A quick question on what streamers to consider.......


Hello fellow Audiogoners - a quick question as I have noted above on streamers. I am looking for a steamer only,  no DAC,  that would be easy to use. I don't want to worry about any updates and would prefer a US made product if at all possible. I have a WiFi service coming into my home so that would be how I would be getting my music. I would like it simple to use and without any hassles. I would be using it in the summer providing music to my back dec, or when cooking or entertaining inside. I would looking in the price range say of ; $2,000 to $5,000 used or new. Thank you in advance and look forward to suggestions on what to buy based on what I have outlined above. Thank you in advance and please stay safe and well.....        

garebear

When I auditioned servers/streamers years ago, Aurender was a distant 3rd compared to Auralic and Lumin. Aurender software is pretty bad too compared to Lightning DS or Roon.

Today, the best streamer that I have heard is the ps audio airlens. Most streamers don’t use i2s and this is the best protocol to use to a dac. Great synergy with the ps audio DS sr dac

In follow-up to my post of 2-21-2024 and to provide info to others who use playlists, the conductor app is still having issues.  It crashes once per session, which is easy to fix with a restart.  More troubling is that I still can not add a track to a Qobuz playlist.  I specifically inquired about Qobuz playlists prior to purchasing and they never mentioned that feature was non-functional.  Support has acknowledged it is an issue and states it is a 'high priority' - I brought this to their attention on Feb 28, 2024.  I am not sure how long it will take or if it will ever get resolved so I can't provide guidance for a timeline.   I will follow-up with them so see if they have made progress.   

@12many I think you really have two options as workaround - 

1. you can add a track to your Qobuz playlist in the Qobuz app

2. you can add your Qobuz playlist to the Aurender library in the Conductor app then add tracks to it there. However in this case it becomes your Aurender playlist and anything you add/remove won’t be reflected in the Qobuz playlist. 
 

I don’t think it’s a deal breaker…at least for me it isn’t.

@audphile1 Thank you for your helpful suggestions.  We have been doing option 1, which works well, just not ideal to go through that process because I have to open the other app, search to find the song (Qobuz has a 'creative' search engine), then add the song and travel back.  More often we Shazam the song, and add it into a playlist the next morning so as to not disrupt the session.

As an update, last night I followed up with Aurender via email and this morning I received an email with another version to try.  I will give it a try this evening or weekend and report back.  The last update they provided did not fix it, but I am hoping this one does.  Nice that they are still updating and responding.  : )  Interfacing software is always challenging.  

Yes they’ve been very responsive to my inquiries as well. They turned around a color theme fix overnight.