Suggestions for a streamer only (I have a great DAC)


I have a dCS Paganini DAC and Paganini Clock. I’m looking for a streamer only to pair with the Paganini to stream via Tidal.  That’s it, I don’t need a streamer/DAC/etc.  I don’t want to extra for pay for redundancy.  Any good suggestions on a streamer only  that you have paired to a high end DAC with good results would be appreciated. 

 

PLEASE no “try some at home on your system” responses …. that’s the reason I came here, for some recommendations. Price range $1500-$5000.

 

Thanks!

naperaudio

I have an purchased an Optical Rendu from Small Green Computer. This is an excellent device a major upgrade for any high end DAC.  It retimes the signal and improves Red Book and extend rate music. The music sounds as good as playing the CD or better.

 

Jim 

The obvious solution is an Auralic Aries G2.1 streamer.

Auralic put extended effort into their wifi implementation to make it quieter and more consistent than ethernet. You can use ethernet but the wifi is great and in fact better. It has a 1gb cache into which it streams all inputs and dejitters and reclocks incoming. Additionally, if you are Tidal HiFi oriented, Auralic developed their own proprietary software to process MQA without using the MQA license, and it sounds better. Also the free Auralic Lightning DS library playback app has fewer bugs and better sound than Roon does today.

In my experience, the Auralic Aries G2.1 makes any DAC you connect to it sound better, regardless of price. I use it to feed a Bricasti M21 Platinum.

 

Phil

Bryston BDP v3 is wonderful and way underrated. I have tried some of the others mentioned here but their software was usually slow but almost always buggy. The Bryston solution is not.

I would strongly endorse Aurender either W20 which can be found on the used market for around 10,000 or their newer SE version which I have heard and read is even more superb. This streamer will also accept an external word clock that you can then match to your DAC