@alpha100 — I’d recommend taking the Jitterbug out and see what you find. When I first built my HeadFi rig I was using a Dragonfly Red and was happy, so I thought adding a Jitterbug would be a no-brainer improvement — wrong! It ruined the transparency and imaging/soundstage and I returned it. I later spoke with an industry insider/manufacturer who has contacts at Audioquest and he confirmed the Jitterbug has performance issues and they’re working on a redesign. Just a thought FWIW.
Anyone else feel like it’s the Wild Wild West?
I’ve been following the streaming threads here for a while now, and I find it both exhilarating and intimidating. I mean, we all know everything in high-end audio matters to some degree or another, right (Ok, maybe except for the flat earth contingent)? From what I’m reading and from my own experience the process of optimizing steaming has near unlimited potential, and some even say it rivals or even surpasses vinyl if taken to the max. Cables, routers, optical, filters, extenders, power supplies, switches, etc., they all seem to make a significant difference despite the naysayers who say bits are just bits. I’m all in on this steaming renaissance, but most of the jewels of useful info are buried in other posts, so I’d like to have this be a consolidator post of your best streaming experiences and recommendations for others who could benefit greatly from your hard-won victories and maybe save a lot of people the agony you went through to get to streaming nirvana. So have at it — let’s empower this community in this noble task and help everyone realize the amazing potential of this magic gift to audiophiles. What say you?
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@jjss49 Yup. I feel like I’ve learned more about improving the audio experience in the past couple years due to navigating the ins and outs of streaming than I had in a decade or more before. There’s nothing like striving to improve the streaming experience to teach you how much everything matters, and there’s nothing that’s done more to elevate my level of enjoying music as an audiophile than streaming because, in the end, it’s all about the music and streaming puts the whole world of music at your fingertips. And the exciting thing about streaming is that almost every upgrade you make in any part of the chain, no matter how small, almost always makes a significant improvement rather than the incremental — yet still meaningful — gains we usually experience once our systems reach a certain level. I think that’s what I meant when I termed this thread the Wild Wild West, because there are so many components to explore and almost every one can make a huge difference. It’s both so exciting yet also quite intimidating. Of course this comes with its frustrations and a pretty steep learning curve if you really care about achieving better sound, but man in the end it’s so worth it (anything worth doing, right?). IMHO, between the really excellent and affordable equipment available today along with the rapid advance of technology at the cutting edge and the ability to experience any music under the sun — much of it in hi res — at $15 or less per month makes this the best and most thrilling time ever to be an audiophile by far. One can only wonder and be excited in the anticipation of where we’ll be 10 years from now. I can’t even imagine. |
@lalitk No doubt. But analog is a mature technology relegated to relatively incremental improvements in products/technology while digital — and streaming in particular — is in its infancy by comparison and improving seemingly exponentially in both products and technology, hence my fascination and excitement where digital will be in 10 years. Even today there are some members here with very nice analog and streaming setups who say the sound they’re getting from streaming now matches or even beats that from their analog gear, so if streaming is getting this close now… |
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