Ok, I’m gonna answer your question directly. I started streaming with my iPad and it sounded fine but CDs sounded better by a good margin and I was disappointed. The good folks here encouraged me to get a streamer, so I got an inexpensive iFi Zen Stream (with upgraded iPowerX power supply) and the difference was literally night and day. Bottom line — the iPad is a crap streamer and you don’t know what you’re missing. Further, my guess is once you have the better resolution with a streamer you’ll hear greater differences between services like Tidal/Qobuz and Spotify. If you don’t like the selection on Qobuz maybe try Tidal. In any event, don’t fool yourself into thinking the iPad is ok as a streamer because it absolutely is not and it’s greatly compromised.
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I tend to disagree with @jl35 a little bit on this. While I agree Tidal/Qobuz will sound better than Spotify given good enough equipment, my improvement with a streamer over the iPad was so large I have to think you’d still notice a significant improvement even using Spotify. Just a semi-educated guess given my experience. FWIW. |
@dunkin you have asked a question and you got answers. But you continue to doubt that a dedicated streamer will be an improvement. Why did you get a DAC? You could have run an adapter from iPad to RCA and feed your McIntosh…iPad has a DAC in it. No need for Chord Qutest. All jokes aside, purpose built streamers will execute their task better than a multi purpose smart tablet or computer. All the unnecessary crap that can compromise the performance is removed. You can be the judge if this by trying a WiiM streamer. |
Thank you @soix. I will try that ad it makes sense. Thank you. |
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