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Fairly new to streaming. Where to start?

$2k & under budget

Aralic Vega has streamer  and DAC. May be the easiest start?
Then there is Schiit...Yiggy or Gumby...which streamer?
Ladder NOS dac? Or Chip? I'm old. maybe I'll like the old school DAC?
Then there is  Benchmark DAC 3...I think it has streamer?
Then
Exasound E32
Audio Mirror?
Metrum
MHDT Orchid
Border Patrol?
Musical Paradise?
Whats a newbie to do? I am a classic rock fan with lots of FLAC & M4a files. I like detail & PRaT. Love a good bass line. I also play some 70's jazz. I have a Theta Miles CD player from the 1900's & play a lot of vinyl too. But I need to come into the 21st century.  Besides, I will probably become tired of the vinyl ritual and work at some point as I get older. I think I have done enough homework to be somewhat confused. Maybe the biggest question in light of how fast digital changes is the question of streamer with DAC or separate Streamer and DAC. One other question is the streamer & bridge the same thing? OK Thanks!! 
128x128artemus_5
soma70
153 posts
 
+1 innuos
+1 Roon 

make sure your hardware is Roon compatible and factor in the subscriptions for Roon and either Qobuz or Tidal. 

nothing worse than a poorly designed app to manage your music. Roon is just amazing.

Auralic also have a good app and i hear good things from Aurender but that’s not Roon compatible and more expensive.
djones51
4,947 posts
 
artemus_5,

 I'll stick with one streamer so you don't  get confused you can research others, the Node2i can be wired or wireless it has 2.4G or 5G, it has a good android app which should work on your phone unless it's more than 3 or 4 years old, it has all the major streaming services as well as radio services, you can connect a USB drive to it, you can also simply share a file with your music in it on a computer or have a NAS. You can use it's internal dac or attach external. If you can stream video seamlessly wireless then you should be able to stream audio but if your network is busy someone is streaming video at the same time you might have problems.
uberwaltz's avatar
uberwaltz
13,381 posts
 
Even though not a huge fan of the Auralic lightning app this is a killer deal......

https://www.audiogon.com/listings/lisa0cd3-auralic-altair-wireless-network-streamer-dac-d-a-converter-1tb-remote-22846-music-servers-docks
incognitodave
1 posts
 
I recently upgraded from a RPi streamer to Node2i and couldn't be happier. I especially like that you can use as a Roon endpoint and use Spotify Connect for the occasional song not on Tidal without switching anything. Would recommend running an external DAC with it.
hilde45's avatar
hilde45
4,974 posts
 
I was investigating this question recently and the people on this forum were very helpful. I decided to go with the blue sound node2i because I think this is the technology that is going to change quickly and I wanted to reserve a big amount of money for the dac, which makes a bigger difference, and is a more evolved kind of component, compared to streamers. I will also use the DAC with my CD transport. I like the idea of keeping these two things separate because one of them is going to become outdated much faster than the other.
If you do a bunch of research, you will see that the blue sound gets excellent reviews just about everywhere, even though it is entry-level. I do not plan on relying on the Dac inside that unit for very long. I picked it up, open box, from Crutchfield for $440. Quite a great deal and an excellent interface that I find it easy to use. I think it is a easy solution and now you could focus on the DAC.
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