What’s the rest of the equipment in your system, and how are you currently getting music from your laptop to your stereo. Lots of options here but need more details please.
wanting to take a digital step
hello, more lately I have been discovering artists on Bandcamp and elsewhere who don't put things out on vinyl. More often new things I have bought on vinyl don't always sound that great. so with that I want to try a cheap set up of some kind to listen from my laptop connected to my system. I did have some cheap $10 interconnects that did the job, barely. just wondering what some digital vets would suggest. Any simple decent solutions for say <500 that would be ok? I have tried looking on different threads and it got confusing. Do I get a cheap CD player or some kind of better set of interconnects to listen from a laptop. I just don't know. thank you.
Showing 3 responses by soix
You should be very excited! I’d suggest doing a free trial of Qobuz and you’ll be able to explore worlds of new music, and a lot of it is available in hi-res (I use my iPad or iPhone to run Qobuz). I’d also highly recommend not using your computer as a source and invest in a separate streamer that’ll sound much, much better, and when you can pick up an iFi Zen Stream for only $399 it’s not a big investment for the return you’ll get in significantly better sound quality. You’ll likely need a good USB-A to USB-B cable like this one to go from either the streamer or computer into a DAC… https://www.lavricables.com/cables/ultimate-silver-dual-headed-usb-interconnect-cable/ You’ll also want to run an Ethernet cable from your router/switch or a Wi-Fi extender if your system’s not near your internet connection. I wouldn’t worry too much about accessing the music from your computer as there’s a good chance most of it will be available on Qobuz — I rarely spin a CD these days. Hope this helps, and welcome to the wonderful world of streaming! |
@charles1dad Sorry, I can’t answer your very good question yet as I’m away from home and so haven’t yet been able to compare one versus the other. But, I have a specific issue that I’m using Qobuz via an MConnectHD app with my iFi Zen Stream (iFi doesn’t have the ability to link directly to Qobuz — argh!) and am having connection issues via Wi-Fi that apparently disappear when using a wired Ethernet connection either from a router or a Wi-Fi extender. I don’t have the ability to run an Ethernet cable from my router to my streamer as my listening room is too far away, but @ghdprentice has reported excellent results using a Wi-Fi extender and Ethernet connection in his top-notch streaming setup, so I’m kinda hanging my hat on that. When I do get to compare the two I’ll definitely report back. |