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Where are the cheap home streamers?

When CD players were first introduced, they were $1000 and more new.  And this was in early 80's dollars.  New ones would eventually drop to under $200, and new players that also play most all formats can still be had around at that price or less.  Sure, not the best quality, but they work well enough for most.  

The new frontier is of course, streaming.  Whether from a local host, online, and so on.  Many options in the high end, but what seems odd is the lack of budget options.  Probably the least expensive that's of decent quality is the Sonos Connect.  Oh sure, you can pair a computer or tablet with a cheap DAC, and get by.  Or roll your own with a Raspberry Pi solution.  And yes, most disc players are "smart" and can stream audio and video just fine.  Among other issues, is that the budget options are defaulting to HDMI out, and omitting Optical, Digital, and Analog out.  

There were some early efforts by Sony and Dlink a few years ago.  Both not only required a display, but were pretty terrible implementations overall.  We recently tried one of the Dayton WBA 31s.  For a mere $50, expectations were of course also modest.  As you might imagine, analog audio out is not great.  Below that of many phones we'd say.  It does however had an optical output.  A dealbreaker for most of our clients in terms of added complexity.  If produced in sufficient number, there is no good reason such a unit with a decent DAC couldn't be built and sold for $200 or so.  Or maybe someone is doing this, and it's just not well distributed?  



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erik_squires
16,258 posts
 
I'm really not into the whole streamer/DAC concept per se.

What I fear most is not that DAC's will improve (they won't) but that streaming services come and go and the need to keep up with them.  It's more of a software and interface thing than hardware.

For this reason I went with Roon as my streaming ecosystem, and like you mentioned, I'm runmning a Pi/Ubuntu streamer talking USB to my DAC, but I could also get a Mytek Manhattan II with a network card.  No built in streaming, but Roon aware. 
fuzztone's avatar
fuzztone
5,633 posts
 
What part of "You get what you pay for" is beyond the OP's grasp? Cheap CD players are/were exactly that.
With streamers the price goes up for "plug and play" because you are paying for someone to hold your hand. If you don't want to spend any time or effort spend lotso $$$$. And like it.
Or speed up the process and market a package for us. The Xiaomi Mi box does Roon nicely for ~$70. Too bad you need a screen too. And to spend a lot more than that every year for gapless playback.
pinwa
290 posts
 
I think I must not understand what people mean by streamers since I would have thought a high quality bluetooth receiver like this one meets almost all of the needs for wirelessly transmitting music to a system:

http://szaudiotech.com/product/blt-hd-bluetooth-adaptor/

The quality of the Bludento using the COAX output to a DAC is very high, I would say about 90-95% of what a USB connection gives you.

And of course, subscribing to Roon and using a Raspberry Pi running Ropieee or one of the other OS's is a great way to feed music to a DAC.
mahler123
3,381 posts
 
To get back to the original question, why are there not a plethora of cheap streaming devices such as the Google Chromecast, my first query would be why did Google stop supporting Chromecast?  I Googled this recently—no pun intended—and didn’t find an answer.
  I wonder if most people just use a computer in place of a dedicated audio device?  Everybody owns at least one, they can do everything that a streamer does, and most people aren’t audiophiles and find them sonically acceptable.  Audiophiles that wish to have a higher quality product are generally willing to pay a premium for the privilege, and thus the sub $500 market would be stressed out.  Another factor is that many lower end products, such as inexpensive AVRs, attempt to add streaming, Bluetooth, and whatever else is desired, sacrificing quality in the process but most people simply won’t care
audioguy85's avatar
audioguy85
2,018 posts
 
I'm still not understanding the obsession with streamers...again, your basic laptop, ipad, android device, ipod....etc etc can all be used as a streaming device. You are not going to be using any of their internal dacs, but connecting them all to a high quality dac. So other than aesthetics, I still don't see any point in spending significant cash on a streamer. Again, I mostly play vinyl records for serious listening....streaming just occasionally for the fun of it and to search for new music...that's it. 
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