New streamer needed
My streamer, 10yrs old, stopped functioning. Now I am listening to CDs again with the transport of the older Accuphase DP-67 and Merason Frerot DAC. The combination sounds great, very detailed and transparent. Now I am wondering how much money I would need to spend on a new streamer to match that sound level and which brands and models to look for. Any suggestions, possibly also from people who know the Merason and/or Accuphase? I am using Qobuz for streaming, and wireless options would be great too. Thank you.
@stievus seems you’re comparing older CD’s to streaming; you’d probably do well to make sure it’s not just different file quality vs. device performance differences you’re perceiving. CD files (production data known) vs. streamed files (production data often unknown) can easily be apples to oranges. |
The pro-ject is designed to facilitate the direct connection of an external drive to a usb input, and I think the iFi is as well. not sure about the others I referenced, but you should check. Regarding the difference in sound you heard, there are two other reasons I could think of: 1) It could be that your DAC is not fully immune to jitter or other noise introduced to it from either your streamer or your cd transport. If that were the case, you could hear a difference between the two. Btw, you never mentioned what model your old streamer was - that could be the culprit. 2) When you changed to cd, you listened intently for differences, and could simply be hearing what you were listening for. That’s a classic opportunity for confirmation bias, something we’ve all experienced a time or two. For a more in depth discussion of that, you could check out the thread “The Emperor Has No Clothes” (though full warning, you’ll have to wade thru a lot of discussion of cars!). Snd regarding synergy with your system, the folks in my camp generally believe that a streamer, properly implemented, does not have a sonic signature of its own. That’s established in the analogue realm, which means somewhere between your DAC and your speakers. Hope that helps.
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Same with me relative to storage. I’m equally torn about the Rivo. I keep coming back to it since I’ve already got a decent power supply that would work with it - which very much makes a difference. Alpha Audio had a pretty high opinion of it as long as the power supply is upgraded and you use aes/ebu for the output. Volumio OS is also unique, in that the plugins offer some advantages. Music Shield can calm down the CPU to reduce jitter, and the app itself offers up sampling options as well. I’ve found both to make a palpable change in SQ overall. |
