I think iphone is the bottleneck. If you had an external DAC, buy a lighting to USB (e.g. type B) adapter and hook up the iphone to the DAC. Or you could invest a portable DAC such as Audioquest Dragonfly Cobalt connected with an lighting to USB type A adapter. That will allow you play hi-res music through iphone. If you want to charge your iphone while playing music for a longer time period, buy a aforementioned lighting to USB adapter that also has a splitter from lighting to charger (also USB).
Playing CDs sounds better than Qobuz — dammit
I’ve built a decent HeadFi rig over the past few months and am quite happy with it streaming Qobuz as a source via my iPad/iPhone. I recently brought my CD player into the rig as there are some reference CDs I need that aren’t available on Qobuz. Well, I made the mistake of playing some CDs and compared them to Qobuz, and in every case the CD sounds better — specifically a quieter background and more transparency overall. I’ve got good cables from the dongle out of my iPad to the USB cable that runs to my DAC for streaming, so let’s leave cables out of the discussion for now because I think this goes deeper than that. Needless to say I’m pretty disappointed right now because I’ve enjoyed not spinning discs over the past year or so and certainly don’t wanna go back to buying CDs again. Ugh.
So, what I’m thinking is that streaming over WiFi through my iDevices may be the bottleneck. IF that’s the case and I need to up my streaming game, what would be the cheapest way to go to overcome the bottleneck? My thought is going hardwired (which I can do) to something like an iFi Stream or maybe a ProJect Streambox, but just wondering if that’d get it done? Something else? I need something pre-made and won’t wrestle with doing a Raspberry Pi with hats, etc. as I have no patience for configuring/troubleshooting tech. Thanks for any advice/thoughts.
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I think the number one problem with satellite streaming is not really the gear (although that can be undeniably a big part of it as well) but it’s the process. The only potential fatal flaw I see there is hoping for the best when you’re trying to bounce the signal up to a satellite nearly 200 miles up and then back down again and expecting it to sound as good as a disc. Somehow, something tells me that process is just gonna be murder on the signal. We’ve more or less seen similar troubles crop up before when trying to run digital signals along lengths of wire. And yes, I know that in that case the signal is actually analog at that point, not digital, and I don’t really even know whether the beam to and from the satellite is in analog or digital form, but my point is simply that if transmitting the signal a short distance here on earth can give us fits, just try to imagine what the hurdles to overcome must be like for the 400 mi round trip...! In the end we may wind up with the technological service we desire, e.g. the one we thought we were getting, but I suspect it may take them a few attempts to get it right...and we’re still basically in the middle of our first commercial attempt. We may have to put this idea back in the oven to bake a little longer, but I’m guessing we’ll get there. Maybe another way to look at that is, IMO, sending a hifi signal across the room via wifi OTOH, is a right good improvement over satellite streaming sq - maybe not q-u-i-t-e as good as disc - but rilly rilly close! Using better gear in that scenario, you’d think it would pay the dividends with sq that you might ordinarily expect to see. But, with satellite streaming I think the better gear might only go so far and then effectively no farther, really. At least for now. Hopefully they will get around to perfecting the satellite part of it. |
@richtruss, I happen to agree with you that a good streamer running Qobuz, in a dedicated system that is properly filtered, sounds far superior to one that is using a CD transport as its music source. I would never have come to this conclusion without the help from both you and Rob. Thank you |
After wading through all this it occurs to me that we don't know anything about the OPs system apart from iStuff. Maybe I missed it? Anyway, it's completely unsurprising that a reasonable CD player/transport on a reasonable system would sound better than the iStuff. I've got a kind of mid-fi setup with KEF LS50s, PS Audio Sprout 100 and Bluesound node 2i. My android phone can stream through the Sprout via Bluetooth. The Node 2i sounds far better (yeah, I know, Bluetooth yada yada). I've also got a seriously high end "reference" system also using a Node 2i. The differences are even more pronounced. That said, the differences between the Node 2i and CDs and ripped CDs onto flac files is minimal. And how much of that is imperfect level matching? Anyway, what you've done (I think) is really just take Bluetooth out of the chain. But what's the rest of the system? Getting all kinds of specific advice on streamers, routers etc is, IMHO, pointless without knowing the rest of the chain.
My gut reaction is just get a Node 2i. Use ethernet if you can. Listen and compare. I'd be amazed if it wasn't an improvement. THEN contemplate how much better it needs to be, if at all. If you upgrade just sell the Node 2i. And forget the special audio router stuff unless the rest of your system is very very special (flame on!). |
With fast music and music with a lot of cymbals my cd transport into the same DAC easily trumps the node 2 either streamed of played off of ss drive through the node. Better flow and more natural sounding. Also music that has large dynamic shifts sounds more dynamic and natural via the transport. |
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