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Best streaming platform with little to no local music?


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Hi,

 

I have an old Sonos ZP80 (Connect it is now called I think) and also a uRendu+roon+MacMini setup. Im not sure why, but I have always found the Sonos so much more logical to use and accessible given its HW based, always on and 'just works'.. I am frustrated a little with the need for a Mac/PC to be on, cabling ok. Rendu on, PSUs on. App opened etc and then likely I will stream Tidal or Spotify (which I cannot with Roon). I'm now thinking that my 'high-end' chain isn't good enough, so bought a new PSU for the DAC, PSU for the Rendu, optical GbE cabling. Now looking at ROCK and potentially another machine (the Mac Mini is my office machine not dedicated for Hi-Fi. A bit of me is thinking this is madness given all the plumbing.

 

I am wondering about whether the Bluesound/ Auralic etc and other platforms offer a simple streaming experience when I really own almost no music and like immediacy of access?

 

My DAC is a Brooklyn and I did want to stream MQA and Hi-Res.

 

I would love your opinions & experiences of different platforms for playing music.

 

Best wishes

Simon

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Thank you for sharing your experience! I need to lookup the Altair..  I am fortunate if I can call it that to not have much in the way of physical music. Hence it makes me think about the streaming platforms and UX..  If my music is only going to come from Tidal amd Spotify then what platform works best with them (especially considering that all this powerful library indexing and processing isn't I assume as relevant when it can never index cloud audio sources. 

 

If Spotify goes lossless and supports MQA then I could drop Tidal and a third party streamer user experience and just use the Spotify app and Spotify connect. 

 

Then my tech brain starts thinking about RAAT protocol and even Ravenna coming etc. I didn't buy into Roon because it was ideal as a UX..  I bought into it because others said the audio quality was better and it worked with the Rendu....  

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1 hour ago, photonman said:

 Now I am happily settled on my Class A amp (which was the only constant in my system) with a recently aquired Altair streamer doing Tidal.  

How do you find the app with Tidal? I have been wondering whether to replace my Rendu with the Aries I think it is streamer into my Brooklyn DAC. 

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These days I have Media on my NAS that also serves as a backup server for Mac and PC, I mostly just use Apple Music via the Sonos, everyone in the house knows how to use the non technical app. This also works well with CarPlay where I stream playlist from AM.

As you say it just works, might not support high def but I find the quality fine without spending thousands on the endless quantity chase.

Setup:

Lumin D2> Roksan Blak> Focal 806

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I'm also a fan of Sonos connect.  

 

Sonos has a very easy UI to use, supports almost all the streaming services one can get in the USA, and it works with my iTunes CD library sitting on the NAS.  It does a very nice job with native Pandora fed to an external DAC.

 

It's short comings are that:

the internal Sonos Connect DAC is poor, so you need a DAC that takes Coax or Spdif.

it doesn't support anything above 16/44 resolution

wifi is problematic in a crowded rf space, so go wired or go home-lol!

It doesn't always pick up the album covers from my iTunes library.  

(But you can download a small jpg of the album to the iTunes album folder and rename it "folder.jpg" literally! and then the Sonos UI will display the album are after you do a library update.)

 

My wish list is that Sonos will come out with a Sonos Connect HD that will support upto HiRes 32/384 and DSD, and that they would do a deal with HD Tracks to stream right thru to your DAC without having to download to a hard drive.  After all, you can only play one song at a time on any given speaker system.

 

Im surprised Sonos hasn't done a music server similar to the Bluesound vault yet.

Best Stereo System: Wired Sonos Connect -> AQ Cinammon Digital Coax -> Marantz SA-8005 -> AA Black Momba 2 interconnects -> Marantz PM-15S2 -> Kimber 8TC speaker Cables -> Zu Soul Superfly speakers.

 

Ingest> NAS> Distribution: Sony Vaio Laptop ripping via ITunes to Apple Lossless, manually synced to WD Mycloud NAS, Linksys 1900AC Router, Netgear Gig E switch, generic Ethernet cables, TPLinc ethernet power line extenders.

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On 5/16/2017 at 10:30 AM, m5sime said:

How do you find the app with Tidal? I have been wondering whether to replace my Rendu with the Aries I think it is streamer into my Brooklyn DAC. 

The Lightening DS app works pretty good with TIdal, I can get to all my music and do searches.  Like any app, it does have its quirks but for the most part, it is pretty refined, the volume control works good and is sensitive and responsive.  Really no complaints other than how the volume is affected by the phone volume but if I just use an iPad then no problem.

 

I have updated to the beta v5 firmware and the Altair can now play MQA upsampled.  Overall, v5 firmware is a nice improvement.

RIG:  iFi Zen Stream - Benchmark DAC3 L - LA4  AHB2 | Paradigm Sig S6 Cables:  anything available

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