If you had to start all over again in this day and age

Please excuse my dumbness but this is all new to me. So I need a streamer. I either have to get one with wifi or wired directly to my modem right?
Now I attach this streamer to my cd player dac with what type connectives? ("digital in" means hdmi?)

Why does the streamer have to be quality if it seems to be only a conduit? I just saw a streamer with dac for $23,000.

Also, I have to pay a monthly fee to join up with a provider like Apple music? What’s "tidal"?

My word. My questions are like "what spark plugs should I use" Sorry.

A streamer gets your music from your wifi router (modem) to your DAC or you can combine both functions in a streamer/DAC. You can connect to your wifi router wirelessly (wifi) or wired (ethernet cable, i.e. Cat 6, Cat 7, etc.).

Digital inputs and outputs will be labelled as such on the component. There are several types of digital cable that you can use to connect a streamer (digital out) to a DAC (digital in).

If you want to read up on this topic, there are a number of very recent threads about New to Streaming, Newbee Question About Streaming, etc. Just do a search of the forums for Streaming and sort by date.

If you read those and are still puzzled, you’re like me. The easiest way to learn about streaming is to buy a Bluesound Node 2i (a Streamer/DAC with a digital out so you can connect it to a separate DAC, if you want to) for $550 list price. It’s really easy to set up and the BluOs app you use to control the streamer is very user friendly. It will sound good enough for starters and you can get a separate DAC if you want better sound once you decide whether you like streaming or not. Eventually, you can spend as much as you want (or have) for better streaming gear if you feel that’s necessary.

Tidal, Qobuz and Amazon Music are streaming services which cost $15 - $20 a month. I think they all offer a free one month trial so you can decide which one you prefer or if you like streaming at all. I like streaming, other people like physical media. You can do both, using streaming to find music you really like, then buying a physical copy.

Ok, thanks Tom.
I'll check the forum out as you advise. Just one more quicky though: Say I stream a song into streamer. Does it get stored in there so I can play it back at any point or do I always have to use a streaming network for play back?

Generally, no, streaming services to the types of streamer dacs we’re talking about here for home 2ch listening always require an internet connection to play the songs. So you do not "own" the songs if that’s what you mean - but so long as you keep your subscription you can play anything from their vast catalog. I think some services do allow download (e.g., to your phone) and play without an internet connection, but your subscription must still be active (once it expires, those songs won’t play). It’s just that most of the types of streamer dacs described above don’t have way to store. (I hope I’m right about this - if I’m wrong someone will correct.)


I like streaming because it gives me access to vast quantities of music, and it curates them by genre. So, for example, I like blues. I listen to a lot of Albert King, Muddy Waters, Keb Mo, Taj Mahal, Luther Allison, Buddy Guy -- all pretty well known artists. But with Tidal, I go to "Tidal Recommends" for blues and I have access to tons of blues artists I’m not familiar with, and I can listen to any of them any time. It leads to infinitely more time spent listening. That’s the best benefit of streaming, IMO. And it’s CD quality or better if you use Tidal/Qobuz and have a decent player. With Hi Res (different services call it different names) you can do better than CD quality. Will it ever better a high-end vinyl setup? Maybe not today. But down the road, who knows. What lots of folks who have hi-end vinyl setups do is use streaming to identify those albums they want to purchase on vinyl.

Not all streaming services are created equal. Spotify has a free version but the quality is low (resolution). Tidal and Qobuz are the two high-quality leaders, and Amazon has become a new contender, but is not supported yet by many players (Bluesound an exception and maybe couple others).


Establishing an account with a streaming service will involve creating an username and password, that you’ll enter once into your streamer initially, and thereafter it’ll find it automatically each time you power on.


Also, not all players (streamers, dacs, or combo units that have both) obviously are created equally. Not all will play at the highest resolutions supported by the streaming services.


Regarding the dac in your cd player, depending on how good it is you may be better off going with a combination dac/streamer. Besides convenience and fewer cables, everything in digital domain runs off clocks and when you have more devices (like streamer and cd dac) involved there is more opportunity for jitter to degrade the sound quality. That said, if your cd dac is decent, it may outperform the dac in the Bluesound node 2i. Dacs/Streamers improve quickly, as in audio terms/timelines this is a pretty fast moving technology (compared to speakers, for example). The dacs 5 years from now will be markedly better than what we have today. That’s a good thing.



Yes, like everything in audio, prices go from low to nosebleed high. You can find dacs costing $100k if you look hard enough.