New to Streaming


Is Spotify a Hi Fi source for streaming? What streamer is good at $1000

shiner3237

@jl35 Yes, I don't have a Pro Plus but reviews say it is exactly the same but with 1. A better clock circuit, and 2. A better DAC that is implemented better. I think John Darko did a 25-minute review of it recently and Matt Coykendall compared it to the Bluesound Node on YouTube. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2mV155qGIM&t=3s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwbEtcgbyEA

I recently purchased the Wiim Pro Plus. For its price and the quality of the DAC it it meets all my needs providing me with a a huge music library at my finger tips. I personally use Spotify since I have a family membership as an annual Christmas present to all my kids. The interface is one of the best. I find there lossy music enjoyable and do not feel it distracts from my listening pleasure in any way from listening to my lossless and vinyl sources. As for the DAC, I have attached my Teac P650 CD player directly to the Wiim Pro Plus and find it provides a superior listening experience to the DAC in the Teac. The Teac is designed to permit me to connect my iPod Classic in direct digital mode Via USB through the Teac and allowing me full functionality of my ipod classic for selecting the lossless files I what to listen to. With all that said, your listening experience may vary but for me its about the enjoyment of the music and this setup gives me an enjoyable listening experience.Enjoy the journey!

@mteetank I’d highly recommend doing a free trial of Qobuz just to see if you hear a significant improvement as everything is CD quality or better.  If you do you may find very little use for your Teac or iPod anymore (I very rarely spin a CD these days).  Hey, it’s free so why not?  Just a thought FWIW.  BTW, can’t believe your iPod Classic still works!!! — mine crapped out at about two years (hope you have yours backed up somehow because I lost everything).

I figured that Qobuz is an audiophile oriented server that has hi resolution for most of mainstream titles. Outside of mainstream Qobuz quality drops too far down.

I have been using Bluesound for about 6-8 years now. I own the Node 2, Vault 2 and now the Node X. I agree it’s a great player with a great OS/User interface. The Node X now comes with a remote. The Node X internal DAC is a huge improvement in sound but I noticed each Bluesound player can sound better with a higher quality external DAC and external linear power supply to replace the stock parts. I am using the Teddy Pardo PS and Denafrips Pontus 12 anniversary DAC with the Node X and a PD Creative PS and Schiit Bifrost 2 DAC with the Node 2. I have both Qobuz and Tidal, but I must say I prefer Tidal. MQA and Hi-res FLAC files sound superb to me. If i had to come up with a beef with Bluesound and also a major strength I would say the units work much better wired via ethernet than the occasional wifi dropout (beef). The strength is in customer support and help. The Bluesound website and staff are very, very good. They have helped me more than once when I was doing something unusual and needed to point the device to my NAS storage and other things.