Streamer Recommendations

When I got an external streamer 8 years ago (instead of using Pure Music and Audirvana), I auditioned Auralic, Aurender, and Lumin, and bought the Auralic Aries with the Lightning DS software. SQ was better and the Lightning DS software was far superior. Since I had a very good external dac, I used the usb interface and started buying all the usb tweaks/gimmicks to make it sound better, some did, most didn’t.

Fast forward and bought a top tier dac that uses Ethernet and I2S with both superior to USB and i2s being the best. Since I’m not a fan of using a server that runs Roon or audirvana in my audio room (runs in another part of the house), I use a streamer that accepts data from the server thru the network, and galvanic isolates the signal going out i2s to the dac, that’s its only function I life.

The software that reads the files is the main contributor to how good the music sounds and it’s the software that allows how easy it is to navigate thru your music. Audirvana still holds the lead IMO, which is a little bit better than Roon. But since Roon offers a better interface plus now Roon ARC so I can stream to our cars so I got rid of Sirius/xm, I use Roon.

I had the Auralic Aries years ago. I preferred the Aries to the Lumin and aurender unit at the time. Lightning DS and the Lumin software was used for the Aries. The major drawback in using the Ari’s was the limitations of its outputs. I used usb to an external dac and with many gimmicks/tweaks to usb, it still sucked. Sold the Aries and the external dac and went with Roon and a dac that had Ethernet and i2s inputs. Went the Ethernet route for years until a streamer was built that used i2s so I switched to i2s now.