Streamers and software

Think a bit more for a pre-owned model : , MOON 280DMiND2…flawless point and click streaming on QOBUZ .

It has a best of breed app / digital interface ..,,, at its pricepoint, it beat all contenders and pretenders in my system.

I think the Pulse mini with an upgraded LPS is a great choice not only for sound but for their outstanding Sense app that some put on a level close to Roon.  That’s a big consideration, and great customer support as well.  Best of luck. 

Can you try Roon?  Supports Qobuz and Tidal. I don't use the playlist features very much though.

This is what I read:

Volumio is buggy

Roon is buggy

Lumin apo not very good.

Sense works good

Let me know if this is not correct. You guys have already given me a couple good ideas. I am not opposed to used.

Is the DAC IN the moon better than the TOPPING D90 AKM I use?

Look for a used Aurender. Conductor app is great, built like tanks, outstanding sound quality. 

I enjoyed the INNUOS pulse mini to such a degree. That my dealer gave me full purchase price within a year for an upgrade to the pulse. Guess who stopped getting Starbucks for the next 12 months. 

Avoid Eversolo.   Their support , if you can call it that , is their forum.  They have no repair facility but they will have your dealer replace it within a year.   

My Dads A6 stopped recognizing his DAC 5 days before warranty was up.  Auto update killed USB.   Solution?   Roll back firmware and wait for next FW.   3 updates and 5 months later still no USB.   

Aurender is the best support I've ever experienced.   I've used innuos and its a good machine too.   Don't waste your money on Eversolo.    The hardware may look great and sound good but as a company they suck.

Since you’re open to used this Innuos Zen is well worth a look.  No need for an external LPS since it already has one, and it has an onboard drive/storage so you can load your CDs into it as well and have all your music available at your fingertips.  Just another option FWIW. 
 

https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/650163113-innuos-zen-mk3-2tb/

Eversolo, Wiim,Geselli are all the buzz now. I see too many for sale used already. They would all be a step back from where I am.

There is a good selection online of Aurender, one Simaudio, innous but might cost close to $2000. I guess that is a realistic cost to move up a notch. I haven’t been able to get responses on USAM. I have never bought anything but lots of Ebay

I use Auralic and their LDS app is excellent and not especially buggy. One thing to keep in mind streamers are essentially computers occasionally you may find a bug.

@daledeee1 

With any software, implementation and hardware are the key to a worry free operation. Out of all the apps being mentioned here, Sense (Innuous) and Conductor (Aurender) are the least likely to experience problems due to their proprietary operating systems. Initial investment is high but you get worry free operation, stellar sound quality and customer support. 

Any offerings from Aurender or Innuous would be a step up from BS Node in a decent system, IMHO. 

I have tried so many streamers and ditched them, not so much for the sound quality but because of the software. Many people like Aurender (Conductor) but I didn't as it was useless for cataloguing classical music and I lost many albums when connecting. I tried Roon and while Ok it was not IMHP worth the money. I have finally bought an Antipodes streamer which provides excellent sound quality and the choice of using Squeeze or a form of Qobuz native software. Neither is perfect but for my purposes as good as Roon. A final plus for Antipodes is the incredible customer service. If you have any connection issues they will do it for you.

Watch for someone here who does not own either Streamer W or Streamer I but keeps criticizing W while praising I. This type of biased comment should be banned here to avoid misleading audiogoners.

Just playing devil’s advocate here. Your post made it sound like you were happy with the Node’s sound just fine, especially after installing a LPS, and it was working perfectly with all your Favorites on Amazon, but for some reason you switched to Qobuz from Amazon. Why? Does Qobuz REALLY sound significantly (not marginally) better than Amazon? If it is Qobuz that is buggy, why not simply switch back to Amazon and save yourself $2000 to $4000, or are you just itching for a new toy? Nothing wrong with wanting something better, and yes, maybe the DACs in some of the ones you are considering will be better than your external TOPPING D90 AKM.

There seems to be a significant number of people on this forum who want a great streamer without any DAC built-in whatsoever, not even a marginal "convenience" DAC. They'd rather use an external DAC of their own choosing. 

I’m just wondering if you’d get more bang for your bucks by switching back to something that was working fine, and instead, spend the bucks to upgrade your DAC.

  I recently purchased a used Innuos Pulse Mini with a Teradak  LPS in excellent condition for $950. I paired it with a Schiit Yiggy DAC and am pleased with the sound quality. I use the Innuos app to stream Tidal, Qbuzz and Radio Paradise. The Innuos app imported all my saved favorites, albums and song lists from my Tidal and Qbuzz accounts without issue. After a few days it wouldn’t recognize the Yiggy via USB. I contacted Innuos customer support and explained USB not recognized but SPDIF was fine. Their support said it was a failing USB card in my Yiggy and to contact Schiit. Now that’s customer support. I plan on upgrading to the Pulse this spring. Regards, Mike B. 

@daledeee1, I’m all about the seamless integration of my music into the usability of the software that plays it. Roon undoubtedly has the best streaming software on the market right now IMO. People say it’s too expensive. Okay then let’s do the simple math. Roon costs around $15 a month. So that’s $0.50 a day to listen to whatever I want, in any room in my house or away from it, from a catalogue of literally millions of high-res tracks and hundreds of thousand of albums to choose from, without sorting through my hundreds of records, tapes, and CDs. 
 

I use a Roon Nucleus music server with its own Sbooster power supply. All that the little intel chip inside does is locate tracks and albums on Qobuz that I control from any of my Apple devices. That’s it. Nothing fancy about it. 

+1 on a used Aurender and the Conductor app.  

I use Roon, have a lifetime subscription, and am very happy with it. You can try out for free, and go month to month to give it a good trial. A bit of a learning curve...but that is true of any of the software packages.

I have a Bluesound Node N130 and it was fine.  I upgraded the DAC and streamer.  For a streamer I bought a used Innuos Zen Mk3 with 1TB storage for $1800.  The Sense app it uses is better than the BluOs with Qobuz in my experience.  I have the Holo Audio Cyan 2 DAC which is excellent.  I Didn’t like the operating system using the Holo Red though as a streamer.  I tried and didn’t like Roon although some swear by it.  I like using my iPad to control my music and the Sense app works very well on my iPad.  In my experience the operating system is almost as important as the sound.  Having tried many different streaming apps I’m happy with the Sense and my search is over.  

I have two streamers, a NODE (N130) with LPS, and EverSolo DMP-A8. I subscribe to Qobuz and Roon. For my Roon server, I have their new Nucleus One. Both of my streamers work flawlessly with this setup. The more I use Roon the more I like it.

@daledeee1

You say that you are looking for a streamer. Being pedantic, you already have a streamer, the Node. What you are looking for is a seamless use of the software package for Qobuz.

I had Qobuz and the Node several years ago. They worked fine together but both Q and the Node have no doubt had numerous software updates in the interim that have caused your issue.

Fwiw I have used a Cambridge Audio CXN 100 streamer for a few years. I did use Q with it at the beginning and it was fine. I don’t know they currently play together.

Perhaps a future update from either Q or BS may solve your problem. In the meantime is it possible to directly connect the portable device that you are Bluetoothing from to either the DACon the Node or an external DAC if you use on? Another option might be connect a computer to either the Node or the DAC

Auralic Vega S1. You can add a dedicated power supply if you wish. 

I went from a Bluesound vault (yes the original) to the node n130 streaming Qobuz. It worked well.  I then went to an Innuos Pulse streaming Qobuz. I like  the Innuos software more than the Bluesound software. The Innuos support is much better than the bluesound support.

I was at the same point you’re at now a couple of years ago, wanting to get rid of my Node and it’s frustrating software. My shortlist of streamers were Innuos, Lumin, and Esoteric. I finally landed with the Esoteric and while I enjoyed everything about it, one of the most surprising upgrades I made was adding ROON to the equation. It works seamlessly with Qobuz, and I’ll never go back. I highly recommend you give ROON a try after you get your new streamer. 

Thanks all.  Lots of suggestions.

I am pretty sure the Qobuz sound was noticeably better.  I am always wringing more out of my system.  I could have done something else at the same time.  But I will try Amazon again.  We are generally in agreement on brands.  An Aurender N10 was 1300.  I have time. I have workarounds.  At least my system sounds great!  But I hate it when I can't fix things.  Old maintenance mindset. 

What akg_ca said re the Moon 280D, except that you seem not to need a DAC so Moon MiND2.

I would stick with Qobuz, personally.  The best sound of all the current streaming services, IMO.

If you're using the Bluetooth connection to the Node, why not correct directly to the Topping, as someone else suggested?  Otherwise, for an ethernet/wifi streamer, the Inuous looks like a good bet, with the most reliable software.  I have not used one myself.

Another option is a Mac Mini running Audirvana, which I love.  Audirvana connects easily to Qobuz and has a good remote app.  For $600, the Mac Mini gives you a ton of flexibility in terms of playback software and connectivity.  Combine it with a Pi2AES Mercury V3 streamer for $500 and you've got a first-rate digital system. ;-)

But in terms of simplicity, biting the bullet for an Innuos seems sensible.

Innuos Sense all the way

C-ya Roon-good riddance 

Hopefully whenever they roll out a "QOBUZ CONNECT" for streamers, most of your problems will go away. That's one reason I started with Spotify then switched to Tidal when it became apparent that Spotify had lied and were NOT going to offer lossless.  I'm glad Tidal has now dispensed with the useless lossy MQA mumbo-jumbo and just provides good old FLACs.  Having a "connect" app just makes life easier, being able to hand off the URL of the stream directly to your streamer. Good luck.

Aurender and its Conductor App are a great combination. Love it. And Qobuz is fantastic. 

Not sure why so many people use Bluetooth, but also want the best signal with the best equipment. Bluetooth just killed your hi-rez experience. If you want the best sound use Q-connect or Tidal connect to your streamer. 

What a unique world we live in now, that we are all in the computer space to listen to music, with the need for 10 different devices to make it all work. So much more complicated over the analog experience. 

As others have said, if you must use BT for connection, and your DAC has BT, just go that route, cutting a device out of the chain. 

My main system has a Cambridge Audio streamer, use Tidal connect with it, either through Cambridge's app, or Tidal app. Works flawlessly all the time, and is simple. Have been thinking about "upgrading" to an Eversolo device. Are our systems ever finished?

Have you tried transferring from Amazon to Quboz again? When I first switched, Quboz lost my playlists. I used Soundiz to transfer again. Then some went missing again. But after the third time, I haven't lost anything. There were a couple of updates that had issues with search, but the latest one is fine. 

I recently bought the Hifi Rose RS130. It has more features than I need, and works great with Roon. 

For the best in audio quality I ran fiber ethernet in and use a 10Mhz Esoteric Master Clock on the streamer and the Esoteric DAC. If you are an audiophile, this won’t disappoint.

My thoughts on streaming is this: I believe streaming will be around long enough to justify equipment that brings out the best in audio quality. Might as well enjoy the music before my demise.

Yes, cat 6 to my streamer.  BT is noisy. 

The data rate is 3X more for Qobuz and it seems to add that little extra.  

I could probably get by until updates come through.  I was trying to figure out how to erase everything and start over.  Copying over didn't work, but Qobuz has all my songs, playlists and albums.  BLUOS is selling moderate priced streamers and haven't put the resources to a good app.  

The WIIM pro comes with all music services you will need built in even Amazon Music..for 170$ off Amazon you can’t go wrong..great as a streamer into a external Dac..but if you want something really great I have the Magna Hifi Mano ultra mkIII with a separate Farad power supply, I use the Ropieee XL software to get airplay most of the time but in two seconds I can change to Volumio music player with a micro SD card to change the software with the slot under the streamer and there is a lot of different options possible..I have had a lot of streamers this is the one that stuck …1600$ after the upgrades when I ordered it…from the Netherlands and I am in the USA…. The sound quality is amazing with this streamer..freaking amazing….i have had most all the streamers mentioned here…friends have brought over their streamers…this Mano Ultra mkIII has won hands down..you have to get the separate Farad power supply with it..

Worth a read ….

https://youtu.be/TZAAvLhpk8A?si=S_3xFhhS8eWmAJyQ

Save money and get a WiiM Ultra. It is all the streamer anyone ever needs and its OS is better than BluOs and Eversolo’s. 

Just another guy chipping in with a Node to Innuos success story. Loved BluOS for years, had my Node pimped with a linear PSU, sound quality great. Added a Mutec MC3+ which tightened up the timing (better clocking of the bitstream)...

... but then I tried a Pulse Mini (you may not need the Zen Mini Mk3’s storage but it could be a cheaper way in as there are more used ones around) with matching LPSU. Sound quality even better than the much-loved and much-pimped Node, brilliant control app (I like it even more than BluOS) and I actually saved money in the process of reducing my box count by two.

I stream Qobuz and it all works great. No downside, all upside.

Nigel

Most here hate my take on this.  All of these streamers are just dedicated computers, mostly running Linux with the vendorʻs user interface on top of it.  Bits is bits.  

They love to tout this $5000 wonder versus that $3500 wonder.  And of course thereʻs always last yearʻs $7000 wonder on Audiogon for only $2800 today...

Bits is bits.   Thatʻs the beauty of digital.

I run Ubuntu Linux with JRiver on a miniPC I got from Amazon for $130, plus and external drive that holds my music data, for another $100 or so.  And of course, being an actual computer, I can access any streaming service I want.

Hey.  Itʻs your nickel. Iʻm saving mine.

russbutton is right. You don't need to buy a dedicated computer which to the user is neither Windows nor iOS nor Linux.

You can, for example,
• store .flac and such files on the hard drive of a Windows PC
• select files to be played with an Android app, like the near-free BubbleUPnP on Android
• thus telling  free program like Minimserver to send the files out to your home network
• receive the files off the home network with a Wiim or Denon LinkHS2 or similar device costing in the low US$hundred
• feed them to your DAC or preamp or integrated amp
and as well you can
• store links to Internet radio stations in a simple .m3u8 text file and choose with BubbleUPnP which to play
and as well you can
• stream from most of the streaming services, selecting with the Android app

Get an Innuos Pulse and be done with it. The Sense app is superb.

If you believe that the CA MXN10 with its internal DAC sounds as good as:

• EverSolo A8
• HiFi Rose RS250A
• Holo Spring 3
• iFi Neo Stream
• Lumin P1
• LTA Aero

—all of which are rated Class A by Stereophile—then your choice of owning budget-friendly audiophile gear is valid. Personally, I’m convinced and impressed with its performance after a side-by-side blind test with the highly praised Gustard R26, a well-regarded R2R DAC.

Briefly, here is my system 

Streamer, Topping d90, khozmo passive pre, pass xa25, crites type B(think Cornwall)

I spoke with TMR.  I want to avoid frustrating software in the streamer.

We settled on a innuous Zen Mk 3 or an Aurender A100. He recommended the zen with a little softer sound.

Just thought I would update the thread.  Both have built in LPS. The zen has dual LPS and I think the Innous LPS is very good.  The zen is $2000, aurender $1300.  

And the Innous needs a USB which I am not familiar with.  He offered a Nordost for $200.  Any recommendations, I am not an expensive cable guy.  Thank you!

To preface, this is just my opinion, but I owned an Aurender N10 for awhile and found the software (v4 I think) quite frustrating. The sound was good. I switched to Innuos and found it much more to my liking. The sound was good as well. 
 

As for cables, the used Innuos I bought came with a Transparent USB cable which I used for awhile. I replaced it with a WireWorld Platinum 7 USB cable, a surprising and very significant upgrade. Note that with USB, results can be very DAC dependent, as it offloads clocking to the DAC rather than handling it in the streamer. 

Well, I have an Innuous Zen Mark 3 coming with the Nordost Purple flare USB cable. I read in another thread right after I purchased the Zen that the DAC USB connector must be galvanically isolated or it causes problems i.e noise. The Topping has an XMOS 208 connector and board. I think it is OK but haven’t found out for sure. The newer XMOS has more processing power and I don’t know what else. There is a part I can buy to fix the isolation. Now if I could just put a DAC right behind it, my system would shine. We will talk about that later.🙂

@zlone you went from a copper cable to a silver cable so forgive me for saying it is a no-brainer that it would sound better. I know people get tired of me saying it but digital cables need silver. the current is extremely low so most of the current is on the surface so digital plated is generally all you need. you went to solid silver and crushed it.

I think people have heard negative things about silver analog cables for so long that they don’t always realize that digital is different. the data is so dense that every little bit helps and silver conductivity is 7% higher than copper.

BTW, I tried some very nice silver plated speaker cables later and was shocked ho bad they sounded. I won’t elaborate.

I see people focusing in the brand. Pick the design first and then look at brands. There is often very little difference between quality brands. the difference is in the design. I don’t know why some high end cable manufacturers still make copper digital cables.

Jerry

@carlsbad2 you went from a copper cable to a digital cable

Assuming you meant 'silver' not 'digital'. Yes, I fully agree that pure silver is excellent for digital for all of the reasons you mention. I want to upgrade my ethernet cable to something similar from WireWorld, but they are quite spendy. 

I am also a fan of the OCC metals, my experience is that it makes a difference.

I also agree that silver plated copper is not the best option for audio applications and I generally avoid it. I think this is where silver gets a bad name. I think that solid silver is probably okay and I am currently trying out some https://silversolids.com/ interconnects, but I am still in the break-in period so cannot comment just yet.

@zlone Thanks for pointing out the typo and I was still in the edit window so I fixed it.  Post your results on the solid silver interconnects. I'm going to try to take some data and if I get good data I may make a post about my silver plated speaker cables.  but lets not derail the thread away from digital. 

jerry

I had silver plated digital coax, albeit Chinese. This replaced a Pine Tree Audio OCC coax.

I then I tried silver coated interconnects. Currently I left those in. I kept OCC interconnects.  So I could go back.  This has been a slo go. The siver IC have been in there a few months.

Now. When it came to speaker cable, I tried the silver coated copper, again Chinese. Nice looking with woven silver wire. I had used PTA rainbow ribbon. I went back to the copper ribbon speaker wire. More neutral and detailed. Soundstaging is good.

I digressed,. I am glad you pointed out the silver for digital. Makes me feel better, $170 is the most I have ever spent on one connection!!