Streaming - how many are doing it?

[Diapason]

That's interesting, Georgi. What do you think the Mac Mini brings that the Bluesound lacks? I have an older Node that I like well enough, but I often wonder if I could do better.

Reality is that most of my home listening happens via Chromecast Audio while in the kitchen or eating dinner. My major complaint there is the lack of gapless playback. If anything, this is the system I'd be most likely to consider upgrading these days, but despite the hotch-potch of components, it's pretty balanced in the small space and I'm slightly afraid to mess with it.

[Georgi]

Well in my subjective opinion, MacMini give a bit more space and maybe a touch of resolution.
If you like the Node, I highly recommend to get a Linear power supply for it, does improve the quality.

[Fran]

The flavour of the month out there on t'internet is the Eversolo DMP A6.....

[Georgi]

The flavour of the month out there on t'internet is the Eversolo DMP A6.....

Naahh, I wouldn't go near it, it's the typical ESS sounding DAC.
Maybe DMP A8 deserves some attention, but these screens and android operating system is putting me OFF.

[Diapason]

All very interesting, thank you.

[james]

I have ripped most of my CDs and stream them.
I have not signed up with any streaming services like Tidal or Qobuz.

[Fran]

I think there are two approaches here:

1. You want an all-in-one box that connects to your hard drive somewhere, or your tidal/qobuz/spotify account and on the other end you have analog outputs. In other words, it acts as both a source and DAC, kind of like how a CD player worked years ago, replacing the CD with a stream of data.

2. You want the front end only, an interface to your files on a hard drive or streaming service and feed out to the DAC you have already.

Most boxes do some version of both of these..... but I think you need to know which you want most of all.

[JAW]

Well put Fran, nice and concise. I would only add one comment, and being an idiot at all things digital, it may not be relevant, but should work over WiFi or hard wired.

[Adrian]

Fran, when I set up the kitchen rig, I decided to use a cubicle in the integrated presses etc. Speakers went on top, but I was limited to about 300mm in height. Additionally given the shelf was laminated chip board I was further limited with weight. Additionally equipment which ran hot was out too as the cubicle had a door.

I originally wanted the traditional set up of amp, cd & tuner. But FM reception was a bit poor so in went the T shaped antenna at the back etc.

Eventually I settled on the ND8006 unit, which is cd player, streamer, usb player, digital in, digital out, fixed & variable rca out. I can control the entire thing from the app on my phone, and stream from my phone to the unit. The ND8006 is now discontinued as they made it even better, integrating it into an amplifier. Basically an all in one box controlled from your phone/ tablet.

It’s good enough quality for the kitchen set up, simple for the wife when she wants to spin a cd.

For streaming it works well on the 2.4GHz band, but drops out when the integrated microwave is started. On the 5Ghz band there’s no drop out.

I never got it running in the main rig however, as I have a Bluesound Vault 2 there.

But regardless, it’s still not as good as vinyl!

[Brutus1968]

Hi, I would like to use this topic to address some basic and naive questions to anybody with some experience on streamers.
As previously said my limited streaming activity is based on a personal laptop that I use mainly in this ways:
- playing digital files saved on an external HD using Foobar2000 as audio player (more than 400 records saved there)
- playing music from internet services like Spotify and Bandcamp
- listening to Internet radio (RTE Lyric in the evening most of the times)
The digital signal is then sent to a separated DAC and from here to the amplifier. Pretty standard.

Now, I am intrigued by small and cheap streamers that are available on the market, like Wiim or those based on Raspberry Pi, but I have never had the opportunity to practically interact with them, so here are my questions:

Those streamers usually are plain black boxes with just inputs and outputs, do they all use mobile apps as graphical user interface for all the services they offer?
Can they manage digital files already saved in a external HD?
Does the HD need to be powered separately? and does it need to be formatted in a specific way?

Probably some of the answers will depend on the specific streamer, but any information on how they practically work will be very appreciated.
I don't think any streamer will ever replace my analogue setups, but I appreciate their convenience and I don't have any objection in having one of them included in my main system.

Best