Is There Such a Thing as a Better Sounding Streamer?

My comments regarding ones and zeros were slightly tongue in cheek. I meant it as in...if the output of the streamer is competent, is low in jitter and noise, and the input on the DAC is well implemented...what else is there? How much difference for how much money are we talking?

I stand by my comments in price and scale ...and Linn in general.

JohnVF said:

I meant it as in...if the output of the streamer is competent, is low in jitter and noise, and the input on the DAC is well implemented...what else is there?

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There is ditch SPDIF, and you'd be a prime candidate for one day doing it, being that the D70 has an I²S input.

JohnVF said:

How much difference for how much money are we talking?

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A question with no easy answer, certainly not the first part, that's subjective.

JohnVF said:

I stand by my comments in price and scale

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OK I'll take my shot at Bluesound then... they've hit a price point and cut a corner in no small part by offering only SPDIF.

Easy, cheap, and appealing to the mainstream? Yes, but not a design choice based on ultimate sound quality.

I'm not claiming anything is pseudoscience. I'm asking what there is to get right or wrong besides jitter/timing and isolation from noise. If you have an input/output setup that is basically free of those problems, what is causing the differences? That's all I'm asking. And I'm not asking it rhetorically ..I don't know. Which is...why I'm asking.

Olson_jr said:

Quoted for truth.

I went from Computers (Mac Mini, MacBook Pro) using USB, to a dedicated Small Green Computer -Sonictransporter I-5 using Ethernet, and it was probably the biggest digital sound improvement I have encountered.

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Interesting.
The folks at Bluesound had commented on the difference their improved wifi chipset had made to the sound of the 2i series. I didn't know if I should take that as marketing or engineering talk. Not that there is anything wrong with marketing folks.

But it doesn't make sense that a solid internet connection would make a significant sound quality difference.

Btw, I'm not familiar with your new computer. What else in there so you figure made the difference?

So Mikey,
If you wanted to put together a state of the art streaming setup, what would you choose? And why? I ask the second part because I genuinely want to understand.

JohnVF said:

I'm asking what there is to get right or wrong besides jitter/timing and isolation from noise.

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It's exactly that, however the sources for those problems, where and why they occur in any given piece, can be complex and/or not easy to solve given budget limitations needed to hit a price point.

A prime culprit is almost always the power supply, and that's for good reason. It's easy and cheap to shoehorn a SMPS into a small enclosure, while expensive and difficult or impossible to include a low noise, low impedance, linear PSU. This has a dramatic effect on the entire circuit, digital included, and it's super easy to hear once upgraded.

So that's another very clear corner cut by Bluesound, though one can modify/upgrade the PSU just like with Sonos. Take a look at this one, it's still a SMPS, but much higher current and lower noise, and crucially, it is external to the main chassis too, so any EMI field is kept away from sensitive circuitry. Better still would be an external linear PSU, and this thread in the U.K. shows some folks are doing this to great effect (as reported by them), and I have no doubt about their findings. Another route would be to just buy a better streamer, preferably one with a linear PSU, though some SMPS designs are quite good.

Why does anyone bother offering PSU upgrades? Aren't those just fancy add-on rip offs? Not at all, rather, they correct the design deficiencies of the stock PSU which was designed to a price point and not for ultimate quality. Could Bluesound put a better PSU inside their box? Only if that box were bigger and sturdier, and they charged a lot more for it.

A power supply upgrade is very intriguing. I replaced the wall wart on my iFi iPhono2 with a huge sBooster LPS and the improvement was not subtle.

Prime Minister said:

So Mikey,
If you wanted to put together a state of the art streaming setup, what would you choose? And why? I ask the second part because I genuinely want to understand.

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Very broad question, if we were talking only about the user interface/software, and intertwining that with sound quality (because the software does make a difference there too), I think Roon is the current state of the art. Roon has recently offered the hardware too, in the form of the Nucleus, which I've never heard. But the why part is the software, it's excellent, and it sounds superb, and it supports all PCM and DSD sample rates natively.

Roon is, like BlueOS, a finished and highly polished product. I hate their software pricing model, but that's a different discussion really.

The question is also broad in that just as I have stated earlier in this thread (as well as others), what some people call a streamer is really a server. Or, you can split that job, the server in one box residing in one particular location not necessarily near the HiFi, while the "streamer" or "player" or "endpoint" is in a completely separate box, and is located right near the DAC.

My preference is to divide those two different jobs, others insist they only want one box. You can also start out with something like an Innuos or Roon Nucleus as the streamer/player, and eventually turn it into a server only, while adding a new piece which is a streamer/player. It doesn't have to be decided once and for all upfront, the system is flexible.

Me personally, I'd run a Roon Core (server) of some sort, locate it wherever there is a network connection, and then use a Sonore Signtaure Rendu SE as the player/endpoint. I'd do so for sound quality, and the belief they have spent the budget on what truly matters, low power, low noise, and a stripped lean/clean custom Linux operating system that just sounds better. For now it would be a USB DAC, though in the future it could be an I²S equipped DAC, or even something completely different such as AoIP (Ethernet) directly into the DAC.

JohnVF said:

A power supply upgrade is very intriguing. I replaced the wall wart on my iFi iPhono2 with a huge sBooster LPS and the improvement was not subtle.

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I would think there must be Bluesound PSU mods that can be sourced here in N. America, there always were for both Sonos and Squeezebox, and they were transformational eye openers sonically speaking that allowed one to consider streaming as more than just a convenience feature.

MikeyFresh said:

I would think there must be Bluesound PSU mods that can be sourced here in N. America, there always were for both Sonos and Squeezebox, and they were transformational eye openers sonically speaking that allowed one to consider streaming as more than just a convenience feature.

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I have compared my BlueSound Node feeding my two DACs to my EMM Labs CDSA SACD/CD player and there really wasn't a huge difference... playing both Tidal and stuff from the server. That's why I'm a bit skeptical on things knocking the health of the spdif output of it. And streaming is one of my main sources, its not a convenience feature.

JohnVF said:

I have compared my BlueSound Node feeding my two DACs to my EMM Labs CDSA SACD/CD player and there really wasn't a huge difference... playing both Tidal and stuff from the server. That's why I'm a bit skeptical on things knocking the health of the spdif output of it. And streaming is one of my main sources, its not a convenience feature.

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Then you are all good and well advised to stand pat.
Or, get your hands on something with an I²S output, as that should be the best input on the D70. If you still hear no difference, then you are done with digital, put a wrap on it.
SPDIF is very 1985, not too many other things digital are still in use that date back to 1985.

Prime Minister said:

I'm not married to Blue OS. If there is a different platform that works as well, or better, and sounds better, I'd be great with it.

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There is, it's called Roon, and it's expensive but great.

Others would vote for Audirvana+, or JRiver, or even server software that runs on a NAS such as MinimServer, or AssetUPnP. Those are headless, it isn't player software, just a server that sits on the network. You use a control point app to actually browse and play the music, directing it to a separate streamer/player/endpoint.

Prime Minister said:

However, if I paid a lot more, I'd want a lot more. Not in features, but rather in sound quality. I realize that we now start getting into smaller and smaller levels of improvement. But if I drop $2500 vs $500 into a cartridge, I get a pretty good idea of what I would hear. I have no clue what that price differential would mean to me on a streamer front.

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The same can said of most any HiFi upgrade, you do face diminishing returns with ever rising price points with the streamers just like everything else in HiFi. Also just like everything else, you either need to audition a streamer at a dealer who can present it in a setting at least somewhat familiar to you, or better yet, take it home for audition. This would seem especially true for you given just about no one has an active speaker quite like yours. But a cartridge and a streamer are alike in the sense that you either have preexisting experience with those $500 and $2,500 price points, or you gain it by dealer demonstration, and/or via hands-on trying it in your own system.

Interesting topic, I feel so far behind! I was one of the first people I knew that adopted music stored on a pc and accessed through a slim devices squeezebox. I still remember people asking me what the hell it was when they were in my apartment.

My bluesound Node 2 doesn't have an external PSU fwiw, it'd be pretty tricky to modify.

I also still have a Boulder modified Squeezebox with the full suite of mods. The most physically noticeable is a custom linear PSU built with good components. It doesn't appear to have too many flashy "parts" but everything used was quality. I'm inclined to agree that the PSU must make a big difference.

240sx4u said:

Interesting topic, I feel so far behind! I was one of the first people I knew that adopted music stored on a pc and accessed through a slim devices squeezebox. I still remember people asking me what the hell it was when they were in my apartment.

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Yet you can't possibly be far behind when Squeezebox to this day is a very viable streamer, especially a modified unit like the one you describe, no doubt really good sounding to this very day.

Though it is sad that Logitech bought and then quickly shuttered Squeezebox, at least they open-sourced the software, which is still actively developed to this day by the open source community, now called Squeezelite. That mode of "rendering" is standard on lots of high-end devices, proof positive of just how good it was/is, and also how far ahead of it's time it was 10-12 years ago. So you were cutting edge.

240sx4u said:

I'm inclined to agree that the PSU must make a big difference.

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Always the biggest difference in my experience, and "digital" is no exception, quite the opposite.

Prime Minister said:

I have read that the upgraded wifi in the 2i supposedly makes a big difference in sound quality, which makes sense I suppose. But I'm pretty well out of my depth with this stuff

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Why not pick up a used 2i and compare the two in your system?

MikeyFresh said:

Do you still have the Sonictransporter i5? If you do I'd be curious to know if you ever connected both it's USB, and Toslink outputs to the very same DAC to compare. Most streamers don't have both USB and SPDIF outputs, but that one does and so all other variables can be made to stay exactly the same, the only comparison is that unit's USB vs. Toslink into the same DAC. Assuming the DAC has a good Toslink input (genuine Toshiba module and proper power supply arrangement), the Toslink can often sound better due to optical inherently having 100% galvanic isolation, use of it removes one source of ground loop, and that's no small thing, even though on a pure bandwidth basis USB is the clear winner.

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Yes, I still have the ST-i5. (I actually have two ST-i5's, along with an UltraRendu and a MicroRendu that are not in use that I should sell.)

I am currently using a PS Audio DSD DAC with the PS Audio Ethernet Bridge and am pretty happy with this setup. I have tried both the UltraRendu and a MicroRendu in lieu of the PS Bridge and I don't hear a difference in my system. Never tried USB or Toslink from the ST-i5.

Prime Minister said:

Btw, I'm not familiar with your new computer. What else in there so you figure made the difference?

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I am not enough of a techie to understand everything that made a difference. I assumed that it was going from USB to Ethernet and going from the Apple OS to the Linux based system in the SonicTransporter. That this computer is doing nothing other than music and was designed to do nothing other than music, might also play into it.

I have two Node 2i's... one in each of my two main systems.

Because of the fact that the Node is always sending the digital out from the SPDIF, I ran it into my Chord Mojo DAC set to line level output and into Bent audio pre's input 1, and then I rant the RCA out of the Node into input 2. The Bent has source selection directly from the remote. The made it VERY easy to A/B the internal Node DAC and the SPDIF output to my Mojo. The mojo beats it up. It's really easy for even novice ears to hear the difference. It's just fuller and thicker sounding. The internal dac is good in the node, but a $500 external dac betters it easily.

Cabling for both is the same Dulund wire... so IC's won't play a part.

I like the BluOS ecosystem... that's why I use them. I think they are the best all in one streamer/dac for the money. Swiss Army knives.

That all being said, if I had @Prime Minister 's setup where I wasn't using multi rooms/systems... I would be buying a Mytek Brooklyn Bridge and running it into the Meadowlarks. Talking with people like @S0und Dragon who have owned the regular Mytek Brooklyn and based on what everyone says and reviews... seems like a killer rig.

My 2 Cents.

- Woody

ICTWoody said:

I have two Node 2i's... one in each of my two main systems.

Because of the fact that the Node is always sending the digital out from the SPDIF, I ran it into my Chord Mojo DAC set to line level output and into Bent audio pre's input 1, and then I rant the RCA out of the Node into input 2. The Bent has source selection directly from the remote. The made it VERY easy to A/B the internal Node DAC and the SPDIF output to my Mojo. The mojo beats it up. It's really easy for even novice ears to hear the difference. It's just fuller and thicker sounding. The internal dac is good in the node, but a $500 external dac betters it easily.

Cabling for both is the same Dulund wire... so IC's won't play a part.

I like the BluOS ecosystem... that's why I use them. I think they are the best all in one streamer/dac for the money. Swiss Army knives.

That all being said, if I had @Prime Minister 's setup where I wasn't using multi rooms/systems... I would be buying a Mytek Brooklyn Bridge and running it into the Meadowlarks. Talking with people like @S0und Dragon who have owned the regular Mytek Brooklyn and based on what everyone says and reviews... seems like a killer rig.

My 2 Cents.

- Woody

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I agree with this statement. A Mytek device will be back in my system as soon as I resolve some of my other system issues. In my opinion, I had it right with the Brooklyn+ and my attempt at doing it on the cheap has simply proved me wrong or right. Depending on what position you take.

Wow, my head is spinning here. Lots of great info for a tech fool like me.
I need to study up, as I had resigned my self to the bluesound route for simplicity sake, but now maybe I need to get more savvy and do better.