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Help—How to Marry High Bitrate Digital Streamers to Two Channel Audio Systems

I have four more than decent stereo systems in different rooms in my house, one living room, one TV room and two at desktop computers, along with a good collection of classical and opera CDs and LPs.  Problem is I’m getting old and laid up with back problems and it is getting really unpleasant to get up and down to change CDs and LPs all the time.  So it’d sure be nice if I could digitize my music and stream it and/or also stream High Bitrate music from subscription sources, all the while taking advantage of my good receivers and speakers.  And I’d love to play the same  music in more than one room at the same time.

But I am technically challenged to do this.  I’m discovering that It’s not that easy to marry the colliding formats of digital and analog and it can be exceedingly expensive! About $3000 plus tax for a midrange Network Streamer such as the Linn Majik.  Ouch.  And that would service only one of my stereo systems and I’m pretty sure I would still have to buy more than that to make it all work just at that one stereo system.   I am especially concerned to choose gear that will maintain the good quality sound I already have, but won’t be ridiculously expensive.

Is anyone successfully doing this?  What sort of gear did you have to buy and How is it all connected?

Anyone using an Oppo as a streamer?  Which one?  Would their latest, the Oppo UDP205 be a decent choice?  It is Roon ready and has WiFi and Ethernet connectivity, with two channel analog outs but 7.1 analog out as well, and also has the all important feature to convert digital to analog, so an external DAC wouldn’t be needed.  But does it produce decent sound? 

Just to briefly describe some of my audio gear I want to set up for Streaming:
  Living room stereo features an  Audiomat Prelude Reference MKII Tube Integrated Receiver with Quad ESL Electrostatic Speakers,
   TV room stereo features an Audiomat Arpege Tube Receiver and Spendor FL-6 speakers for music and Arcam SR250 Stereo AV receiver for TV. 

 
128x128echolane
tkr
100 posts
 
I use one of these http://mhsecure.com/metric_halo/products/hardware/uln-8.html
As ADC/DAC/preamp/crossover/EQ.

It means that the analog signal has to go through an AD/DA- loop, but conversion is at 24/96, and I am unable to hear any degradation of the analog signal.

On the digital front, the Metric Halo lets you stream music from a music server, any music provider available, YouTube and internet radio.
gdnrbob
4,444 posts
 
I would look into Bluesound. They offer a few items that should work for you.
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2psyop's avatar
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2psyop
1,574 posts
 
+1 on Bluesound. You could add a Node 2 to any or all of your stereo systems. Then create one source of digital music in one place that each node could see and connect with. That way you will use a smart phone or tablet or computer as your remote for ALL music that is digitized or streamed whichever room you are in or whichever sound system you want to listen to.
echolane's avatar
echolane OP
102 posts
 
Got it.  Just looked up Bluesound and they make it look easy.  And the Node 2 device is actually affordable.  Only problem I saw was from one reviewer who said the tagging software is woefully inadequate for tagging classical music.  About 98% of my CDs are classical or opera.
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