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Slappy here. Been a long time, have some audio source questions.

Hey Everybody. 

Long time no see, I think it has been close to 13 or 14 years since I was a very active contributing member. Cant get in my old account Slappy as i cant remember the password and the email tied to it has been long since deleted. Maybe some of you old school guys remember me. :)

Brief History.

Took quite a break from audio, but found myself back into it recently.I had a Denon 3805, Denon poa-2800 amp, and a pair of Jmlab Chorus speakers with a pair of Velodyne subwoofers. Lived with this system happily for a long time. 

Long story short, various parts of the system were failing and now I have all new(ish) equipment.

I have a Denon 4100w receiver, a Carver TFM-45 (omg this thing is immaculate), and a pair of Martin Logan Motion 40s with a pair of older Velodyne subs. Massive improvement all around! I love the ML's, and the Carver amp really brings these babies to life. However, sometimes music sill feels a bit flat, and I think that is because virtually all my listening these days is on Pandora. 

So lets to get to the question. 

So what are the cool kids doing these days for quality audio with the flexibility of Pandora? Sometimes listening to Pandora it still sounds a bit flat, and other times it sounds excellent. I am pretty familiar with IP and how packets work, UDP, TCP, layer 2, layer 3, etc. I get the impression that sometimes depending on the overall bandwidth available through the interwebs that I might be getting better packet delivery sometimes than others.  I fully believe it is possible to stream high quality, but I am not sure if anybody provides that. I am hesitant to start building up a large collection of optical medium as it is prone to scratching, costs extra money, and reduces the overall flexibility. I may end up getting a transport, but I was wondering if there have been any cool advances with digital media in the last 13 years.  

Any Advice?



biolapse
acman3
4,275 posts
 
Biolapse,

I kept hearing everyone saying Tidal was great. Also heard a lot about Roon. I had another person I bought a dac from recommend the Microredu, Sooo.., When I bought the Ultraredu,( go big right) and the uptone power supply, I just decided on Roon and Tidal. Both cost more money.

After downloading Roon and Tidal to my laptop, the Roon program found the Roon ready Sonore device, and I was streaming.

As you can probably tell, I am not an expert, and my only goal was to get it working. There are many ways to skin this cat, but that is simplest way for me. Still haven figured out the NAS storage, but have been blown away by what I am getting through Tidal. This coming from an analog guy.

Fyi,From what I gather here, Tidal sounds best, but Spotify has more music.


https://www.audiostream.com/content/sonore-simple-design-microrendu
acman3
4,275 posts
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XRi9utNBl4
acman3
4,275 posts
 
Another idea.

Good Luck!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV-FvRF9KGA
willemj
1,036 posts
 
Your receiver has an optical input, so all you need to do is get a $35 Chromecast Audio plus a mini optical cable to connect the Chromecast to your receiver. See here for more information: http://archimago.blogspot.nl/2016/02/measurements-google-chromecast-audio_27.html
A Sonos Connect would be a more expensive alternative.
All this really is a no brainer, because utterly convenient, and the DAC (digital to analogue converter) in the receiver will be responsible for sound quality. You can always invest heavily in a better external DAC later if you really want to, but I doubt you will need to.
The most important decision will be to choose the right streaming service for your favourite repertoire, for the interface, and for sound quality. Spotify is not quite full Red Book CD (but close at 320 kbps). Tidal and Qobuz here in Europe are full Redbook CD quality.
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