thanks, any streamer suggestions, without breaking the bank? DH Labs has a couple of USB cables, do you have a preference?
Well, I got an iFi Zen Stream that retails for $399 along with their iPowerX power supply that’s around $100 I think, and it elevated my streaming performance to an entirely higher level. I actually ended up buying a USB cable from LavriCable that uses silver conductors and physically separates the power and data legs for better performance. These are features usually only found in much pricier cables, and as I was very impressed with their balanced interconnects and headphone cable I bought from them I just decided to stick with them for the USB cable. Others who’ve bought LavriCables here also feel they offer very high performance/$. Anyway, here’s the one I bought…
https://www.lavricables.com/cables/ultimate-silver-dual-usb-a-b-interconnect-cable/
While the iFi Zen Stream also provides a lot of performance/$, I only recommend it with a few caveats:
- Either hardwire it to your router or use a Wi-Fi extender or mesh system and hardwire the Zen from that. I found its Wi-Fi performance to be spotty and very frustrating, and hardwiring to it via an Ethernet, CAT7, etc. cable sounds better as well.
- iFi as of yet doesn’t support Qobuz directly, but you can download the mConnect+ app for $6 and that works well at least until iFi gets their act together with Qobuz. This is what I did.
- iFi customer support is virtually non existent so don’t count on any help from them. Fortunately you can get questions answered here or by doing a Google search, but as long as you hardwire to the Zen Stream you’d probably have little need for support.
That said, I think the Zen Stream is excellent for the price, and you’d probably need to spend well over $1000 on an Innuos, Lumin, etc. streamer to get significantly better performance. Anyway, hope this helps.