Streamers with best apps?


I tried this question on an Australian forum with no luck, so I'm hoping a more audio savvy community might do better. I currently have a Cambridge Audio CXN which as I discovered has 2 hopeless apps when you want to find classical albums saved on Tidal My Collection. So thinking of ditching the CXN and getting another streamer/server , preferably without a DAC as I will be running it through a Pure Audio Lotus DAC 5. Most reviews of streamers seem to focus entirely on sound quality but as I have discovered the apps used are of almost equal importance. I have considered an Elac Discovery DS-S101-G which is controlled by a Roon Essentials app. So first question. Does anyone know how the Essentials app lists classical albums in Tidal My Collection and does it have a search function for the albums saved? Second question what streamers can you recommend that at least are equal and preferably better than the Tidal app which does have a search function but very little logic as to how it lists classical albums. I have thought about the Bryston BDP Pi, Innous Zen mini or an Auralic streamer but know nothing about the usability of their respective apps. So anyone out there who can help.
128x128mazian

Showing 5 responses by mahler123

Finding a good streamer for Classical Music is well near impossible, imo.  The best classification for classical that I have seen turns out to be itunes.  I also use Bluesound OS, which looks terrible unless you compare with my latest streamer, Bryston BDP3, which has a barely useable app.
From the above post by amg56

“...CD’s backed up on a local hard dick (typically 2TB)...”

His streamer offers more features than mine.

My experience with Idagio was that it had a very limited catalog.  For example, it may offer 5 versions of a Brahms Symphony, out of perhaps 200 currently available.  One can logically argue the necessity of having 200 versions of a piece, but if they are available on other services, it would be nice to have.  Tidal Classical offerings were described by another poster as “having been organized by a Chimp on Crystal Meth” and my trial suggested that might be an understatement.  The first movement of the Beethoven Moonlight Sonata would be followed by Dukas Sorcerer Apprentice—you get the idea.  I use Qobuz currently, which has a large catalogue and a reasonable search engine, although it can take multiple attempts to find something.
  My bigger frustration is having an App that can find CDs once burned.  The problem with Classical is that the algorithms designed for pop work terribly.
The Artist might be classified as the Composer, the Conductor, the Soloist, or the intern who fetched the recording engineer a cup of coffee.  I have better luck locating a CD on my shelves than finding it in a streaming App, so I stopped disposing of them after I burned them, which defeats the initial purpose of getting into streaming.  I get particularly frustrated with Bluesound and Bryston Manic Moose Apps because even editing the data in their app doesn’t do diddle—the program basically ignores the edits and stores it according to its own whims.  At least with iTunes, once I edited something it stayed edited.
  The best technique is to make a playlist.  This is relatively easy with Bluesound, and I had created 20 or so, but then I had to do a Factory Reset to fix a hardware issue, and it wiped out the playlists.
  I keep hoping that someone who enjoys Classical Music will invent a useful Universal App that can be used with any streamer.  Until then, I have basically gone back to CDs
I think Qobuz works well on the BluOS.  For me the experience is equal to using the Qobuz stand alone app on my Android phone
Mazian

Perhaps I wasn’t sufficiently clear, Tidal app SUCKS with Classical which I had thought was a major interest of yours.  Every other streaming app is better 
My Roon experience was limited.  I tried the free trial but on day 2 my vintage MacAiir froze and was dangerously overheating.  I have several thousand CDs in my collection and I think the computer was overtaxed.  At any rate the one day that I did fiddle with it for Classical it was similar to Audirvana Plus.  Definitely an improvement over Tidal, but that is a low bar.  It’s another program designed with non Classical in mind that tries to retro fit Classical in and imo doesn’t succeed, and not worth the money.  Ymmv