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Where are the cheap home streamers?

When CD players were first introduced, they were $1000 and more new.  And this was in early 80's dollars.  New ones would eventually drop to under $200, and new players that also play most all formats can still be had around at that price or less.  Sure, not the best quality, but they work well enough for most.  

The new frontier is of course, streaming.  Whether from a local host, online, and so on.  Many options in the high end, but what seems odd is the lack of budget options.  Probably the least expensive that's of decent quality is the Sonos Connect.  Oh sure, you can pair a computer or tablet with a cheap DAC, and get by.  Or roll your own with a Raspberry Pi solution.  And yes, most disc players are "smart" and can stream audio and video just fine.  Among other issues, is that the budget options are defaulting to HDMI out, and omitting Optical, Digital, and Analog out.  

There were some early efforts by Sony and Dlink a few years ago.  Both not only required a display, but were pretty terrible implementations overall.  We recently tried one of the Dayton WBA 31s.  For a mere $50, expectations were of course also modest.  As you might imagine, analog audio out is not great.  Below that of many phones we'd say.  It does however had an optical output.  A dealbreaker for most of our clients in terms of added complexity.  If produced in sufficient number, there is no good reason such a unit with a decent DAC couldn't be built and sold for $200 or so.  Or maybe someone is doing this, and it's just not well distributed?  



128x128austinstereo
mike_in_nc
1,147 posts
 
@austinstereo--

As for the Allo, and the Pi, and any other DIY stuff, they are great options for hobbyists. And the results are beyond what you’d expect for the money. In this case, we’re looking for ready to run. Many of our customers just want a simple solution.
Oh, I missed that you are a dealer. The Allo can be bought pre-assembled and is pretty easy to set up and use, yet still, it doesn’t have the polish of more commercial products.
I’m going to look at the Songbird myself. People ask me for recommendations, and like you, I’d like to have something inexpensive, reasonable quality, and not tweaky.



jrwaudio
345 posts
 
For $600 the Audiolab 6000N ( no display) does a good job with DTS Play Fi and has a pretty decent internal DAC  For $180 the Audio Engine B1 links easly to your phone via the higher quality Bluetooth for streaming and has toslink out to bypass it's internal DAC 
slackjef
2 posts
 
I have the Arylic S50 Pro.  it is 200.00 from Amazon.  It is ok as long as all you are doing is streaming.  In their own materials they state that they are focused on the streaming and the support of digital files is secondary.  As to streaming I have clung onto AmazonHD which is a very good product and there is a discount as i am already an amazon prime customer.  For AmazonHD, there are some features that you can't use while streaming (adding music to your library or playlists for example).  I think I want a 200 product to work like a 1,000 or more product.  Another thing that annoys me is that the best it will ever play is cd quality regardless of the source.  
erik_squires
16,049 posts
 
I'm really not into the whole streamer/DAC concept per se.

What I fear most is not that DAC's will improve (they won't) but that streaming services come and go and the need to keep up with them.  It's more of a software and interface thing than hardware.

For this reason I went with Roon as my streaming ecosystem, and like you mentioned, I'm runmning a Pi/Ubuntu streamer talking USB to my DAC, but I could also get a Mytek Manhattan II with a network card.  No built in streaming, but Roon aware. 
fuzztone's avatar
fuzztone
5,595 posts
 
What part of "You get what you pay for" is beyond the OP's grasp? Cheap CD players are/were exactly that.
With streamers the price goes up for "plug and play" because you are paying for someone to hold your hand. If you don't want to spend any time or effort spend lotso $$$$. And like it.
Or speed up the process and market a package for us. The Xiaomi Mi box does Roon nicely for ~$70. Too bad you need a screen too. And to spend a lot more than that every year for gapless playback.
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