Streamer suggestions with both wireless and wired connections


There are necessary components in our systems like speakers and amplifiers,  which are to be bought.  At the same time,  since one can  use a computer to stream 0s and 1s, is it justified to invert 5k or > on a streamer?

I am using a Blue sound Nide 2i streamer (not as a dac though) for already several years, sometimes I use my computer and actually I note no essential difference in sound quality. Some of you claim a night and day difference between SQ of different streamers. So I want to find out if I am really streaming constantly at night. I have no convenient Ethernet connection close to my audio system, besides would like to compare the defferences in SQ with wireless and wired connections.

Please help to create daylight in my streaming environment

 

128x128niodari

Please post your system and a few pics in your profile to get the best responses.

My suggestion is don't even consider wiireless.  

Putting a high performance DAC downstream of a wireless streamer is like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle with 2% of the pieces missing.

My Blusound Node works well on wireless.  We live in a single family house and our wifi is pretty good.  I think maybe apartment dwellers or others with a whole lotta traffic on wifi might like using wired LAN better.

I have owned and streamed using PC, MAC, IPad, $2K, $3.5K, $5K, $10K, $13K, and $22K streamers. In each case absolutely worth the increased sound quality supplied by that level of investment / performance assuming you have a system.. DAC, Preamp, Amp and speakers to support that level of performance. Also, you choose the best in class at that level of investment.

 

I have found that with a good quality streamer it does not matter if feed by wifi (wall wart wifi extender) or Ethernet direct from router… but for some reason I have not had good luck with onboard wifi receivers.

Great quality streamers like Aurender clean up the incoming signal, cashe the stream to make up for network deficiencies and do not require any fiddling with your network. My Aurrender work flawlessly from a wall wart extender even when I cannot get the pages to refresh on my iPad.

@ghdprentice

In each case absolutely worth the increased sound quality supplied by that level of investment / performance assuming you have a system.. DAC, Preamp, Amp and speakers to support that level of performance.

With your experience, care to estimate the appropriate importance of streamer relative to rest of the system? I assume Speaker + Amp far more important, then the DAC, then streamer. So would that make streamer worthy of 1/3 your speaker investment?