Wanting to upgrade my streaming sound quality.

OP,

My Aurender W20SE steamer has been life changing. 

Hopefully soon you will get all working seamlessly and it just becomes as reliable and predictable as a CD player or turntable. It should be. Also, operating from your iPad and creating a library of stuff you like is mandatory. If this is not true soon. Think of changing. 
 

Living in the streaming world is much different than in the world of collecting vinyl or CDs. I seldom listen to stuff I listened to in my vinyl or CDs any more. You can get lost in nearly infinite music. You need to easily find the stuff you like… and writing it down would not be an acceptable solution. So, hopefully it sounds fantastic and you can comfortably move around.

Also, start up your free month with Qobuz. By the end or the month you will drop Tidal. I did… and all my audiophile friends. 

@gphill 

👍🎉

@sns +1

FYI OP

This is pretty standard for all high end streamers.

”One of the things that pushes me toward the HiFi Rose is the ease of use along with the support of the company as far as frequent automatic updates.in addition to the touch screen It has a physical remote or can be controlled from my iPad.”

How robust and user friendly the interface (Aurender and Aurlic are pretty universally considered exceptional) varies highly from streamer to streamer. Aurender supports iPhone and iPad and you can make requests in the app from the streamer so they can support and download a new version automatically. Questions answered within the app within a day or so. To use a new one, just plug in turn on, download app… put code from streamer into iPad… and you are done. 

A key to the app is integrating your streaming service library and local files, And Network files if you have any. Keeping track of music you find in your streaming service and creating your personal library is really important. Qobuz, Tidal, and one or two others are integrated on all high end streamers. Just sign on in the app once and you are done.

Hopefully your HiFi Rose will be similarly well designed.

OP,

Congratulations on your decision. I read the review in The Absolute Sound. Sounds like a really interesting device. I hope you will report back on your findings… how it sounds,  how it compares with your analog system. 

@jallan

+1. Not sure this will get you all the way there, but my guess is it will be one of the highest performing pairs for the money (I own or have had both) but will be satisfying and serve as proof of concept. Giving you a platform from which to upgrade further if you wish. Both are highly regarded and should have excellent trade in value.

OP, I was not in any way suggesting you spend $30K. What I was suggesting that in order to get to the same performance level it is likely you will have to spend something on the order of cost of your other components. Hence I suggested maybe a Aurender N100 might be appropriate… actually it is $2.7K.. not $4 like I said.

Happy hunting.

I have been primarily an analog guy for fifty years. Wishing and being disappointed by digital. Finally over the last couple years I was able to do it. It is not likely to be cheap. You can see my system under my ID.

My best bet for you to accomplish what you want would be sure to make sure you have the best DAC that MAC makes and then pair it with a first rate streamer… you might start by trying a Aurender N100 ($4K)… I am not sure of the SQ of your analog end. I recommend Aurender for a serious attempt at duplicating analog’s high sound quality. I have there flagship the W20SE and that is what it took to get there. Linn also makes great high end streamers. You need both high end streamer and DAC.

In my system most components ended up costing roughly in the same ballpark. My analog end cost about $35K (TT + Phono stage) and digital ~ $40K (streamer + DAC). Obviously that is only a generalization on how to look at this. But I have tried a few high end DACs and Streamers and they are competitively priced on sound quality. Unlike the lower end where there is much more variation in price / sound quality. I would imagine scaling these numbers to fit you system might not be helpful in thinking about what it might take. It can be expensive trying to go too cheap over and over again.

Good luck, it is amazing when you get there. But no less work and money than putting together a great analog end.