Recommendations for good sounding streamer


I am looking for a decent sounding streamer without breaking the bank. My daughter has Spotify premium and it would be nice to connect up to my audio system (de Havilland UltraVerve tube preamp, McCormack DNA-1 amp, Martin Logan SL3s).

I mostly listen to vinyl (Pro-ject RPM5) and CDs (Ultech UCD100) using the internal DAC. I do have a V90 DAC however that I used for playing digital from my phone. 

I don't really have the money any more for expensive digital playback. So what a recommendations for bang for the buck system. Could include using my V90 DAC. 

Reading through the forum here it seems that Spotify is not the best quality digital (Tidal seems to come up a lot). But for now we have tons of Spotify playlists - just looking for an affordable way. 

Some considerations:

Bluesound NODE 3

iFi Zen Stream

Any others? Pros/cons?

1trackmind

Showing 1 response by mwinkc

As others mentioned, Spotify is quite low-rez.

I felt tied to it because of playlists and album lists like you and your daughter, only to find, during a Tidal trial, that when switching to Tidal, they offer links to online utilities that can import playlists and favorite album lists between the different streaming services. In a couple hours, my 8000 tracks were all available to me in Tidal.

I tried Qobuz as well, but on my Node, I did not hear an appreciable difference and more importantly, Qobuz on Node did not compare, in functionality and ease of use to Tidal Connect on Node.

CD quality music is available on Tidal for $9.95/month... no more than Spotify Premium. It’s much better sounding. For $20/month you get "Tidal Masters"...MQA. I was not thrilled with MQA and saw no point to paying extra for it.

The higher quality streaming was especially noticeable using a higher quality external DAC, as well.

Dump Spotify...you’ll kick yourself for not doing it sooner!