I have streaming music in my car and on my computer, but I can't currently access any streaming services on my hifi system because I have tube gear and neither it nor my old backup gear have streaming capacity or a DAC (other than the CD player).
I guess that I need to buy both a streamer and a DAC? I now have a pretty decent hifi system, but I want start out with modest priced streaming gear.
Can anyone recommend a streamer & DAC, or unit that does both? Does it make sense to put more $$ in a DAC or in a steamer? Not sure about budget, but I'm thinking $500-1000 used for both as a starting point. Thank you.
Terry
@elliottbnewcombjr I have a purple and gold synergistic research, carbon tuning disks that I suppose you could win as a booby prize for being right. Otherwise, like I said, the OP seems to have some really nice equipment and a quality streamer is only going to lend itself to the synergy of their system. |
@tlh28 uh in think the Simaudio 340 is a integrated amp? Do you mean your CD player is the 260D? If so that is a well regarded DAC implementation and it has spidf and optical inputs. I would just get a streamer and run it through that DAC first. Do the Blue Sound with external Power supply and I bet you be happy camper until the upgrade virus takes holt again.
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I recently found a new in box Bluesound Vault 2i for $700. It’s amazing to me. Not only does it stream anything through a respectable DAC, it has a CD slot and it rips CD’s in 12 minutes each and has a hard drive large enough to store my rack of 1600 CD onboard. Now I just need two full weeks of time to save my collection. I know, why save them when I can stream them? Well, just to have them in case the internet goes down for a long time.
Happy hunting. |
@andym23456 it seems streaming services can and do sometimes pull albums / artists off their catalogues without warning. Kind of like Netflix dropping movies or series with little or no notice. That’s an even better reason to save your disc collection files.
To OP and anyone else on the learning curve, some of the claims made of streamers in this thread have no evidence, just subjective conjecture, nor basis in current (pun!) electrical knowledge, so self-educate before getting carried away is a fair plan. Chasing “better” streamers relies on factors that don’t make much sense if you will be streaming via Bluetooth. That should perhaps be first thing out of the chain if one hopes for improvement, lest you constrain your streamed files from the get-go. |
@danmar123 Great that you’re getting the AVR outta your 2-channel signal path as that’s a huge bottleneck to performance. I started streaming from my iPhone using the Apple Camera Adapter to run USB into my DAC with Qobuz, and it sounded good until I realized CDs sounded significantly better, which was very disappointing. Following advice from people here I got a streamer (an inexpensive iFi Zen Stream) and my streaming immediately sounded as good or better than CDs — literally a night and day difference. So while the iPhone is certainly a cheap and easy way to get started, if you’re concerned with sound quality you should plan on getting a streamer down the road. Just my experience FWIW. |
