Streaming for beginner


I have a PS Audio front end-- DMP disc player and DirectSteam DAC. Very happy with the resolution and performance, especially from my redbook cd collection. For those familiar with the DSD, it is upgradable via a network bridge card to become a dedicated streamer. When I bought this DAC, I was looking ahead to an eventual migration to streaming.
I also have a Spotify account, that currently only serves me as a companion to my iPhone during walks and exercise.

My question: assume my goal is to stream for convenience, simplicity, and achieve audio quality that equals or surpasses that of redbook cd’s. I am not looking to purchase music or download it for storage. What am I missing? I also have a dedicated iPad that can serve as the interface to the DAC/Streamer. Spotify also claims that streaming in high resolution is available on my account. Do I need anything else? Am I oversimplifying this?

I am a beginner when it comes to streaming, so please answer in simple terms since I will not be familiar with a lot of the services and components mentioned elsewhere in these forums. In fact, confusing enough for me that it is forcing me to ask here.


mbiondo

Showing 1 response by rikkipuu

You have very high end gear to play from CD.  It will be difficult but not necessarily impossible to get close.
The devil is in the details.  Very clean power for everything.  Lots of good LPS, lots of choices.  My current favorite for the price is the Farad3.
In my system I started with an EtherRegen and it was good with LPS1.2 for power.  I added a SOtM sNH 10G with clock and Farad3 for power. Then the icing on the cake was adding an EE Switch8 powered by an Uptone JS2.  Sounds crazy but it keeps getting better.  Then I turned the EtherRegen around and added Fiber to the EtherRegen and SOtM and that was like adding Frosting to the icing.
Also big improvement with the 2 dcbl CAT7 cables and a dcbl CAT6 cable from SOtM.
I found removing all the SMPS was helpful.  I changed SMPS for my REL Longbow's from stock to IFI and it destroyed the sound of my system.  The IFI may have cleaner power output but they added a lot of noise to the rest of the system.  I had to move them off the dedicated lines for the rest of my audio gear.
Roon was another plus for its integration with Tidal and Qobuz and using the DSP, but having the Core on a quiet computer is important and a good streamer counts.  I have an Innuos Statement which is very quiet with its crazy power supply.  I can hear a difference between locally stored files and hi-rez on Tidal and Qobuz and it is bigger than the difference between Tidal and Qobuz.  Tidal is a bit more lively and Qobuz is smoother and a bit more relaxing. 
But at the end of the day it all sounds good and it gets nit picky only when comparing the sources.
Listening to Roon Radio  playing Rod Stewart Mandolin Wind 16/44 on Qobuz now and it sounds wonderful.