Streamer creates a Wow experience

@lordmelton

Thanks for your post. I just want to reiterate, the use of external clock with N20, N30 or W20 requires a well thought out holistic approach and a commitment for SOTA digital streaming. Attaching a 10mhz master clock to a streamer is a half bake idea even with a high quality DAC. A external clock on streamer end alone will not yield full benefits in terms of musical rhythm, pace, timing, realism and phase coherence.

In order to realize aforementioned benefits, you need a music server and a DAC with master clock inputs. The external clock can then be used as a single source to synchronize timing between both digital devices ensuring jitter-free and time-perfect data transmission.

My previous setup included a N20, DA2, Ref10. While adding the Ref10 made a difference over already excellent internal clock in N20, the differences was not day n night or should I say worth $8K (clock, PC, BNC cable). I was looking for next level improvements and thanks to @mikelavigne and my dealer @gestalt audio, I now have what I believe a true SOTA digital streaming front end. I also encourage the use of high quality Ethernet switch / noise filtering device to further enhance your streaming experience.

BTW please ignore silly comment that a LPS for digital audio is snake oil. Utter nonsense. Best wishes.

@charles1dad Yeah, I know.  I was just trying to be nice instead of my more normally cantankerous self.  I use the iFi iPowerX power supply with my Zen Stream. 

@reimarc I highly encourage you to jump in.  There are obviously many ways to go — it can be very overwhelming — but I’d highly recommend the route I took as the results are spectacular, it’s not that expensive, and it could hardly be easier to get up and running.  The iFi Zen Stream by all accounts is an excellent performer at a very reasonable price.  It can be had for $399, and I view the iPowerX (or some other external power supply) as not optional.  I got my iPowerX from B&H used for $75 and works great, and they apparently still have more...

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1551794-REG/ifi_audio_306039_15v_ipower_x_15v_anc2.html

Setup could hardly be easier and you can just follow the few steps on their quick start guide and be done in five minutes.  The only wrinkle is you can’t stream Qobuz directly through the Zen, so you need to download the mconnect app and link your Qobuz to it, then you play Qobuz through the app to the Zen.  I’d only recommend the mconnectHD version for $5.99 as it allows you to play everything and the install/setup process was a breeze — not sure that’s the case with the Lite/free version.  Anyway, if you’re looking to just get started with a relatively affordable yet high-performing option with an absolute minimum of headaches, I can’t recommend this setup more highly.  Best of luck. 

Streaming vs. cd sound quality is no longer the issue. Streaming wins on the availability of music and ease with which it can be accessed. Now, my own experience during the time I was transitioning from cd's to cd rips, was that the rips had better sound quality than cd's, this was the final nail in coffin for cd's, and I had well over 3.5k cd's to rip, took me a couple years, what a pain!

I'd like to be convinced there is a single music player software that is superior to all the others. I've observed reviews of the software for years, opinions all over the place. At some point its likely I'll try some proprietary player. The excellent sound quality I'm getting with Roon at present certainly doesn't give me feeling I'm leaving something on the table. I have found that turning OFF every single process possible with Roon provides best sound quality. I also presume Roon has deepest pockets of all the music player software app providers, assume greater knowledge base of engineers working on things like sound quality, ease of use, etc.

Per sound quality music player software. What makes me somewhat skeptical is while some claim they hear differences in sound quality with Roon updates, I can't confidently claim I hear them. I'd have to do A>B>A comparison from some rather old Roon iteration to latest to really test for this. Still, not writing this off as possible or even likely, I just think the small differences between iterations make it difficult to hear.

Don't listen to those who claim lps and usb no good, total nonsense. Lps always good, usb superior in some cases, other times not, depends on implementation. One must optimize both usb out of server/streamer and usb in on dac.

@reimarc 

+1 for Aurender streamers. They have outstanding good sound quality every level of price / quality. They are completely self contained, so no need to play around with other software. You can easily move any files you want onto them. These are audiophile components. Plunk them down and the provide outstanding sound quality. I have two (see my ID). 
 

Their Conductor App is excellent and well regarded for its simplicity and power. 

I just wanted to do a separate post for those who may want to stream Qobuz through the iFi Zen as Qobuz as of yet cannot stream direct to the Zen. At first I thought maybe I made a horrible mistake getting the Zen as my sole source for streaming is Qobuz. I had visions of wrestling with third-party apps trying to get everything to work together — it seemed like a nightmare for sure headed my way, especially because I’m just awful at dealing with anything computer related.

Long story short, I needn’t have worried, and this is one of those VERY rare instances where everything just worked. To get Qobuz to work with the Zen you need to download the mconnect app. This made me nervous as the app only had like a 3-star rating, which had me really worried this was going to be a bad experience with glitches galore. Anyway, to minimize potential issues I plunked down the $5.99 for the mconnectHD version, which I can’t recommend highly enough. Once you have your Zen hooked into your WiFi, you just go into the app, choose Qobuz and sign into your Qobuz account when prompted, and that’s it — you’re done. Even I couldn’t screw it up, and that’s seriously saying something because I’m a pro at finding problems where there are none.

Here’s the best part — once these steps were completed, everything just worked! Imagine that. Qobuz popped up in the mconnect app, and all my playlists, favorites, etc. were there. It takes a few minutes to find the search function because the layout is a bit different from the Qobuz site, but it’s all there and it all works just as it should. I couldn’t believe when I hit play, the green light lit up on the Zen, and music started playing. Not only did music start playing, but it sounded absolutely glorious — much better than playing CDs at least in my system (admittedly I’m just using an Oppo through SPDIF as a transport, so take this for what it’s worth).

Sorry for being so long winded, but I just wanted to assure anyone who may be considering this route that it’s really easy to implement and the results are incredible. Hope this helps.