Higher End DACs

erik_squires,
I’m an oddball and really do not. I’m probably the only person on A’gon who went straight from CD’s in the 80’s, 90’s to Tidal streaming in 2019 without ever downloading a digital music file. Skipped the whole Napster/Apple Music/ everything else for last 20 years. Why? I don’t know, to be honest. Kids, work, family, life, who knows? Then I found streaming and game changer -- back in audio in last year in huge way like I hadn’t been since the 90’s.

So long story short, no, I only use Tidal and I’m like a kid in the candy store now with unlimited (to me anyway) access to everything music. I’m sure eventually I’ll add a second service to cover the things I can’t get on Tidal but I can’t see ever going vinyl or hi-res downloads just too big a rabbit hole cash wise for me today. Maybe in 10-20 years when my kids are grown and I’m retired and have unlimited time and more $$.

In a home environment the " front end" component is your modem. It takes the analog signal and turns it into digital by MOdulate and DEModulate. In other words it’s basically a ADC incoming and DAC outgoing. So the signal sent to your router then streamer is only as good as that analog to digital converter in your $100 modem, either it works or doesn’t. No one said the streamer/dac is moot but the notion it’s the "front end" of the chain like a CD player or TT is not accurate. It’s a middle of a chain component. I never said they all sound the same I said in my opinion the most important role of a streamer is the ease of use through its interface and making sure the signal gets to the dac without degrading it. The only thing a streamer could do to interfere with the signal which would affect the sound is by adding noise or distortion so the quality matters but not to the extent that the dac does.

Go for Lampizator or EAR yoshino